Future Mobility in Case of Electro-Mobility in a German Regiopolis

The future of mobility, especially electromobility in the mobility culture of the industrialized countries, is a major challenge. Electromobility is intended with a huge potential of sustainable innovation and will emerge in urban areas. Urban mobility solutions are changing and become multi-modal sharing systems which combine different mobile alternatives. Nevertheless, changing the mobility culture means changing mobility habits, practices and values and allaying fear of new things.

Younger generations currently undergo a transformation towards a multi-modal sharing system and collaborative economy. Both are regarded as interventions against the automobile path-dependency (Urri 2006). The transition into electromobility is a chance for urban regions to design an environmentally friendly mobility form (German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology 2016).

This research project works with the contextual-relational approach that integrates all actors in this changing process. The goal is to design and promote a framework of electromobility in an urban area in Germany with a high automobile- dependency. This happens by a networked innovation cooperation with regional companies and the city council. The transformation of the mobility culture towards new mobility solutions happens in four separate but collaborative service development processes.

One of our main results show that the emotional perception by testing and user experiences of electromobility has great impacts on our goal which raises the “coolness" resp. "flow" factor of electromobility. This positive effect leads to its social acceptability. Due to the emotional perception, we are currently testing a Canadian e-Bike-Sharing-System (electrobikes) in a two-month field test. The initial results confirm the flow factor and the social acceptability in case of e-bikes and stimulates interest for further electro-mobiles. Experiencing electromobilty by using allays the user´s fears of them.

Future mobility isn´t about less mobility, but rather a different way of being mobile and using different types of mobility solutions.