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[Music]
please give a warm welcome to Speedy and
[Applause]
scoy uh
[Music]
I will switch to English in a
second so I am Speedy you can also call
me Anon this over here is scooty uh he
is currently in Shanghai so this is
where you see him wizard of O style um
we will start our talk by defining the
word micromobility because not uh for
not not for everyone this term is sort
of the the means the same things for us
when we talk about micromobility we mean
mainly
individual um
Mobility uh Electric Mobility shared and
dockless Mobility so basically this uh
and to us this is micromobility in its
current most sort of famous
form um and the the this is a few those
are a few pictures of the first couple
of days of
micromobility in
Europe uh and I think the way we got
introduced to this topic uh a lot of us
for a lot of us this was the the the
first sort of introduction into
micromobility and uh
very soon this sort of thing happened
and misuse and vandalism happened and um
for us our background why we initially
started to even uh consider making art
about it or researching this um was that
we as sort of tech enthusiasts were very
stunned that someone had the idea to
just like drop 15,000 scooters 15,000
sort of high-tech devices on on the
streets overnight and uh naturally um we
just uh took it apart uh at first and
looked what's inside and how does it
work and from this um we sort of started
open coil which um is the name of what
became uh our research program let's
call it that and um yeah maybe Dennis
can tell you
more hi welcome everyone I hope you can
hear me uh I hope the connection will
stay stable I'm a bit far away it's
super nice to be here um it's a shame I
cannot see you all um so like Anon
explained um this so-called
micromobility Revolution as claimed uh
by the companies that that brought these
spikes basically happened overnight um
so this first wave uh mainly consisting
of bicycles just appeared overnight
really dropped at midnight on the
streets and without consent of any any
government institution um basically
using a like a
loophole uh claiming public space to to
uh make money um so indeed like what
Anon said like
what is this technology like how is it
possible to to dump these high-tech
electrical devices with batteries and
all kinds of connectivity on the street
on public space and yeah basically we
wanted to see how it works
um most other people's reactions were
basically either breaking them or
throwing them in the river and we were
looking for something more or less
destructive and more creative so we're
starting to look um at basically at ways
in and this is how open coil started um
from basically looking at what kind of
interfaces what kind of ports what kind
of labs are are there on the scooters
that can give us some knowledge of how
these things actually
work
until um so very very early on we
realized okay so some of those scooters
have this uh Wireless G charging pad
that is actually meant to sort of uh
make this more interesting to users than
maybe the other brands because in the
beginning this brand this was sort of
unique to them and uh Riders could like
charge their phones with it whilst
riding and so on and so forth and we
realized oh okay so this there there are
some scooters that um will give you free
electricity all thep
not only if you write with them so this
was sort of the first input we found by
observing uh the scooters in the
citycape and um uh quickly we we came up
with this little first prototype we took
um sort of an an add-on Wireless G
package that you could add to phones
that didn't have wireless charging and
we took out the coil we hooked it up to
an ESP 82 um 66 and just
like designed a small PCB and um then we
tried to hide it uh on the scooter
because we wanted it to stay there for a
bit so we created these plastic shells
we molded this and we created the
plastic shell and in the end this is
what became um our first sort of
intervention into micromobility space we
called it the open coil um parasitic
Gallery because our first public
intervention um maybe some of you saw
our uh last talk was the open coil spee
show that we realized at the end of 2020
in Berlin it was basically a week of
um an art show hosted on uh
micromobility and hosted by the
micromobility network um we used our
little parasitic uh adapter to um Power
our esps on the east P there was a
little Wi-Fi um uh portal and a web
server running and we invited uh 11
artists to create a little piece of
artwork that could be hosted on the um
on on our device and then um the second
thing we did is the the second in in way
into micromobility we found was uh their
API so we tried to recreate how their
app this displays the available scooters
to its users um so we used a software
called burp suit to sort
of sniff all the traffic that our phone
would send to the servers um when we
requested the location of the scooters
around us and we recreated those signals
to create our own little app or map to
only display the 11 scooters that were
part of our little offline online
uh show and yeah as we said it happened
2020 end of 2020 for a week in Berlin
and um if you want to know more about it
we have another talk online um but maybe
today we get a little bit more into
detail as how as how exactly we um used
the API because in our future work after
this first intervention this became sort
of more more
relevant shall I talk a bit about the
regular oper operation uh of the API so
uh in normal operation um you open uh
you download the application of the
sharing company you install the
application and you register account
with your phone number and uh you are
able to view the map of all all
available uh uh vehicles in your
area sometimes you don't even need to
register uh an account and um basically
the API key is stored in this
app uh
sometimes
um the API key is stored somewhere else
for example uh by searching the internet
using search engines um this way we
found uh uh an API key key uh used in
hack home um we also decompiled some
official apps and also used burp suit to
sniff API keys from so-called super apps
uh these are apps that um like combine
multiple uh sharing providers
together um so in order to follow our 11
scooters um we basically had to find uh
an API key and uh the endpoint um which
to you request um where our scooter is
and what its status is um luckily all
these endpoints are actually documented
in this excellent git uh W bike and also
in the official uh tier
documentation um so all we all we had to
do was basically use uh uh an API key we
found on a search engine and uh an
endpoint we found uh in the official
documentation and this way we could just
use Curl to uh return all the locations
of our uh 11
scooters and the nice thing of this was
that um this key was not rate Limited at
all we could just basically real real
time follow our our scooters and create
a map for people to find uh the
individual artworks and through this
approach we basically realized very
quickly oh we just now through this
little what was thought to be an
artistic experiment uh became a scooter
company ourselves and we suddenly had
the same problems that as the scooter
companies because very quickly uh we
were up all night like looking at the
status of our scooters trying to take
care of them and we quickly realized oh
they also get like broken and trashed
and thrown into the river and within a
week or so I think a third of the 11
scooters we initially had mod
had to go uh get repairs done uh and
this is also how we first found our the
our first sort of Warehouse we just we
thought oh some drunk person drove a
scooter very far outside of Berlin
overnight but when we actually went
there to bring it back home uh we found
a warehouse full of thousands of
scooters that will were there to to get
repair and to get service and um this is
sort of the first uh takeway way we had
from the Berlin show is that
okay we on a very small scale can
experience the issues that a larger
micromobility operator can have uh and
also um we can sort of get a peak behind
this sort of curtain of micromobility
the the the side that usually is not
shown usually micromobility if we look
at it at all is going to be this like on
the streets the only thing that going to
be visible usually is this but through
our artistic approach and through just
the commitment to sort of take care of
our little flock we found out um
everything about the the the gig economy
that this industry heavily relies on um
only a very small percentage of the
people who are sort of taking care of
this infrastructure are actually uh
company workers or um and just the mo
most of the work that is done to keep it
up and running is done by third party
gig economy workers in the beginning
they were called juicers those were the
people who like at night drove Vans
around the city throwing scooters in
driving them to large warehouses where
they would get charged and maybe they
would burn down the warehouse and
because they uh didn't take care of
their outlets and so on and so forth so
those was those were sort of the
first um observations through that we
that we were able to make through
through the first intervention and this
is also basically where we left off um
after our first talk at rc3 3 years ago
um after this experience we knew okay
the next step is to open up this
research project to actually make it a
research project to allow other people
and other creative people to maybe come
up with new ways to interact with a
scooter to find new ins and outs and try
to establish a uh better way of
communicating with the
micromobility infrastructure cuz we we
still aren't very interested in the
operators but more how it all works and
um yeah trying to establish
uh some way of communicating here um so
what we did is we held a few workshops
one of them was in
Brussels um and uh as I said yeah we
basically wanted to create more of those
parasites more uh small little things
that could be attached to a scooter um
at first we came up well we presented
them our first sort of uh intervention
and taking the power and luckily in
Brussels the situation was the same
there were actually multiple scooter
companies that had open coils so
scooters that would hand out free
electricity um we but we quickly came up
with with new ways of um sort of
interfering and we hijacked uh we tried
to um sort of block GP s and LTE
coverage we actually used uh an osmocom
uh microcontroller to try to see if
there's any relevant information being
transferred via GSM or if you can do
like something like a man in the- Middle
attack to actually learn how a scooter
would talk to the server and if we can
learn how to be a scooter for for their
Network and maybe create ghost Scooters
or things like that just learn the
language
um and see where this would lead us one
of the things that we were happy that we
managed to do in Brussels um because
Dennis briefly said the API key that we
used for the first intervention was very
limited in what it could do basically
would it just allowed us to ask for the
locations of different scooters but
since it was an API key used in one of
those super apps it was cool it didn't
had any data rates we could use it like
basically spam it all day long but uh it
wouldn't allow us to unlock a scooter or
to uh make it Flash and ring and this
was something that we really wanted to
do so we again turned to burp suit and
uh sort of tried to sniff how our phone
would do it when we used the official
operator app and press the ring button
um how would this work and we found out
okay there's a it's a bit more
complicated here here um it's uh you
have your individual accounts API key
and then this will be used to generate a
bearer token that is only Val like valid
for maybe 60 Minutes uh but not forever
um and we used this to um re well we
wrote a little script we first took a
bunch of
um Sims that were sort of clean and uh
we could create multiple accounts so
that we would get around the rate limit
um for these requests um that the per
our personal API Keys uh had so we um
bundled a bunch of accounts and we
created this little script that would
request the bearer and then send the
ringing request and this way we created
a little a little script that allowed us
to basically ring all the scooters in
close vicinity to one God scooter that
we marked in the script and this little
thing this little experience was
fantastic because you could take this
God scooter and you could ride it around
Brussels and the sound of micromobility
would haunt you it was fantastic it was
just insane experience of this network
and infrastructure that as I said
usually is not really meant to be so
visible or is only seen as are those
scooters that are always lying around on
the floor and um all this um and yeah
here you can see a couple of other
pictures for example we of course found
more warehouses we also realized oh
those warehouses other than the ones in
Berlin they are actually in
like residential areas and the kids they
are totally aware of it and they use it
at their playground cuz many there are
too many scooters to fit in the
warehouse so even at night many of the
scooters are bundled outside and they
would from time to time blink or beep or
whatever and the kids just loved it um
another thing we found out through these
observing techniques is um scooters get
rebranded all the time cuz it's the
market is super um fluctuating and many
smaller companies get bought by bigger
companies or um yeah don't yeah they get
taken over and so a lot of the scooters
are actually not properly painted they
just have the sticker around them to
like make them the new the new brand and
the original brand logo in like the
rubber Parts is just like sanded sanded
out so it's a it's very ghetto the whole
micromobility industry is is not
everything just screams um sort of quick
and dirty and
um yeah just the the the main thing we
found is the main goal is just
uh get bigger as fast as possible to
either sort of get bought for a good
price or become the one that uh in the
end is Market dominant and therefore can
maybe at some point become
U
uh profitable
company um another this this picture
here is a really nice hack cuz we found
later uh versions of the micromobility
app if they because they were always
parked wrongly the scooters so they
implemented this little thing where you
had to take a picture of your parking
spot to make sure it's parked properly
and we were wondering who who checks
this and can we maybe get into contact
directly with these people who check it
by Mis parking them and then putting
also with the photo we take a sign to
get in contact with us sadly no one ever
got in contact with us this is by the
way also totally fine it's it's parked
here no one it's it worked I don't I'm
not charged for this it's it lives here
now
um yeah maybe Dennis can take uh sum up
the those a bit more the the
takeaways thank you thank you
Anto another another thing uh that we
tried was to um actually repurpose um
the the microcontrollers inside of uh uh
scooters of companies that that were
went bankrupt and the scooters were just
left to rot on the sidewalk
basically um yeah if you can find the
data sheet for the microcontroller it's
rather trivial to just ref flesh it uh
with your own code and this is for
example uh just a you know Blinky Blinky
example using a existing LED uh on the
on the PCB
already um another thing we notice is
that uh scooters actually
migrate and this can be illustrated by
actually the scooters we used in 2020 in
um
Berlin today they're actually in Hamburg
uh four of them you can find them in the
in the city center of
Hamburg um so yeah ask Anon if you want
to go on a on a tour to to find them and
see see if the if
our which is something uh an experience
we already already made in Berlin the
the one of the scooters that were taken
was taken to the warehouse actually was
repaired and put back on the street and
it still had our little parasite on it
so we we hid it properly and it was
still functioning and we were super
stoked about it um anyway to sort of
move as we as we said we through this
observation one thing became very
apparent that they are sort of hiding a
lot of a big part a big chunk of what
what actually is micromobility is sort
of behind the curtain and hidden away
from from from us uh um and from also
from the from the users and the the sort
of big it's often hidden away behind
like cute branding
cute cute Nam this is a little unlock
simulation of a Chinese bike sharing
bike manufacturer and um as you all know
the the main thing with these compan
companes is green washing this is the
micr mobility Revolution is also a green
Mobility Revolution every [ __ ]
scooter has has it written on it you
your right is climate neutral
so we looked at the data as we said we
previously encountered the high high
rate of of of um vandalism that those
scooters appear we also realized this
marketing climate neutrality is
something that's not sort of uh just in
the micromobility or in the startup
space basically every every bigger
company is doing it because it
apparently sells this little picture is
um what we call First wve micromobility
this those this is a bike graveyard
maybe some of you have already seen
pictures like these um when we say first
wave micro Mobility those are the
non-electric sharing bikes that were um
implemented mostly by Chinese
companies from maybe 2017 to 2019 um
some of them are still on the street I
think I I'm sure somewhere in Hamburg
there are still a few Mikes but the app
is gone the company is gone you cannot
use them anymore uh and most of them
land uh here on these um sort of
graveyards and uh yeah yeah this not
only this not only happens in in China
you know it also happens here in Europe
This is a a picture of a graveyard in in
near near Rotterdam in Barco Rise um and
here the the the company actually tried
to collect some of the the bikes uh
through like a partner um called Fox
Global um
uh and
what's interesting is that they also
used this um sort of shipping company to
bring them U to the harbor of rdam and
distribute them uh through uh
Europe another story that we can now
tell is uh cologne a few years back or
actually like two years back uh there
was a little out outrage for like two
weeks in the newspaper because one of
the operators actually contacted um uh
diving company um and asked for a price
to get some of their scooters out of the
rine as as as some like a marketing
stunt they wanted to release pictures of
them cleaning cleaning up the Ryan River
um and it backfired because they it was
too expensive so they pulled out but it
sort of still became public knowledge
that they that there are like 500
scooters just underneath one bridge in
Cologne alone
um so for like 2 weeks every newspaper
Outlet would would
um write stories about it and uh the
right picture here is uh an actually an
German newsp news uh on Tv show uh in a
little snippet of where they pulled out
two scooters for the camera from the ran
River and I I actually recreated uh uh
this little scene in a gallery because I
I believe it's it's very yeah the you in
this Gallery you can read the the
signage on the scooter and um bring it
in context with the reality someone's
looking for
this uh and in the end the the the sad
truth is uh the city of Cologne went to
court and asked the the companies to be
sort of forced to take care of this
issue and they lost and the Court ruled
the riverbed is city property therefore
the city is in charge of cleaning it up
doesn't matter what's in there or not so
um the scooter companies didn't even
have to clean it up in the
end um so yeah what what what are we
going to do about this
right so here's a picture of the
European commissioner n Cruz and the
former
um prime minister of the Netherlands uh
with the lobbyist of
uber um you can read
about about this um if you search for
the Uber
files um
basically uh Uber tried to influence uh
to get market share in Europe and to get
around certain
La as I think they proved previously
with when they established their taxi
thing it was the same sort of trying
to force lawmakers to play with their
rules anyway we realized those sort of
strategies of um sort of artistic
observation trying to find creative ways
to both visualize and or make visible uh
the infrastructure um are very very
effective and you can immediately sort
of find clues in every city um if you
know where to look and this is this
inspired our second large intervention
this was this year at fmr uh 23 in Lin
um we were invited there to do um
performance piece and this is our little
Safari Lodge as you can see the backdrop
is a very nice power plant um and we
again used basically the same technology
as the first time so a little coil um
induction coil an ESP uh and um a web
server but this time we didn't host an
art piece or an art show uh we hosted a
little interactive map of Lind uh with a
curated map uh of certain spots that you
could visit physically in Lin and see
a different side than just scooters
basically everything that's not a
scooter but still uh sort of has
something to do with micromobility we
Tred to um make put it on this map um as
you can see there are rivers also
because a lot of micromobility can be
found in the rivers the the power plant
was on there and also um we
learned that by looking at just the GPS
locations of the scooters in the
statuses they had in the in the response
that the server sent back um we found
some anomalies uh in the city where
there is a cluster of broken Scooters or
seemingly broken scooters and usually
for us this meant ah okay this must be a
warehouse this must be where they repair
it so we went there we wanted to take
pictures of the war but it was in the
middle of downtown Lind and there were
no scooters around uh but there was a
concrete un like underground uh pathway
and we realized when you drive through
this pathway and try to end the the ride
somewhere there there is a small chance
this will glitch out the connection
between not between your phone and the
server but between the server and the
scooter so your end you you will be able
to end your ride you will be able to not
be charged anymore but the scooter will
still run and you could still drive it
away it's basically a liberated scooter
at that point but the GPS uh information
that's sort of on the server is still
the location where you try to end the
ride so this is why there we called it
the Bermuda Triangle of Lind because
there were thousands of ghost scooters
that were not there anymore but uh were
sort of liberated and someone just drove
it off and we actually witnessed um
multiple people who didn't seem to care
about having rented this so they they
were just chilling and not even using it
but it was unlocked so we are sure that
other people also found out and we
actually witnessed kids in this area
going from scooter to scooter to scooter
trying if it would run so it's it's
really it's a nice observation to see
that it's not just us sort of trying to
see it but it's also very natural observ
observation by kids in the area okay
there's there are these nice toys on the
street and sometimes they are free to
use and um yeah this is just a another
takeaway that um we took from from this
Safari in
Lind yeah so we visited uh various
locations for example that are connected
to
uh micromobility but um often like
overlooked so of course these um um the
so-called green uh mobility scooters
they need to get their energy from
somewhere and we were conveniently
located uh next to the power plant that
uh uh provides energy for uh the whole
flints and they burn basically trash and
piles of wood as you can see on the
picture on the
left and we took people on a T um
throughout all these locations we we
spotted um ly is also um like a a hub in
the in the uh Bel and road or the new
Silk Road initiative which is kind of
interesting like how did the scooters
end up how did they get to
lens um of course we vised the uh P
Stones the warehouse at the end of the
tour uh maybe you can guess where it is
by looking at at a map of our like pre
preliminary research black is dead just
as a little
tip
and yeah what's interesting was that um
the warehouse in
Lin just like the one basically in in um
in Berlin seem to be yeah just an
empty like temporary space um in Lind
all the doors were open 24/7 you could
just go inside and drive
around um it was the old Nestle factory
and it's basically in a sort of
transition phase I believe
um they first they wanted to transform
it to a cultural space but I'm not sure
um if that if that's still going to
happen but meanwhile uh these companies
have to stay flexible they uh have to be
able ble to react quickly to the
market um so yeah they they they rent
temporary spaces basically squatting
spaces in the
city which they actually needed to react
very quickly as a result or as a direct
reaction to what we did to their
scooters uh this time we actually left
our little uh modifications on the
scooters because we were hoping the show
would go on even after the festival had
had ended and maybe a month later or so
we received an email by the festival
organizator that apparently some tier
user found our little modification
thought it was spy wear went to the
police and it escalated completely and
tier in the end had to pull all of their
scooters from Whole lens to their
warehouse and someone had to check
whether it's actually SP where or not
and if you go to Lind and it's not their
new fancy model anymore that you can
write we're sorry this is our fault they
now have to use the shitty old models
again um
but to sort of transition um to to the
next sort
of um location of our research um as I
said people are adapting more and more
to micro Mobility people and nature the
picture here is a sunken scooter and
nature is healing nature is also uh
adopting or hijacking or
misusing
micromobility um the right one is a
picture of a I think a bird's nest in a
in an antenna uh people more people then
just Dennis and I uh have realized okay
maybe if we don't use those things
and we still have to live with them in
the same public space Maybe we get
creative and use it for good this is
those are a couple of pictures of
Shanghai where um restaurant owners with
limited kitchen capacity would just use
the bikes as drying racks for their
dishes
um we have pictures of the police in
China using uh bikes as sort of fencing
for uh Corona testings uh facilities and
um yeah it's it's really nice to see
that more and more people get creative
with uh what is what has been put in
their sort of public
space and uh we also see more and more
micromobility influence sort of other
culture so we it hasn't been the last
time or the
it's not just us anymore who do art
shows uh that include micromobility this
is I think a picture of of uh an a
gallery they they just put out a couple
of scooters there and there are even
other sculptures that um react to
micromobility and with all these like
new tools to observe and to also
interpret the data that the
micromobility industry keeps
pushing um we went to Paris why Paris
well Paris is for one one of the largest
cities in Europe um one of the first
cities in Europe that um allowed
micromobility operators to operate on
their streets way before Germany uh also
one of the ones that were hit the the
hardest I think at Peak micromobility
there were over 20,000 scooters in Paris
and uh they were met with the same sort
of vandalism uh as anywhere else and at
first the City of Paris tried to put
more rules on how on the oper on how the
operators could operate and The
Operators would then try to find new
loopholes to not really OBS abide those
laws and it was a back and forth back
and force um from 2018 when it they
first arrived to this year year when in
April 2nd of April of this year the City
of Paris had a public vote uh of on
whether or not to keep scooters
specifically in the city of Paris and
maybe some of you know how this turned
out 90% of the people who voted which is
just 10% of people who were allowed to
vote but nevertheless 90% of the people
voted against the scooters and scooters
uh the scoo operators lost their
operating license at the end of August
of this year so we went there for half a
year and we wanted to look at the sort
of definition of a revolution because as
we told you in the beginning the term
that the micromobility industry
themselves used to sort
of uh put out the word of what they were
about to do to our c cities was a
revolution and I think the people of
France and specifically the people of
Paris might have a different definition
of what A revolution is still today um
um basically around the same time where
they held this public vote on whether or
not to keep scooters they also voted on
the entrance um age for retirement and
this is what happened to Paris uh I went
there to take pictures of micromobility
of the micromobility Revolution and as
you can see I accidentally took pictures
of a totally different Revolution
happening in the background and
micromobility playing its part and this
was not um one day experience it went on
for like weeks um and I have thousands
of pictures like this uh and for
me it was really interesting this to to
like on on these pictures to see both
definitions of this uh term Revolution
the uprising of uh oppressed uh people
as well as uh Technology Innovation and
yeah maybe in the end the people of
Paris actually won the revolution
against
micromobility because now they are not
there anymore so also also we thought
because we found we we used our previous
knowledge about how uh the API works and
um we created a little map of sort of
the Dead scooters and I collected the
data of the scooters for the past 3
months and if you look at a map of Paris
um and the locations of those scooters
today then you will see there are still
hundreds of scooters in the city of
Paris um
and today so to this day and they all if
you click on the status they all have
the status lost so all of those scooters
um sort
of became the the uh victims of the
micromobility Revolution they are
nowhere to be found the operators
claimed that they pushed most of the
scooters into other service areas but
their GP as data shows they are
basically by the thousands in two
warehouses next next to Paris and
um yeah the the 15,000 scooters that
were in Paris they have been swapped out
by bikes so it's not really
micromobility that Paris got rid of it's
just bike
scooters
well um
yeah
basically to wrap this up
uh over the past three or basically four
years now we've held interventions uh
workshops discussions and try to make
people aware of the bigger picture of
micromobility and try to see how they
would react to it and it was so nice to
see that the feedback has always been
now that we like saw some work of yours
or heard you talk about micromobility we
cannot unsee or un we notice microm
mobilities differently now and uh some
take better care maybe pick them up when
they are in the dirt some
uh but some also try to um sort of
inform themselves as to or how they
could maybe um force uh Regional
government to act on it because as you
can see in Paris it is possible to at
least uh somewhat uh have an impact on
on on how micromobility is uh sort of
being treated in in in your city
um um yeah maybe Dennis has also
something to say
yeah yeah exactly so um in order to like
our our our story um um this sort of
technique of counter mapping of creating
a map like an inverse map of the uh
existing app uh is like a invaluable
tool for us uh to to tell this story um
it immediately uh allows you to see um
where there where there are broken
scooters basically and this way you can
find graveyards you can find workshops
um you can find out um
uh a lot about uh like the the hidden
the hidden infrastructure Behind These
companies
and now for example all the all the
bikes have been replaced by um uh Al the
scooters have been replaced by by bikes
it it sort of indicates that
it's it has nothing to do with whether
whether it's a bike or um a scooter or
um uh like a
um as you can see in this picture uh a
baby
stroller um it's just about about money
it's about um investing in in not in
public space but investing in market
share um new Buzz words keep coming up
um um and new loopholes are are you know
being being exploited um in in order to
make profit um so for the future we we
found some interesting
models um of course
uh uh AI will be a boss word you will
see a lot and and even in their Market
Video they they they call it AI driven
and then in the video you see it's
actually remotely
operated it's
really just a Google search for or what
do does my company need for to be
successful and they will implement it in
their Market strategy and now it's Ai
and self driving and they have cameras
to map the streets and all of this but
maybe at least they won't claim they are
carbon neutral anymore who knows um uh
maybe this gets old for them um and we
believe that a key reason for why they
operate this way
is that in sort of the startup World
there are basically only two exit
strategies there's either get bought uh
or become the one who's sort of uh
ruling them all become the one who
Market dominant and um this of course
forces companies to not always act
ecologically even if it's the thing that
they have written biggest on their
Flags um but it also shows as for
example Paris and there are other cities
smaller cities that have reacted on it
that we can still sort of have a say in
it and it's not set in stone it will
always keep changing and loopholes can
be closed they will find new loopholes
but maybe we can push it into a
direction where it's actually going to
become something that is valuable Val to
the public and not just valuable to I
don't know a few investors maybe if it
all goes
well um thank you all for listening we
will now have time to take some
questions but also we want to let you
know that we are planning a little
Hands-On demo of this uh open coil
Hardware that we created to do most of
our shows and so maybe keep a look in
the self-organized uh
events part of the c um CCC and uh you
will find it it's probably going to
happen on the 29th so uh keep an eye out
for this if you want to test it yourself
maybe thank
you thank you very much so who wanted
this scooter it's available
now so we have any questions please line
up to the microphon so we start with
microphone 2 please hello um thanks for
the talk um there was a lot of criticism
in the early days that
scooters yeah basically break after a
short while but um you have some actual
data on that right so you have the 11
scooters that you initially upfitted how
many of those are still
available um I mean two definitely in h
three um it's a great question and
something that we found out actually
just as you said by looking at our own
scooters um they do actually get
repaired as long as they aren't uh
haven't been thrown in a river and their
batteries have leaked and whatever or
not all these scooters that were in the
warehouse uh will have probably been
repaired at some point and then put back
out on the street we can also see that
while in cities like Berlin where tier
uh is has their headquarter there will
be new models and new hardware Ware on
the street every couple of months but
the old Hardware might migrate to other
locations for example the old scooters
in Berlin are now in in Hamburg so this
at least is some sort of positive thing
we could read out of the data that they
they do not throw them away immediately
but this is also due to their learnings
that they have to improve their Hardware
this is not the latest but one of the
Improv versions of the scooter that we
used um in Berlin and it has like better
protection around the battery it in they
I mean you maybe noticed this yourself
if you have noticed micromobility very
early on the scooters have become
beefier and uh heavier and they not only
become more feature but also more sort
of stable and maybe harder to destroy
and uh yeah so maybe this answers the
question
okay yeah I think they're they're quite
stable I reversed one myself so I can
tell it's uh it's quite
good um MH for number three please yeah
thank you for the talk um also um I
noticed that when you use the tier app
you can't ping scooters that are too far
away but if you then reserve the scooter
you can ping it from further away yeah
and but anyway so my question is um if
you have scooters and you can have
apparently you have unique IDs for every
scooter uh have you uh looked into
extracting movement patterns and perhaps
also checking whether you can
reconstruct which people did the routes
because I smell some privacy nmare
here it's it's actually funny if I can
can say something shortly um one of the
the apps we checked out in Brussels I I
think it was the was it the the pony one
mhm um you could actually see um active
actively rented scooters so we were just
looking outside of the window and
checking the app and we could actually
see people passing by so we naturally
wanted to find out how the app does that
the answer is it's a URL it's not
protected no API Keys no nothing you
have to know the URL you type in in your
browser and you will get um live Json
data straight from the URL of all
scooters not only the ones available but
also the ones that are currently being
used as far as we could see there's no
easy way to link it to like private data
as like the names of accounts and stuff
like that but also we didn't try very
hard because this is not what we want to
do
but I feel the
same thank you
okay we got microphone number one with
the
E don't touch hello hello um well thank
you for the nice talk it was really good
um one thing I noticed in in my own
research is that um tier is one of the
companies that is um getting their
scooters from okai the Chinese company
and it's just one of like five or six
companies in Europe Alone um that they
they don't only get the scooters but
they also get as far as I know a wiely
app for IOS and Android and they just
change the logo and okai the Chinese
company is taking care of Fleet
Management tracking also payment
processing in parts and uh so they have
like a scooter startup as a service and
the job of tier and the other companies
is to find venture capital and to play
along in this game of being the last you
know the last company to be on the
market or B port and um okai is like one
of the three manufacturers in China that
provide the World Market there's also
two others but this segue for exactly
and JD uh but that's about it so there's
very limited uh people who actually
build these and there's companies that
um use the services from another company
that provides the actual um business
application and and that's that's a
remarkable aspect of this that the whole
G economy you know this this is this is
really weird it's really weird if you
think about
it it it makes apparent two things very
very clearly
one this is not the product of tier this
is not what they are selling this is
just the the thing that they are
currently most I don't know hyped about
or the thing that they can sell the best
or something but this is as you said
there are like three companies in China
that manufacture these and the companies
can basically say Okay I want this in
green color which is a very
um favor favor very the favorite company
company color of these micromobility
industries is shade of this uh and also
that um the yeah it's
it's the takeaway is just
uh I lost my I lost you you I think you
understood it okay so uh we're running
out of time so I think thank you very
much again for this nice
talk
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