Taking a data-driven approach, Budapest's first e-carsharing service has significantly increased daily rentals
BUDAPEST, Hungary: Sitting alongside the great Danube river, the histories of Vienna and Budapest have long been deeply intertwined. Now, in combining for car share excellence, Ubiq and GreenGo are bringing this interconnectedness to the future of urban mobility.
An Austro-Hungarian collaboration
Described as “Budapest’s first e-carsharing service”, GreenGo gives no-car households in the city a novel, eco-friendly way of getting from A to B. Reasonably priced - about half the price of a taxi - and with no need for the user to charge them or pay for parking, GreenGo offers a cheap, convenient urban transport alternative.
Based in Vienna, just over 200km upstream of the Danube, Ubiq is a global provider of fleet management services for shared mobility. With AI-driven assessments of each vehicle’s position relative to forecasted demand, Ubiq ensures that free-floating vehicles are in the right place, at the right time, to be utilized. And with a community-run approach to operational execution, Ubiq has established itself as a unique provider of shared mobility services.
In deploying Ubiq’s StreetCrowd, GreenGo has increased daily rentals for each vehicle by as much as 40%.
Community managed vehicle repositioning
With a strong reputation and fair pricing, GreenGo has quickly established itself as the leading car share operator in the city. And with its fleet of 45 cars ballooning to 300 in just over 2 years, their electric cars known as ‘GreenGos’, are common sight in Budapest’s busy streets.
Attracting customers therefore has never been a problem. Making sure vehicles are where they need to be to meet demand, however, can be a challenge. This is where Ubiq comes in.
Ubiq’s AI-driven rebalancing engine first scans GreenGo’s fleet to see which vehicles are eligible for repositioning, providing an optimal new location for each car. An alert is then sent via the StreetCrowd app to StreetCrowd members - ordinary citizens paid and managed by Ubiq - who then execute the repositioning. Users simply sign up to Ubiq’s StreetCrowd app and can do as little or as many vehicle moves as they like.
Demand is forecasted based on historical data combined with other proxy data sources such as weather and local events. With the city broken down into different zones, Ubiq predicts which parts of Budapest are likely to have high demand for GreenGo cars at any given time. GreenGo’s cars are then picked up by StreetCrowd members who move the vehicles from low demand (cold zones) to high demand (hot zones) areas.
Budapest’s StreetCrowd community is a thriving one. With demand so high, Ubiq has had to install a waiting list for StreetCrowd members with more than 600 already registered. And as the majority of StreetCrowd members are often car share users themselves, GreenGo benefits from having an operational ecosystem of individuals invested in its service. This leads not only to increased revenues, but increased customer loyalty, too.
Corporate carsharing
One of the things that sets GreenGo apart is its B2B model in the form of corporate carsharing. Car share schemes for workplaces are not entirely new, but providing on-demand vehicles for businesses is more novel. By only renting vehicles when needed, companies are able to save significant overhead costs. GreenGo allows businesses to reserve vehicles for their employees, satisfying the needs of ecological and time-conscious workers.
This puts special requirements on the StreetCrowd which is required to take into account corporate carsharing allocations. This entails ensuring vehicles are conveniently located for employees to use when they need them. In this way, StreetCrowd ensures a sufficient, steady supply of vehicles in business hubs.
A win-win for the people and businesses of Budapest
In combining a consumer-centric approach to car sharing with data-driven operational tools, GreenGo and Ubiq come together to provide better mobility services. Connected by history, Vienna and Budapest are now tied to the future of urban transport, too.
Based in Budapest, GreenGo currently provides car share services in Budapest and Prague. For more information visit their website.
Elena is Project Manager & Computer Vision Engineer at Ubiq, responsible for driving the deployment of Ubiq's services. Connect with her on LinkedIn to learn more about what she does.
If you are interested in finding out how you, like GreenGo, can benefit from data-driven, crowdsourced shared mobility operations, schedule a meeting with Ubiq’s Head of Sales Max Mayer.
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