Shared use schemes for e-bikes and e-scooters have many benefits to users and cities. However, two areas that arguably still require a little attention are parking and battery swapping. This is where Swedish start-up Standab has come in, designing a parking and charging rack for both e-bikes and e-scooters.

The concept differs from Yamaha’s new Enyring idea, where e-bike owners buy a subscription to use and swap their batteries. In this case, the focus is shared use schemes with a parking dock that doubles as a charging station.

One of the biggest complaints about shared use schemes, particularly in the UK, is how vehicles are parked once the user finishes their ride. Instead of having half-charged e-scooters strewn across the streets, or left in trees, the Marma charging hubs would offer official places to park.

The Marma uses a connector that is compatible with several models of shared vehicle schemes, employing a magnet to keep the e-bike or scooter in place while it charges. By adding charging points throughout a city, there is then reduced need for battery swaps, which greatly reduces the burden of fleet management.

Shared scheme Dott has piloted the Marma hubs in Stockholm and saw the average battery levels in the fleet increase by 49%. It also found that the number of battery swaps needed within a two-week period reduced from 22 to zero.

To help entice both cities and schemes to utilise parking hubs like the Marma, Standab is installing its hardware for free. Operators will only pay for the costs incurred from the e-bikes and e-scooters being charged.

How will they know where to install the hubs? By using end-of-ride data from shared scheme operators over the last three years. It seems like a win-win for cities and operators, but also for users who will presumably spend less time hunting for bikes/scooters with charge as well as having to undertake less admin like photographing where they’ve left their vehicle at the end of each trip.

Will we see something similar in the UK? Related projects include a small network of private-use e-bike charging hubs rolling out across the North East courtesy of Intelligen International, while Solarcycle UK has also introduced solar-powered e-bike chargers for staff in some NHS hospitals.