Superpedestrian purports to be a safer, more profitable way to launch e-scooters and small electric vehicles through re-engineering, monitoring, geofencing and software. Auto Futures talks to Assaf Biderman, Superpedestrian’s CEO and Founder.
Superpedestrian came out of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning in 2013. Its goal was to create safe and reliable lightweight electric vehicles (LEVs), starting with the Copenhagen Wheel. The Copenhagen Wheel contained a motor, battery, sensors and app that turned a traditional bicycle wheel into a motorised e-bike. The first LINK scooters were based on the same technology.
The company was named Superpedestrian because, eventually, vehicles will be much smaller, more like pedestrians on moving sidewalks like super pedestrians, says Biderman.
Superpedestrian is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It operates shared fleets of LINK e-scooters in cities in the U.S. and Europe, including Seattle WA, Hartford CT, Columbus OH, Asbury Park NJ, Provo UT, Austin TX, Rome, Vienna and Madrid.
“We focus on small and medium-sized cities. With our lower cost structure, we are the only operator that can serve them profitably. Most of the world’s urban population already lives in cities of less than one million people, because people are getting priced out of the larger cities,” says Biderman.
“Small vehicles sustain lots of abuse. The designs and technology are inconsistent for many small vehicles on the market,” adds Biderman. He says that most of the problems cannot be seen by the naked eye.
Superpedestrian developed and patented its vehicle monitoring system, called Vehicle Intelligent Safety System (VSL). It can be deployed on any light vehicle with up to 20 KW of power, says Biderman.
VSL monitors all electronic components, the motor, batteries and braking systems. Then it takes protective action in real-time. There are five computers onboard that get real-time updates on LINK scooters, he says.
Re-Designing and Re-Engineering LINK Scooters
The company spent significant time and effort researching and engineering the LINK scooters.
Superpedestrian simulated a lifetime of abuse on an accelerated timeline. The company spent $40M custom-designing 67 testers to overstress the vehicle and every structural component.
“We tested sub-components through shock and vibration. We tested our electronics by conducting module-level tests on the motor controller, Battery Management System, and system controller. We used third-party labs to test, validate, and replicate findings during the development program. The first 40 validated vehicles went into a Beta Testing program. Over 7,000 miles, we collected qualitative and quantitative data from test riders, gathering invaluable insights that led to tweaks on our final product before mass production,” says Biderman.
Their efforts enable them to make a scooter that endures one million potholes at 15mph. It carries one ton of vertical load as protection from impacts. It can handle a 0.6-ton horizontal load at the handlebar to avoid cracking of steering columns from vandalism or hitting curbs. Plus, the LINK scooter survives 100k repeated curb hits at five miles per hour.
The secret sauce is not just the hardware. It is also the staff as well as the software systems monitoring and controlling the vehicles and riders.
We are a safety obsessed engineering company – solving the key problems of small vehicles.
Superpedestrian provides three core ways to make their vehicles safer, says Biderman.
“Number one is a safe ride because the computers on the vehicle check and make sure everything is functioning and correct for it when possible,” says Biderman.
VSL monitors thousands of components and data points within the vehicle multiple times per second. If a potential hazard is detected, VSL can take over with140 types of corrective actions. VSL autonomously monitors, detects and averts the most common issues that can cause other scooters to fail.
It can prevent failures from short circuits, inconsistent braking, water ingress, and battery temperature. LINK can also detect data inconsistencies and perform component recalibrations.
For example, a LINK rider in Florida began riding up a hill climb after a long ride in hot weather, causing the motor temperature to increase. VIS attenuated the motor power to reduce the temperature, three times. Without VIS, the motor would have failed, stranding the rider, says Biderman.
Employee operations teams also monitor weather safety. They work with the cities to guide actions in severe weather.
If the weather is too cold, the vehicles can do certain things to try to heat them. If the lithium-ion battery gets too cold or too hot, the system will shut off. The battery will be recycled and replaced, says Biderman.
The second way the system works is to monitor rider behaviour. Before taking a ride, the rider has to take a test on the app. Then their behaviour is consistently monitored. If they don’t obey the rules, it will is communicated to them. Riders are educated against doing aggressive behaviour. Ultimately, they could be suspended.
The third safety aspect of VSL is to protect the safety of those around the riders according to location through geo-fencing. For example, making sure that the rider is in the right of way or if they are not allowed on sidewalks.
Other micro-mobility vehicle’s geofencing can be inaccurate and have latency issues because they store their geofences on the cloud and are therefore subject to cellular communication time lap. Superpedestrian’s maps are kept onboard, enabling almost instantaneous geofence enforcement in less than .7 seconds.
It is 99.91% effective in geofence enforcement, says Biderman. Geofencing can stop rides and also slow down riders depending upon location.
Geofence enforcement can also prevent riding in a school zone, sidewalk or park, on the wrong side of the road and against traffic. The geofencing can prevent parking in the wrong areas by not allowing the vehicle to pass through a geofence.
The company updated the LINK software to Codenamed ‘Briggs’, the 2021 version. The update reduces geofence reaction time, increases geofence storage, offers better geofence accuracy, increases battery life by two days and extends scooter range by 10% (up to 61 miles) on a single charge.
“We are a safety obsessed engineering company – solving the key problems of small vehicles,” concludes Biderman, “In the future, our machine learning will detect more safety issues and prevent them.” He predicts that by 2030 the average vehicle size will be half of what it is now.
Keyword: Superpedestrian LINKs Technology to Changing Behaviours of LEVs – CEO Assaf Biderman