Location. Location. Location
Why location accuracy is so important for micromobility users and operators
By Levi Schulman Marketing And Business Development at Navmatic and Boaz Mamo, Co-founder and CEO at Navmatic
It’s a hot, humid, sunny day in Durham, North Carolina. You are only a couple miles away from your house, but you are tired of walking in the heat. Luckily, Durham is known to have a thriving micromobility industry, so there must be scooters all around the city. You pull up the app, and see that there is a scooter 0.1 miles away. The only issue is, you get to the spot on the app where the scooter is located and it’s not there! You look across the street, around the corner, up the block to figure out where it’s located, and, ultimately 10 minutes later, you find the scooter. That is 10 minutes of time wasted by the consumer, and 10 minutes of income wasted for the company.
This story is a commonplace one in the micromobility industry, but not only for the consumer. You could be an employee at a large micromobility company, driving around the city in order to charge the ever-growing number of scooters in the surrounding area. Unfortunately, the same problem befalls you. You spend an inordinate amount of time making U-turns because the scooter is located on the other side of the street, or peaking down side streets in an attempt to figure out which house the scooter is parked in front of. Not only is the driving around inefficient and tiresome, but you are making less money while charging less scooters due to the inability to accurately locate them.
You are not alone in suffering through these experiences. In a survey conducted with 72 participants from over 10 locations, over half responded that it takes them more than 5 minutes to find a scooter to begin their ride, while 40% of respondents said that they had difficulty finding their scooters.
Ultimately, the inaccuracy of the GPS in the micromobility industry is both a financial and a morale drain for the consumer and the company. Consumers are consistently unhappy with the time it takes to find the scooters, making them less likely to use a scooter the next time they find themself out in the city on a hot summer day, while companies are woefully inefficient when it comes to charging their fleet of scooters.
Micromobility companies must invest in a better solution to make your life easier, and make their own companies more successful.
