International Transportation (71) 1 | 2019 16 PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS Mobility on demand “On-demand software solutions can help municipalities” Digitalization and automatization are regarded as the royal road to a convenient on-demand mobility. However some solutions still seem to be isolated applications: limited in their range and not really made for the everyday needs of passengers. Other technology solutions are wide in use and it seems that they could fit the wants of both the operators and the customers better. But what is essential? Answers by Gunnar Froh, founder and CEO Wunder Mobility. International Transportation - Mr-Froh, you founded Wunder Mobility as a technology supplier for digital end to end mobility services. What is the approach - what are the specific features? Gunnar Froh - Wunder is the fastest growing mobility-tech company in Europe that provides technology, that enables cities and companies to launch new mobility services and be able to create more efficiency to their businesses. We are the only global company that conceptualizes and scales all variations of new mobility services as part of its technology and aim to offer the entire spectrum of mobility services from a single source. What are the solutions to achieve this aim? There are three options. Wunder Carpool is an innovative technology solution for ridesharing and commuter carpooling that aims to reduce traffic density and improve air quality levels in cities. It is a peer-to-peer platform that allows to share empty seats in your car, e. g. on the way to work. Wunder Shuttle is an integrated software solution for all “shuttle-on-demand services”, which can be integrated seamlessly with existing means of transport. It allows operators to create an on-demand Taxi or ride sharing system. The third product is Wunder Fleet, that delivers the technology to power all sharing services in the mobility ecosystem ranging from bikes to electric scooters and cars. From an operator perspective, we provide all the tools to be able to manage a vehicle sharing business from end-to-end. Let us start with fleet management. Free-floating carsharing pioneers like car2go and others are long experienced in this field. What’s the difference in your conception? Car2go created a really good in-house solution that is tailored for their business and it suits perfect their current needs. We developed Wunder Fleet in close collaboration with over 30 customers and followed a vehicle agnostic approach. We built our fleet technology to add all kinds of vehicles with an unpaired feature set, which is the broadest on the market and is open for new integrations. No application is built perfectly to suit everyone’s unique needs, but it is important for us giving our customers easy access which allows them to use our product in a way that best suits their needs. So they can easily add business tools or their own frontend application … … meaning that the solution is taylorable to any means of transportation - even with future vehicles? We even integrated a mobility hub with multiple vehicles in out back-end which allows an operator to choose from multiple options. As we don’t see the big OEMs in the software business in the long term, we want to become the best software provider for mobility worldwide. In the future, complex mobility services, just like vehicles, will be the result of a value chain in which system suppliers play an important role. The international, entrepreneurial and data-driven culture of our company enables us to build and further develop the software and operating system for this ecosystem faster and better than large OEMs are able to. Our technology is used in more than 100 cities on five continents to power more than 100,000 vehicles - cars, scooters and kickscooter - facilitating over 12 million trips worldwide. In contrast to Wunder Fleet the Carpooling solution addresses the end customer as a peer-to-peer system? Yes, Carpooling is a P2P solution. General operations are needed to run a market - community management, operations support - but overall it is a community from users for users. Payments can be made in cash and electronically through our integrated Wunder Wallet. It is also possible to add fees to both payment solutions. Is the Carpooling technology field-tested and how does it perform in practice? Wunder Carpool has already been launched in 7 different markets and over 5 million Source: Wunder Mobility International Transportation (71) 1 | 2019 17 Mobility on demand PRODUCTS & SOLUTIONS carpools have been processed through it. It makes a huge impact in the markets where we operate at scale. For example in Manila we take up to 50,000 cars of the street through carpooling. Cities that have carpooling solutions can drastically reduce CO 2 emissions and traffic congestion, without any infrastructure investment or adding vehicles on the streets. In New Dehli one of the most polluted cities in the world, we helped reduce CO 2 levels by 20 tons a month. Connecting existing services should be an effective possibility to pull more car drivers from sitting in traffic jams to convenient public transport. How will Wunder Shuttle play a role in this matter? Wunder Shuttle is a demand-oriented mobility solution. The software supports operators to optimize and tailor their existing mobility offerings to the end-customers needs and market demands. Besides many factors that are needed to change people’s behaviour away from their single car usage to using pooled transportation, is the offering of a worthy alternative that is easier and more comfortable to use. Wunder Shuttle is continuously being developed on the basis of experiences gained from the mobility market of pooling passengers and drivers. Integrating a new solution into existing offerings needs the close collaboration of the public operators and digital service providers to combine their knowledge about the end-customers needs. What have passengers to do to get the benefits, how are the procedures? By using the Shuttle app, passengers can plan their trips, find the best possible routes and book these. In addition, the app allows the user to follow the selected journey in live mode in order to identify possible delays ahead of time. And how does it work on the operators side? Operators are looking at a one-time setup fee and monthly vehicle fees for the software which ultimately helps reducing overall operating costs through the savings in efficiency improvement. What are your experiences with the Shuttle solution up to this point? Multiple scenarios have shown overwhelming results. One of them supporting a local shipping company with the first & last-mile solution in the harbour of Hamburg in order to ease the daily commute of their employees to or from the nearest public transportation station to their premisses. Offering an additional service helps increasing employee satisfaction and encourages using public transportation in order to reduce parking space necessity for the employer. By relying on the knowledge and expertise of local operators and enhances their operations, Wunder Shuttle does not increase the number of vehicles running in the streets but optimizes the amount of passengers utilizing the vehicles. Through the technology multiple use-cases can be implemented besides first/ last mile solutions for example corporate & campus transit, employee & school transportation, hotel & airport transfer, tourism & event shuttle and many more. We talked about applications in urban areas with a great variety of public transport offerings. But what about the benefits specifically of Shuttle and Carpooling in the hinterlands with none or hardly any public means of transport? A combination of several offerings is the key for successful mobility to supporting more rural areas in the outskirts of cities. The necessity for on-demand mobility is much higher in areas where public transportation is failing the end-customers’ needs and can be used precisely for this purpose. Ondemand software solutions can help municipalities to evaluated their mobility need and offer alternatives, especially to inhabitants that are no longer able to commute in their own vehicles. www.wundermobility.com ■ Wunder Carpooling app Source: Wunder Mobility Carpooling in Manila Source: Wunder Mobility