The electric scooter is not yet officially allowed in the Netherlands, but the rental e-version is. Dutch start-up Felyx Sharing has been providing e-scooters since 2017. Innovation Origins spoke to an ambitious company that has ambitions to become the global market leader.
What is Felyx?
The Felyx concept is simple. The rental electric scooters can be localized and activated via an intuitive app. Users are then able to take the e-scooters anywhere and leave them anywhere within the area of service. Felyx changes the batteries when they are empty and recharges them using 100% green electricity. The innovative concept is scalable and can be rolled out (inter)nationally. Felyx has been active since the summer of 2017 and currently offers more than 1250 e-scooters in The Hague, Rotterdam, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Brussels in Belgium.
How did you come up with the idea of setting up this company?
We ourselves already used various car-share schemes at home and abroad. Although we enjoyed the advantages of these type of rental cars, we also experienced a number of disadvantages. Like being at a stand-still in traffic jams along with trying to find a place to park the car. We were often overtaken by personal scooters on the left and right side of the road when we were stuck in a shared car on the way to an appointment. That is where the idea came from to start a ‘scooter share’ initiative.
Is there a lot of competition in this area?
There are currently three other major rivals active in Europe. They are Cityscoot, Coup and E-cooltra. These parties are active in a number of large European cities with several thousands of e-scooters.
What are the main obstacles that you are having to face?
Legislation and regulations in some Dutch cities mean that we can’t expand as quickly as we would like to. Besides that, it is difficult to attract enough talented people because of the enormous demand for people with the necessary skills. Finally, attracting new (international) colleagues and maintaining the current corporate culture is a great challenge for our company since we have grown so fast.
What are you proud of?
That we have already experienced tremendous growth within less than two years with a relatively small team. All this in order for us to be able to fulfil our mission to make cities more sustainable while at the same time contribute to improving mobility within cities.
What are your plans for this year?
We want to further expand our services this year. Unfortunately, I cannot say exactly what this will mean in view of the sensitivity of this information.
What are your goals for the next five years?
Our goal is to continue to scale up the company internationally, which will make us one of the largest e-scooter companies in the world.
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