Philip Reinckens becomes Spin’s new CEO

A Berlin-based micro-mobility operator, Tier Mobility, has acquired another shared mobility operator Spin with a very large presence in Europe. Ben Bear is the CEO of Shared Mobility before the acquisition; he is currently stepping down from his position just after Tier mobility took over.

Philip Reinckens, a Tier veteran who as of June 6 will be leading Spin, integrating it with its new parent company. After Philip Reinckens took over, he sought a partner, thereby making Spin the main choice in the city.

Tier acquired Spin from Ford in March, which brought about the movement of the German company into the North American market. Reinckens worked as a strategy consultant in automotive companies like Volkswagen and Faurecia, a Tier one supplier. Tier also recently purchased Fantasmo, a U.S. based computer vision-powered e-scooter parking startup whose tech Tier had been in multiple cities all over Europe.

Reinckens relocated with his family from Munich to San Francisco, he has held several roles at Tier in Germany, including most recently the VP of business transformation. He also served as a general manager of a European region which comprises six countries.

The Fantasmo’s 15staff members Tier will bring all and also continue to invest in and also develop what will now be an in house camera positioning system (CPS) technology, which is more accurate than GPS and validate e-scooter marking within 20 centimeters or less. This acquisition will also erase the public menace effect of scooters on sidewalks that will vertically integrate capabilities or acquire more land and vehicles.

Tier Mobility in Nov 2021, bought German bike-sharing startup Nextbike, and in December, it acquired Wind Mobility’s Italian e-scooter operations, Vento Mobility. Recently Tier purchased Spin from Ford, making its entry into the North American market. Tier’s applied the same multi-modal approach that competitors like Lime and Voi have followed to benefit the existing market share.

The Mobility firm also has a fleet of e-mopeds, committing heavily to e-bikes in recent months with launches in London and Stockholm and expansion spreading across 6 Countries in Europe. Tier operates in more than 160 cities in 16 countries in Europe and the Middle East. They benefit from bringing Fantasmo’s Tech on board and also have another revenue stream selling to other operators.

The Scooters ADAS trend deepens

Tier Mobility will be implementing some version of Scooter ADAS that protects against bad parking, for example, it will integrate the company’s hyper-accurate location-based technology that can detect and correct unsafe riding attitudes.

Bird, also a Shared micromobility operator developed a similar tech in-house whereby Bird vehicles accurately detect sidewalk riding and slow riders to a stop.

Bird after 3 years of research launched a new technology which can detect when a rider is scooting on the sidewalk thereby bringing them to a stop. This helps Riders on the sidewalk to receive audio and visual alerts of their transgressions via mobile application and a new 16-bit colour display before the scooter removes its throttle and comes to a stop.

Bird explores sidewalk detecting technology since 2019. The company has explored other solutions, from the camera-based to ultra-wideband, which is a form of radio technology which uses short-range, high bandwidth communications across a radio spectrum.

Tier has also announced on Wednesday their plans to introduce a new computer vision-based driver assistance technology which can help detect traffic violators and also collisions, as well as rough scooter riders. Riders who do not follow the rules will be informed of their offences or will be fined or banned for violation of rules and regulations. This new technology is being tested privately and will be rolled out in cities around the globe in a few months.

Micro mobility companies such as Tier have helped in clamping down on the number of operators allowed on the streets. Spin as at about a few weeks ago laid off most of its staff as it prepares to reduce operations in some U.S markets, Germany, Portugal and Spain. This move will help promotes the company’s path to making profits via its move of pursuing limited vendors markets. Hence Spon has retained 100% of those permits over the last five quarters, which would make it attractive to partner with Tier across the Atlantic.

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