BeMobility: Berlin Elektromobil 2.0

Today, cities face a number of challenges related to motorized transport such as congestion of city centres and environmental degradation. Taking into account these challenges and the rising number of car owners, individual car traffic seems insufficient for the urban challenges of the 21st century. Hence there is an urgent need to develop new mobility concepts that guarantee a high degree of individual mobility whilst facing the social, economic and environmental challenges of our future cities. 

Multimodal transport systems that combine a variety of efficient means of transport in one coherent smart scheme have the potential to be used intuitively, which is the essential perquisite to compete with the car.

The vision is that public transport will be further electrified and supplemented with electric cars, scooter, pedelecs and bikes that can be rented everywhere leading to a green, seamless and responsive mobility system.  Within this multimodal transport offer car sharing is becoming ever more important and seems to be a promising platform for the introduction of electric vehicles.

As part of our commitment to this vision we formed a partnership with the German research project Berlin elektroMobil 2.0, a multidisciplinary research project financed by the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Development. The project aims to further develop the systemic integration of electric mobility into sustainable transport and energy networks. It also includes the development of new business models, software, tariffs and infrastructures.

Happold Consulting was approached by the BeMobility partners to contribute our skills around the implementation of complex mobility and infrastructure systems in cities. As an essential part of this we have been introduced to the project as a lead integrator of both the diverse research streams and the numerous stakeholders from the private, public and academic sectors.

Beyond this we are currently working on three specific areas: 

1. On the system level we are developing strategies and models on the planning and implementation of integrated charging infrastructure for German cities
2. On the product level we are consulting on the implementation of two smart, multimodal and modular charging station prototypes in Berlin’s urban realm
3. And finally we are visualising and communicating concepts and research results of the BeMobility project

Related Disciplines

• Transport planning
• Transport
• Urban development
• Environment