“For providing innovative and sustainable mobility to businesses” was the motivation of the Smau 2021 Innovation Award that Pirelli received for CYCL-e around, a bike-sharing service project dedicated to businesses and communities wanting to invest in sustainable mobility for the everyday commutes of their employees.
Smau, the event held in Milan dedicated to companies striving for real innovation, was the setting for the round table entitled “Smart Factories and Smart Mobility: What is the Next Frontier?”, during which Francesco Bruno, Head of Pirelli Micromobility Solutions, spoke and was handed the award for the CYCL-e around project.
“Mobility habits are undergoing deep changes. New consumer patterns are emerging, facilitated by the growing importance of issues, such as environmental sustainability, social inclusion and technological development. We are in the midst of this transition and all the mobility ecosystem players, both old and new, are facing new and fascinating challenges. It is essential for Pirelli to play an active role in this transition, to increase opportunities for contact with end consumers on their increasingly articulated mobility journeys and to pick up the emerging needs of the new generations. In particular, our attention turned to the evolution of private mobility, enriched by the push towards the use of electric vehicles, new forms of micromobility, and the evolution of new user-based consumer models,” Bruno commented during the awards ceremony.
CYCL-e around for businesses was created as a bike-sharing service for communities, in particular those wanting to invest in sustainable mobility for daily commutes. The idea stems from a study conducted on Pirelli employees in 2019, which showed that 26% of them were interested in using a bicycle to travel to and from work. The survey gave the Micromobility Solutions business unit the impetus to launch Pirelli CYCL-e around, an e-bike rental service first tested within Pirelli, that has since caught on with other companies, including Open Fiber, Accenture, Golden Goose and NTT Data EMEA.
The service features a fleet of top-end e-bikes, an app for managing bookings, routine maintenance of the bikes and marketing and communication support to promote the project within partner companies. Incidentally, this is not the first accolade it has received. The CYCL-e around app was shortlisted in the “Service Design” category by the ADI Design Index 2020, the annual selection of the best products of Italian design, last year, just over 12 months after its launch.
