AD&P; > December 2015 > TALK > On Mobility > abovecar@gmail.com
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Dan Sturges, Mobility Designer, team red
Another Alternative for Urban
Transport: Shared Micro Vehicles
In late October Nissan and partner
Scoot Networks announced they
have launched a new shared micro-
car service in San Francisco. The
new scheme uses the tiny Twizy
"car," a tiny electric-powered
tandem-seat vehicle by Nissan's
sister company Renault. For this
application, the vehicle is being
called the Scoot Quad. I have been
interested in this idea for years, and
now that this future has arrived,
I am surprised to fnd myself won-
dering how prevalent this service
will become with the enormous
growth of ride-sourcing services
(e.g. Uber/Lyft). Once it was a
question of if. Then it was a ques-
tion of when. And now it is a
question of how big.
The beauty of Mobility-as-a-Service
(MaaS) is the ability to right-size
(and right-price) our transportation.
A user doesn't need a conventional
car, comprised of 25,000 parts or
more, to travel a few miles in an
urban core. The tiny vehicles from
Nissan/Renault ofer large economic
advantages due to simplicity and
size, but I wonder if a user would
rather just hail an Uber rather than
check-out, drive, then park a car.
Perhaps it's the type of trip that
will decide the mode of travel for
the consumer in this future. For
example, "trip-chaining," when a
user needs to make a number of
errands or multiple stops, is prob -
p The Nissan-supplied Scoot Quad for
carsharing in San Francisco.