A new study has revealed that Catalonia has become a micromobility hub with 119 companies in the sector, showing a collective turnover of more than €255m a year.
Published by public agency ACCIO, the report shows that in the last five years more than €222m has been pumped into the industry.
This investment has created 372 new jobs, which means that over 1,300 people are now working for Catalan micromobility companies.
Of these 119 Catalan firms, 38% are dedicated to manufacturing micromobility vehicles, including bicycles, tricycles, e-mopeds, scooters and skateboards.
The rest are split by vehicle rental (29%), the development of shared mobility services (12%), component and charger manufacturers (9%), app development (7%) and engineering (5%).
From a shared mobility perspective in the region, e-mopeds and bike-share schemes are the dominant modes.
Zag’s latest modelling and research shows that there are five bike-share schemes in Barcelona.
- Bicing, a station-based mixed mode, is one of the world’s largest with 6,000 bikes, of which 2,000 are e-bikes
- RideMovi offers 800 hub-based e-bikes
- Bolt has 500 e-bikes on the ground
- Donkey Republic has 360 hub-based manual bikes
- e-BiciBox is based in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (south-west of Barcelona) and has 300 station-based e-bikes
In Girona, there is a long-running home-grown bikeshare called Girocleta, which has 300 manual bikes.
This growth in micromobility only looks set to continue with Barcelona City Council projecting that by 2024 the use of these vehicles will increase by 31%. Private vehicles and public transport in comparison are set to increase by just 0.5% and 2.2% respectively.
The notable absence of e-scooter shared schemes is because, in the summer of 2021, Barcelona introduced a law that heavily fined shared operators that left their devices on pavements and so many companies pulled out of the city. As it stands no operators are offering automated e-scootershares in the city.
