The startups rolling out of Europe's early-stage micromobility scene

Yahoo

5 hours ago

Early-stage micromobility has shifted over the last few years. The cowboy antics of e-scooter companies causing chaos in a bid to scale has faded along with those fat venture checks that are now flowing to AI startups.
Tighter capital combined with an existential need to create sustainable business models has produced a new crop of micromobility startups.
This week, I attended Micromobility Europe in Brussels, where I toured the conference's so-called 'Startup Arena' to get a sense of what Europe's early-stage micromobility ecosystem was bringing to the table. Many of the companies I spoke to are trying to fill the gaps of this industry – whether it's through fleet management software, parking, or charging. Some, though, are just building the vehicles they wanted to ride.
All of them represent the next phase of the ever-evolving micromobility industry.
E-cargo bikes are often marketed as making parents' lives easier, but most are heavy, bulky, and expensive. UK-based Convoy, which was founded in 2023, is trying to surpass those obstacles with a clip-on cargo conversion kit for bikes and e-bikes that can carry up to two small children.
The team behind Convoy has a diverse background that ranges from femtech and e-bikes to the ex-CEO of Dyson.
'We have worked together for 10 years building the first hands-free wearable breast pump,' Tatiana Escobar-Peake, Convoy's chief revenue officer, told TechCrunch. 'For a decade, we have been obsessing over why life for new parents has to be so miserable?'
Convoy's attachment fastens easily to the back wheel of an existing bike, stores easily, and only weighs about 26 pounds. It offers a 250-watt motor that turns pedal bikes into e-bikes, as well as rear-wheel steering preserves the turning circle of the bike.
Convoy is launching pre-orders for the €2,200 ($2,500) trailer next week. The startup has raised modest funding and secured enough demand from European distributors this year to start thinking about expanding to Japan and the U.S. next year.
Founded one and a half years ago by brother and sister duo Caroline and Johannes Goeckel, Germany-based Azora Charge is building solar-powered charging and parking stations for e-bikes. Azora Charge isn't trying to directly meet the needs of shared micromobility operators as much as serving regular people who own an e-bike that can be safely charged and parked in public.
'There are no solutions like this,' Caroline Goeckel told TechCrunch. 'In London, for example, there's no way I can park my bike somewhere and know that it's safe. It's just gonna get stolen.'
Azora's flagship product, Azora Arc, is a covered charging station that can fit inside one parking space. It features integrated five solar panels, four charging stations that can accommodate up to eight bikes, and can be adapted for advertising. It's designed to be a plug-and-play solution, suitable for various locations like parking garages and city streets.
Azora wants to sell these stations at a retail price of €28,000 ($32,000) – or €15,999 ($18,400) for the Azora Flow that doesn't have a cover – to cities, apartment complexes, shopping centers and other businesses. They hope to raise €250,000 through venture capital or friends and family, emphasizing the need for expertise in B2B distribution. A pilot program is set to start in Heidelberg, Germany, to test the first prototype's viability.
Fleetser is a European-based micromobility marketplace that buys, sells, and refurbishes shared electric bikes and scooters. The company, founded in late 2024, caters to both new and established operators, offering help with supply chain, software management, and batteries.
Fleetser's client base includes sellers looking to offload hardware and new operators seeking cost-effective entry into the market.
'We are the right marketplace to help someone that wants to start out, or even a big operator that wants to expand affordably,' Alexei Stefan, managing partner at Fleetser, told TechCrunch.
The company operates remotely with warehouses in Romania and the Netherlands. It has sold 6,000 bikes this year and is scaling organically through market demand and word-of-mouth. Fleetser also offers logistics support for moving and delivering bikes, and was seen chatting with the founders of Detroit-based Bloom – which wants to take on all the hard, behind-the-scenes work for e-bike startups – at the event.
Italian startup Switch is bringing AI and simulation to fleet planning and fleet management for cities and shared mobility operators – including a pilot with Lime. The startup offers two core products: Urbiverse generates synthetic data and simulations for logistics and mobility, while Urban Copilot offers real-time demand forecasting, fleet rebalancing, and operations optimization.
Then there's the AI agent that is 'able to access all the tools of the stakeholders,' from Slack to CRM apps, so that users can ask 'cross-section questions.'
'So you can ask it somelike like, please send a notification on Slack every time that the fleet battery average level goes below 40% in this neighborhood, you can you ask for a report of the status of my fleet in comparison with public transport disruption,' Alessandro Ciociola, Switch's AI officer, told TechCrunch.
Founded in 2020, the company has raised nearly $1 million, including from the European Institute of Technology.
Zapp, a super app from Bosnia and Herzegovina, offers food delivery, shared micromobility, package delivery, rent a car, and taxi services. Zapp launched in 2020 and has expanded to 10 cities in Bosnia — where Uber still doesn't have a big presence – and plans to enter Croatia this year.
What's different about Zapp is that it operates a franchise model, an idea that came from CEO Martin Mikolic, the former CEO of gaming cafe franchise Friendly Fire.
'In the Balkans, there's not a lot of competition [from established players like Uber], and the focus for our franchise is smaller cities below 1 million people because the concept is to empower local people, because local people know best what the customer needs in that city,' said Mikolic.
Jean Madaule was a business analyst for the video game industry who wanted to buy an electric motorcycle, but couldn't find anything on the market that met his needs of traceability, reparability, and a cool design.
A self-taught engineer, he started building motorcycles in his garage until he came up with what is now J2R's flagship model. J2R, which was founded in 2022, named its first electric motorcycle Smol — in a nod to its small size. Smol has a sharp, radical design that has futuristic dirtbike styling with a minimalist appeal, which is enhanced by features like the exposed suspension.
'It's a toy, but for the city,' Madaule said. 'Basically for people who are really urban and into street culture. I guess that's why scarcity marketing works for them. They feel like it's a drop of something super exclusive.'
The team launched a pre-sale campaign in September with a price tag of €9,450 ($10,800). They plan to deliver 15 numbered units by the end of the year and 100 units in January 2026. Smol is assembled in France with parts primarily sourced from the EU.
As the former founder of German bike-sharing operation Velocity Mobility, Tobias Meurer understands the pain points of the shared micromobility business. In April 2023 he returned with a new startup, Trace Mobility, which provides business intelligence services for bike and car-sharing operators.
Trace Mobility offers a subscription-based software service that tracks key metrics such as user registrations, bookings, vehicle utilization, and revenues. It also integrates publicly available data and offers an AI agent for customized insights and operational suggestions.
The company's target client is smaller operators that don't have their own booking platforms but rather rely on white label solutions, which Trace draws data from to come up with its own insights for clients.
'Profitability is a big issue for everyone in the business and to improve profitability, or to first reach profitability, it is important to know the mechanisms behind your cost and revenue structure and how these are connected,' Meurer said.
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