Detailed description (English): Inspiring Smart Mobility: Our vision is to make mobility available for everyone and everywhere, both in cities as well as in rural areas by building a powerful demand-responsive transport system. ioki is about discovering sustainable solutions that make mobility economically viable, and saving our environment by sharing rides, hence increasing the quality of life. Today we already connect our new responsive forms of mobility to existing public transport modes in a smart way to give customers access to mobility even without owning a private car.
In our heart we are a full-service-provider and have built an open demand-responsive transport ecosystem. The core is our flexible ioki platform, that offers third parties like cities, communities and companies all components and services for the introduction and operation of strong DRT solutions. ioki can be individually adapted to fulfill every customer’s precise needs and can be used in different use cases: regardless of whether existing services are digitised, or if a public transport system is to be expanded by a flexible system as an alternative to private cars. Tightly integrated in the public transport system, the objectives of our ridesharing concepts are focused on guaranteeing optimum utilisation of routes and vehicles by our strong algorithms.
Several pilot projects prove our success in demand-responsive transportation as well as autonomous driving:
- In October 2017 we launched the first self-driving bus service on public roads in rural Bad Birnbach in Bavaria. Until now, it remained the first one in Germany operating on public roads.
- In November 2017 we launched our first driver-based demand-responsive ridesharing service for up to 15,000 DB employees in Frankfurt . This is the biggest DRT laboratory in Germany so far. All our new product features are pre-tested here first in a real world environment before we bring the service to our customers.
- In April 2018 we started to implement our first demand-responsive autonomous bus in Berlin, in cooperation with Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG).
- In May 2018 we integrated the first demand-responsive, digitally bookable driver-based ridesharing shuttle in existing public transport in Wittlich.
- In May 2018, ioki has started Germany’s first demand-responsive shuttle service for pupils in Schoeneck, Hesse.
- In Summer 2018 in Hamburg we launched the first public transport and tariff integrated ridesharing service with our partner VHH, a large bus operator and the city of Hamburg. Hamburg won the Intelligent Transport Service World Congress in 2021 and is a great and innovative place for new mobility in Germany.
Target group(s): As a bridge to intelligent mobility on the road, ioki enables third parties, such as cities, transport companies and associations, local authorities and companies, to offer their customers needs-orientated and modern mobility concepts and to operate them with the white label app under their own name and design. Existing traffic can be supplemented and strengthened with the help of the individual system modules.
Objectives: ioki sees great potential in making public transport more sustainable and efficient and wants to make individual mobility without a car possible. We don’t want to replace public transport, but rather strengthen it and relieve traffic with an integrated, demand-oriented mobility concept. The aim is, as a major mobility service provider, to actively promote the topic of individual public transport for customers, the industry and the Deutsche Bahn company.
Expected Outcomes: Public transport in Germany will face key challenges over the upcoming years: traffic in urban cities is increasing more and more – traffic jams, environmental pollution and parking space problems are the consequences. New mobility providers are already offering demand responsive transport travel solutions, but mostly these are not relieving traffic but rather harming it by eliminating public transport. At the same time more and more people are leaving rural areas or decide actively against public transport and pro private car, because there’s no suitable offer for the first and the last mile.
This is where ioki differs from other offerings, because we’re the pioneer in developing demand-responsive transport services enabling demand-driven mobility tightly integrated in the public transport systems in cities or complementing basic offers in rural areas. The goal is always to shape traffic in a more sustainable and efficient way. So the expected outcome is a seamless, sustainable and a strong public transport system, that increases the quality of live in cities and on the countryside.
Partner: ioki is a corporate start-up of Deutsche Bahn AG. Within the framework of the pilot projects, ioki cooperates with strong public partners and established transport companies with whom future-oriented mobility projects are realised in close cooperation.