Commuters could 'float' over that last mile on plastic scooter

GUANGZHOU, CHINA — Oliver Risse is a longtime fan of the “shared economy,” and because of a new business he's started in urban transportation, he's become a fan of plastics.

The Singapore-based entrepreneur and his start-up company Floatility GmbH are making heavy use of plastic composites for a lightweight electric scooter, for a business they plan similar to urban bike sharing, with hundreds of rental scooters available for short trips around cities.

Its three-wheeled scooter, dubbed the e-floater, was featured at the Chinaplas trade fair in Guangzhou in late May, where Risse spoke at design events organized by German plastics maker BASF SE. Risse said BASF played a major technical role in the scooter's development.

In an interview at Chinaplas, he said most scooters have metal bodies but Floatility took a look at plastics and composites after a manufacturing partner in Indonesia connected him with BASF.

More than 80 percent of the e-floater is now made from composites and plastics.

Risse, founder and CEO of Floatility, said plastics made sense because the company wanted “something that from a design standpoint that looks very different” and that would appeal to commuters, both for looks and safety.

“Almost all other vehicles you find on the market are aluminum or [another] metal,” he said. “Weight is a very important factor to us, and also convenience. The composite technologies … are super nice actually, from a stability point of view, a durability point of view, and also from an aesthetics point of view. There's a lot of design freedom.”

Floatility started in 2013 in Hamburg, Germany, and the seven-person company is now on its sixth prototype version of the scooter.

Plastics, including various grades of glass-fiber reinforced nylon for structural parts and thermoplastic polyurethane for tires and handlebars, play a key role in making the vehicle lighter. The scooter weighs about 26 pounds, or half the weight of most bikes.

Risse said it folds up and its battery makes it easier to get around without the exertion of a bike ride, potential advantages for commuters or workers crossing large factories or corporate campuses.

“Over a thousand [bike sharing] systems are already installed, large-scale systems, but why do people still pedal?” he said. “In tropical countries like Singapore, nobody wants to pedal. That's why we say ‘Look, we need to get something that's the next generation of technology, that's purely electric, people stand on it, go a short distance to go from A to B.'”

Smart city development

He argues that the scooter fits into the “three major pillars in smart city development:” electric transportation, mobility on demand and a sharing economy.

“The most important factor is the sharing economy,” he said. “Our business model is not to sell a single product. We are selling a network solution. The vehicle itself communicates in real terms with a server, so we can offer a sharing economy model. It's the next generation of bicycle sharing.”

To illustrate the potential he sees, Risse points to figures from a 2-year-old New York company, Citi Bike, which has had more than 10 million trips: “That means people have replaced the car trips with bicycles, which is an awesome figure.”

Risse, who has a background in venture capital financing in the clean tech industry, including as former chief operating officer of Singapore-based Asia Clean Tech Capital Pte. Ltd., said Floatility needs more fundraising to fully launch. But he said there is a lot of interest in “last mile” urban transit.

“The smart city/smart mobility space is, generally spoken, very hot,” he said. “If we can [prove] that we solve the last mile transport problem, then we're sure that we will be closing the funding round relatively quickly.”

Putting aside big-picture visions of urban planning and finance hurdles, the company now is handling a lot of day-to-day challenges, like ramping up for production.

It plans to finish tooling and begin production, and then start operational trials in Singapore, where it has an office, and in northern Europe, to gauge performance in extreme weather conditions, Risse said.

Supplier collaboration

Manufacturing will be done in Indonesia, by the Tangerang-based firm ID-IC & Partners, a group of companies that are involved in injection molding, mold building and product development.

The scooter requires technical knowledge of injection molding with glass fiber-reinforced nylon, and keeping manufacturing precise enough for smooth assembly, given challenges with deformation and shrinkage in working with plastic composites, said ID-IC CEO Norbert Fechter, in an email interview.

ID-IC, which has 540 employees and about 40 injection machines, has worked with BASF for about two decades and connected Floatility to the German materials maker, Fechter said.

That connection turned out to be useful for Risse, who readily admits he's not a plastics expert, nor particularly a manufacturing expert.

Instead, he described Floatility's plan as a melding of software with scooters, and mixing in plastic composites, to find a new niche in urban transit.

“We're maybe the first company who tries a smartphone enabled last-mile electric vehicle with advanced composite materials, to our knowledge this is unique,” he said. “We assume that the user experience while floating through the city is very smooth and easy. Much softer than with a metal chassis.”