Paris is quickly becoming one of the frontrunners in micromobility. The city has taken major steps to adopt ambitious infrastructure plans with a plan to become a 100% cyclable city by 2026. 

In light of these developments, Paris is the perfect venue for mobility industry gatherings. Last week Comodule’s team attended Paris Autonomy, one of the biggest mobility fairs in Europe to catch up with the latest trends and showcase our technology. We had many great conversations and were impressed by how fast the sector is growing.

Here are some of the trends we noticed at Paris Autonomy:

1.Growing B2B2G data business models - big data and AI platforms are thriving on providing insights to micromobility fleet operators to improve their operations. At the same time, they are using the data they gathered from the fleets and selling insights to city municipalities. Cities have a lot of pressure to make infrastructure changes towards more livable cities and data is key to them.

2. Autonomous vehicles - while there were several autonomous vehicles on expo, the main discussions still revolve around whether our cities are autonomous-ready and how to pave the way for driverless vehicles. Our prediction is that autonomous vehicles will not take over our roads any time soon as these types of vehicles need a whole new layer of regulations.

3. Smart parking solutions - while there is an abundance of scooters and bikes on the streets, cities are tackling the issue of where people can park them. A variety of smart docking and charging stations were showcased at Paris Autonomy and it’s likely we’ll see more of them installed in cities across the world.

4. Beauty contest for sharing fleets - as more cities are regulating the number of fleets on their streets, the sharing operators are doing their best to stand out and create better relationships with municipalities. One of the keywords is sustainability, which is either reflected in vehicle choice or how the sharing business is operated.

5. Electric scooter regulations – the different regulations for electric scooters that are required by the public sphere make scooters more expensive and sometimes even impractical (for example, the need for computer vision to detect sidewalk riding). Some countries are requiring features that make it questionable if they actually increase riding safety or not (turn signals, display that shows the speed of the scooter).

6. Last-mile delivery - micromobility is not just changing the way how people commute but it’s also innovating delivery transport. We’ve seen an explosion of new cargo bikes and delivery services in the last few years and the trend keeps going strong.

7. More connected vehicles - established manufacturers, start-ups, and even traditional auto industry players are scrambling to catch up and offer connected light electric vehicles. There are still challenges to identifying the use cases and convincing investors to bet on connectivity. All in all, connectivity is becoming a commodity for mobility providers because of unmatched security features and enhanced riding experiences.

8. New modality - vehicles that are positioned on the cross-section of e-bike/moped/motorbike are taking ground. Cake and Brekr were presented as good examples of this pedal-less vehicle.

9. Paris truly is a great cycling city - we couldn’t resist testing out the streets of Paris ourselves and we must admit, the wide separated bike lanes are great for dwelling around the city. We took our e-bikes and scooters for a trip across Paris and the amazing Eiffel tower backdrop elevated our joy of riding.

If you are in the micromobility industry and you missed as at Paris Autonomy, we’re happy to talk to you personally about how IoT could support your business. Get in touch with our Sales Manager Dan at daniel@comodule.com.

Thank you to the organizers and everyone we met at the fair. See you in Paris next year!