More electric, smaller and lighter, sharing mobility continues to grow: Milan first in Europe

Sharing mobility is getting greener with 94.5% of zero-emission vehicles. Turnover in the sector is growing, + 52% compared to 2020. Milan is the first in Europe. Car sharing changes its appearance: fewer rentals, but longer. Boom of scooters and scooter sharing is also growing.

Rome, 10 October 2022- Sharing mobility is constantly growing in Italian cities. In 2021 the levels of use of vehicle sharing services (carpooling, scootersharing, bikesharing, scooter-sharing) return to rise as in the pre-pandemic period: trips made in sharing mobility in 2021 totaled about 35 million, + 61% compared to 2020 and 25% more than in 2019 and 83% of rentals take place on a micro-mobility vehicle. The sharing mobility fleets also continue to grow and become increasingly “light”, small and electric, passing from 84.6 thousand vehicles in 2020 to about 89 thousand vehicles in 2021, divided between scooters (51%), bicycles (31% ), scooters (10%) and cars (7%) and electric vehicles went from 63% to 77% in the last year. Sharing becomes increasingly green with 94.5% of vehicles being shared with zero emissions. The turnover of the sector also grows, reaching 130 million + 52% compared to 2020. The symbolic cities of sharing mobility continue to be Milan and Rome, but Palermo and Naples are also climbing in the rankings, thus confirming a growth in the sector in the center-south.

The photograph of Italy of sharing mobility is taken by the “Report on sharing mobility”, presented on the occasion of the 6th National Conference of Sharing Mobility, “Lesscars: drive the revolution”, organized by the National Observatory on Sharing Mobility, which this year also analyzes for the first time the incident in micromobility and the economic dimension of sharing mobility. The Report also anticipates the positive trends of 2022, which is preparing to be an even better year than 2021, given that the set of rentals registered by sharing mobility services grows between January and June by 113% in Milan and 83% in Rome.

Italian sharing mobility affirms its top position in comparison with Europe, in the European shared mobility index, tracked by Fuctuo, with Milan as the first European city in terms of sharing vehicles per inhabitant. In terms of the absolute number of vehicles on the road, Rome is in fourth place in Europe and Milan follows it in fifth, preceded by Paris, Berlin and Hamburg. Milan is a “bronze medal” for the use of bikesharing, after Paris and Barcelona, ​​while Rome is ahead of the growth in scooter sharing rentals in 2022 compared to those in 2021.

The data of the report

Car sharing changes its face: free-floating car sharing is the only service in difficulty in short rentals, but it is growing on medium-long term rentals, aiming to become the alternative means of car ownership. In 2021, free-flow services recorded 8% fewer rentals than in 2020, but increases the duration of rentals to 43.7 minutes and about 11 minutes higher than in 2019. Car-sharing services are better. stations that mark a + 22.2% of trips compared to 2020. 32% of cars are electric or hybrid and electric has increased by 12% compared to 2020.

Bike sharing

The offer of bikesharing in Italy in 2021 recedes compared to the previous year due to a recalibration of fleets in large cities and the transition to new tenders. But between the end of the year and the beginning of 2022, especially in large cities where the same operators of scooter-sharing services enrich their fleet with thousands of electric bikes, bikesharing makes a rebound compared to 2020 in terms of question: + 56% for free-floating bikesharing with 4.6 million rentals and + 22% with 3.4 million rentals for station-based bikesharing. A particularly visible trend in Rome and Milan, where rentals respectively increase by 90% and 157% from January to June 2022.

Scooter-sharing

2021 certifies the strong diffusion of scooter-sharing services, a segment of sharing mobility which alone recorded half of the total rentals made in Italy (17.9 million), more than doubling the previous year’s performance with an offer of over 35 thousand scooters. To the 24 cities where the service was active in 2020, another 15 were added in 2021 (Benevento, Brindisi, Cagliari, Catania, Frosinone, Grosseto, Imperia, Novara, Padua, Palermo, Piacenza, Prato, Ragusa, Reggio Emilia, Teramo) .

Scootersharing

The use of shared scooters is also expanding rapidly, which in 2021 returned to the demand levels of 2019 (+ 5%) with an offer of approximately 9,000 scooters. Also here in 2021 new cities were added where the service is available (Benevento, Bergamo, Grosseto, La Spezia, Lake Garda, Lecce, Pescara, Taranto). The Italian scooter sharing fleet is almost completely electrified.

The cities of sharing

For the first time since the birth of sharing mobility, the number of provincial capitals with at least one service is higher than the number of those without any active service, 62 against 46. From a territorial point of view, the provincial capitals with at least one service are 35 out of 48 total in the north, 11 out of 28 in the center and 16 out of 32 in the south. The only regions that do not have significant services at the end of 2021 are Umbria, Molise, and Basilicata. In the ranking of the top 10 cities of sharing mobility, Milan and Rome are confirmed at the top for available fleets, rentals and km traveled. In particular, Milan still shows supply and demand (rentals) distributed in a very balanced way among the various services. In the top ten of the offer of sharing services there are, in order: Milan, Rome, Turin, Florence, Palermo, Naples, Verona, Bologna, Rimini and Bari.

Accidents

A first survey by the Observatory shows that the sharing scooter records a level of accidents slightly higher than that of scooter sharing, exactly 2.07 accidents every 100,000 km compared to 1.72 of the moped, both distant from the bicycle with the value of 0.74. Even by comparing accidents to the number of trips, the ranking is reversed and scooter sharing precedes everyone with 7.77 accidents per 100 thousand trips, with the scooter following with 5.01 accidents, and finally the bicycle with 1.35 accidents per 100. thousand trips.

Is the sharing economy convenient?

Two important elements emerge from the economic analysis of sharing mobility. The first is the growth in the overall turnover of the sector, which reached approximately 130 million euros in 2021 and grew by 52% compared to 2020. The second is the comparison of the costs of shared mobility in relation to the costs of private mobility. A citizen who uses his bicycle more often in the city, public transport and, if necessary, a combination of sharing mobility services, can achieve annual savings of up to € 3,800 compared to the choice of habitually using his own car. The only fixed costs for owning a car in Italy would allow the purchase of 3 trips a day with different sharing mobility services.

Does sharing mobility reduce environmental impacts?

From an environmental point of view, the positive effects of sharing mobility are not limited to the ecological quality of the shared fleet, which is 94% zero local emissions. From the “Pollicino” research that the Observatory carried out in Bologna in collaboration with the Municipality of Bologna, TPER, Nordcom, SRM, it emerges that the sharing mobility user makes a number of daily trips substantially equal to non-users, but adopts a general style of mobility more geared towards sustainability than those who do not use it. The user of sharing mobility in his recurring trips for work travels less by car (11% modal share against 24%), more with public transport (30% against 18%) and, even if only slightly, on foot (26% vs 24%). Ownership of cars in the family is also very different: in the case of sharing users, 44% declare that they do not own a car in the family against 14% of non-users, 40% against 54% declare they own one and 17% against 32% to own two or more cars.