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A project offers self-service electric scooters for shared mobility

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An initiative from two students born during their studies at the GSEM

While completing a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Management, two former GSEM students, Ilir Kurti and Rawid Yunus started thinking about an innovative project with a local perspective, and the idea of a self-service electric scooter service was born. Three years later, this service will be launched in a commune of Geneva at the beginning of 2023, as well as at the University of Geneva.

The two friends founded the start-up iUGO and their project aims to offer a shared mobility service that promotes a multimodal and intermodal approach to mobility while ensuring freedom of choice by broadening the range of transport modes on offer. Its objective is to encourage citizens to gradually abandon individual motorized transport in targeted areas and thus reduce the negative impact of daily mobility.

The electric scooter model chosen has been specially designed for self-service shared use, and the vehicles are equipped to meet the strictest safety standards. Users unlock the scooters by scanning the QR code, which opens a mobile application. Through geolocation, users will be able to locate the nearest available scooter available to make their journey.

For this mobility project within urban and suburban communities, Ilir and Rawid benefited from the support of GSEM Professor Dimitri Konstantas. Involved in the research fields of mobile applications and mobility, Professor Konstantas is also the Coordinator of the H2020 European project AVENUE, which focuses on the validation of autonomous vehicles for public transportation. In May, the two entrepreneurs accompanied Professor Konstantas to the European Energy Transition Conference, where they presented their project.

In addition to the pilot project starting in 2023 in Geneva, an initiative called UNI-GO, under project manager Jean-Luc Sudan is studying the use of this self-service scooter project to connect the buildings of the University of Geneva. UNI-GO aims to fill the current lack of mobility options between buildings on the UNIGE urban campus to facilitate commuting to and from work (for employees) and classes (for students).

July 12, 2022
  2022
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