MOIA, the shared mobility of the future is already here
In December 2016, MOIA became part of the Volkswagen Group. It is a young, dynamic company, with offices in Berlin, Hamburg and Helsinki, whose activities focus on new forms of shared mobility with the goal of creating innovative and efficient services: connecting the digital world and that of urban transport, an app and the people who use it.
What requirements led to MOIA’s formation?
One of the main problems with today’s mobility? Empty seats! But in a world in which we aren’t keen on sharing, how can we convince people to fill them? We need to rethink everything, break down barriers, increase the quality of the time spent in those seats and ensure that it is simple to find them, as well as minimising waiting times.
What does MOIA do?
It is a brand which integrates car pooling (multiple people sharing a route) and ride hailing (paying for a single journey through an app) into a concrete project in order to create and offer mobility solutions to make cities more liveable, beautiful and safer for everyone.
How does it work?
Intelligent algorithms allow many people to travel along the same route but get in and out at different points, thus creating many (potentially infinite) virtual stops, roughly every 200-250 metres. The journey is booked and paid for through the dedicated app, which provides a real-time display of the vehicles available nearby and the predicted cost for the chosen destination. The various passenger destinations are combined into a single route, which the same app then provides to the professional driver.
What are MOIA’s goals?
The goal is to reduce the number of vehicles on American and European roads by one million by 2025, reducing city traffic by 90% – while achieving lower prices than a taxi ride.
Are MOIA’s services already active?
A test phase for the ride pooling service began in October 2017. A small number of users – around 2,000 – used the app and the corresponding service around the streets of Hanover, Germany, booking and taking over 100,000 journeys on board a fleet of 20 Volkswagen T6 vans. In the last few weeks MOIA has started up a new phase of the test, expanding its fleet to 35 vehicles and increasing the number of users, with the goal of perfecting the system. The official launch of MOIA is planned for Hamburg in late 2018 / early 2019, when a fleet of purely electric vehicles specifically designed and developed for MOIA will be used. They will feature generous levels of space, excellent accessibility, the correct level of privacy for each passenger and a 300 km range, with a battery which can be charged to 80% in just 30 minutes.
Source: MOIA