Bosch is launching its new Coup eScooter sharing service in Berlin. Coup, a subsidiary of Bosch, now provides Berlin residents with a new mobility option featuring a simple pricing model. Customers can now find, reserve, and use their nearest eScooter at any time. After reaching their destination, they simply drop off the scooter anywhere in the city center. “With Coup, Bosch is launching its first purely end-user and concessions business in the mobility sector and creating a new independent brand,” says Dr. Markus Heyn, the member of the Bosch board of management responsible for the project. Two hundred connected and all-electric scooters produced by Gogoro, a leading eScooter brand, will be available for the launch in Berlin.

Large cities are characterized by traffic jams and a shortage of parking spaces, yet they also trigger the desire for individual mobility. “Coup wants to help overcome the urban mobility challenge,” Heyn says. Especially the younger generation demands mobility and flexibility – owning a car is no longer seen as necessary. “Mobility requirements and demands are changing. Bosch wants to shape this change with their own mobility and service solutions,” Heyn says. As a result, the company is already working on solutions for connected parking management, cloud-based fleet management, and app-based mobility assistants that support the multimodal use of different types of transport. The new Coup sharing service represents an additional building block for the Mobility Solutions business sector.

New clients, new partners

To start with, 200 connected eScooters will be available in the Berlin neighborhoods of Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain, and Kreuzberg. They have a maximum speed of 45 kph so that everyone over 21 holding a car or motorcycle driving licence can use them. The storage compartment under the seat fits one helmet and two swappable batteries. In the future, a second helmet will be provided. The eScooters have a range of around 100 kilometers. Customers will not have to worry about recharging – Coup will handle this for them. The pricing model is based on a flat-rate fee which charges 3 euros for 30 minutes or 20 euros for the whole day. The service is accessed via an accompanying app, whose intuitive interface makes it simple to find, book, and pay for a scooter. Even opening the helmet box is controlled by smartphone, which is connected to the eScooter via Bluetooth.

Coup is collaborating closely with Gogoro on this project. First established in 2011, this Asian start-up has rapidly become the global leader for connected and electrically powered scooters, which are now also available on European roads thanks to Coup.

The set-up and operation of the sharing platform have taken place in close strategic partnership with BCG Digital Ventures, the corporate venturing subsidiary of the Boston Consulting Group. “We have jointly developed Coup based on the MVP principle (minimum viable product). We are now quickly entering the market with a basic version to ‘test and learn’ together with our users in order to further refine our service,” says Mat Schubert, who is responsible for the Mobility Services project at Bosch as well as the CEO of Coup Mobility GmbH. “In the near future, we will see which urban areas have the highest demand. On this basis, we will then gradually expand our service.”

Original Source: Bosch