Smarter Cycling Series: Cycling Innovation under the spotlight at CES 2018

By

Eva Malovrh

12 Mar, 2018

As part of our committent to help cycling and the bike industry seizing the opportunities offered by smart, connected and shared mobility, we are working with visionary business leaders who are paving the way for the future of mobility. We will share their thoughts and visions on ECF.com in the coming months.

Matteo Pertosa, Manager of IoT and e-Mobility division at SITAEL S.p.A., talks about the role of technology in e-Mobility and reveals the secret of the high degree of innovation that earned the Italian Company’s Connectivity System for e-bikes the prestigious Honoree title at CES 2018 Innovation Awards.

eMobility: keeping up with Technology to understand (and satisfy) users’ needs

Electric Cycling can be seen as one of the main solutions to help reduce air pollution and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, not only because transport is a major source of environmental contamination but also because great improvements can be accomplished in this field by making transport technologies really sustainable.

As stated in the report on Electric Vehicles (EV) issued by the European Environment Agency, almost all of the existing electric vehicles guarantee higher efficiency, low engine noise, and near zero exhaust emissions compared to conventional vehicles. However, some drawbacks are still present in the production phase as well as in the way they are perceived by final users: a relatively recent innovation that includes uncertain aspects and provides access to limited information.

The integration of electric components in an e-bike is still considerably easier and less expensive compared to big e-vehicle development, which can be quite challenging: batteries are smaller, require less time to be charged, and guarantee a good performance; furthermore, efficient infrastructures have already been created to implement bike-sharing systems in many cities worldwide (some of which are also electric). To have an idea of current BSSs (Bike Share Schemes) in the world, give a glance at the Bike-Sharing World Map by Paul DeMaio and Russell Meddin.

The development of eMobility is strongly based on customers’ needs and wishes. The common denominator for each electric transport sector – ranging from public city bus service or bike-sharing fleet management to private electric vehicles – consists in the capability of retrieving data, analysing and processing them accordingly and storing information so that it would be easy to access them by selecting useful info for different simultaneous purposes, thus offering consumers an enhanced experience based directly on their data.

Consumer-oriented eMobility Innovation: international echo at CES 2018

There is not one single solution for facing both e-Mobility's old and new requirements, and this is the reason why inventions and developments in this field are particularly welcomed.

Awarded at CES 2018 Innovation Awards, SITAEL introduced the evolution of its ESB connectivity system for e-bikes, called MAT (Magnetic Assisted Tap), developed to enhance cyclists’ user experience. MAT is a new concept of smartphone holder docking station transforming e-bikes into fully connected EV and providing end-users with advanced features available on their smartphones thanks to intelligent data retrieving.

This kind of innovation needed the development of an entirely new multi-functional cloud-based platform for arranging all kinds of data and managing different fleets of connected e-bikes at the same time. The adoption of a common web-based platform that allows manufacturers, retailers and end-users to inter-communicate in a frictionless way and to access simultaneously to different kinds of information both in real time and by remote is the key for meeting this challenge.

The international scenario of CES highlights the relevance and need for innovation in eMobility, both for contributing to long-term objectives on environmental sustainability and for enhancing transportation, that is at the focus of a society of connections: among people, countries, economies and ideas. It confirms that thinking outside the box, risking and investing in something original satisfies necessities in everyday life and transforms future concepts into real options.

Dear electric vehicle manufacturers, forerunner retailers, dear associations supporting sustainable eMobility and dear smart cyclists, all of us are (in) the future, since we believe in it.