I’ve just got back from the Tomorrow Mobility World Congress in Barcelona. Its a 3-day summit, where industry executives, government leaders, researchers, entrepreneurs, and technical experts discuss the most relevant issues for the future of urban mobility.

A key observation for me was a critical shift in focus away from those pioneering entirely new modes of transportation, such as eVTOLs or hyperloops, towards effectively analysing, optimising and modernising existing urban infrastructure.

I heard plenty of great conversations about the need for speed to reach net zero, effective economics, and building partnerships.

The event also showcases just some of the many startups that are dedicated to greening cities and improving transport through digital solutions, retrofitting, and infrastructure enhancements.

Here are some standouts:

Karos (France)

Look at any busy road during peak hour, and you’ll see lots a gridlock of single occupancy cars. Public transport is great, but it relies on home and work being close to amenities, which is often not the case if you live or work in the outer suburbs or rurally. 

Karos operates short-distance carpooling for daily commutes. 

Its developed an app that leverages AI and geolocation to match carpoolers based on their preferences and mobility patterns. The app offers optimised door-to-door itineraries, including intermodal trips combining carpooling and public transport. 

Users can easily choose and confirm carpool proposals while the app’s algorithms calculate meeting times and optimised pick-up locations, considering factors like detours and walking time. 

Importantly, Karos integrates with local public transport networks, suggesting combined options when appropriate. 

The company often partners with large organisations to subsidise the service, and drivers earn at least €1.50 per passenger per journey. There is also a customisable SaaS platform for corporate clients, providing tools for tracking usage and implementing communication campaigns.

EVARM (Spain)

EVARM is an integration engineering company specialising in converting professional vehicles to alternative fuels, such as LPG, CNG, hydrogen, which have an ECO or 0-emission label.

It offers customised solutions that reduce emissions, improve operating costs, and supports clients with fleets across road transport, water treatment, corporate sanitation services, and more.

Zeabuz (Norway)

Zeabuz is a spin-off from the leading research community on autonomous vessels at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, which built the world’s first autonomous urban ferry prototypes. 

It has developed a proprietary autonomy platform for vessels, scalable, certifiable, and suitable for new designs and existing vessels’ retrofit. It consists of three onboard products and two supporting onshore products that can be implemented in different phases and for various levels of autonomy, customised to the segment, vessel, regulatory requirements and customer needs.

Following the same cognitive and physical processes as a human mariner, the Autonomy Solutions can see, understand, plan, act and reason. Through human-machine teaming they will support the tasks and responsibilities of a human operator located onboard or onshore.

Zeabuz launched the world’s first autonomous urban passenger ferries  in Stockholm this June 2023, and now deploys solutions for intelligent automated navigation and remote supervisory control for conventional vessels. 

Nemi (Spain)

Nemi makes public transport in low-density areas feasible by providing a software solution that enables flexible bus services.

By deploying Nemi’s software as a service tool, local authorities transform and develop their communities, transport operators optimise the use of their fleet while making more efficient and frequent trips and passengers benefit from a reliable, transparent and flexible public transport service.

The company offers software to support:

• On-demand bus  services  to improve the efficiency and user experience of low demand areas such as small and rural towns,
• Hybrid software to facilitate the needs of irregular passenger flows, including on request stops or operating on-demand during certain off-peak times of the day or week or year.
• Digitising regular public transport lines to create a communication channel between the users and the operator to improve accessibility and safety. This includes data on passenger numbers and popular pick-up points.

Parkunload (Spain)

Parkunload aims to address the challenges of urban parking demand, particularly for freight and delivery vehicles, by providing a digital platform that makes short-term parking zones more efficient and easier to manage for both drivers and city authorities.

By leveraging Bluetooth technology, the solution enables precise zone detection, automatic permit validation, and real-time enforcement. This empowers cities to optimise parking space utilisation, reduce illegal parking, and streamline traffic flow.