Shared light mobility has recently become a billion € industry with ~260 million e-scooter rides taken in Europe 2024 alone. Actors such as Lime (US), Dott (DE), and Voi (SE) have operated shared e-scooter (SES) & e-bike fleets for >7 years, and with these businesses becoming profitable, the use is likely to further expand. Given this, it is relevant to consider ways of benchmarking SES battery performance, just as for any other electric vehicles. The automotive industry and customers benefit from standardised usage profiles, such as the Worldwide Harmonized Light-Duty Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP), but at present no such profiles exist for SES. Furthermore, little is known about SES-specific battery ageing, partly due to lack of detailed understanding of operating conditions, including a representative load profile, which arguably can have a significant impact on lifetime [1].

Here we approach the challenge of identifying typical SES battery usage and load cycles that are relevant for both lifetime testing and performance benchmarking by using high frequency voltage, current, and temperature data collected from 10 thousand commercial SES both during rides (> 15 million) and standby (>3 months accumulated operation). This way we can identify fleetwide distributions in C-rates, temperatures, rest times, and state-of-charge windows traversed, using the battery information format (BIF) [2]. Combining all above, we can tentatively give recommendations for representative test conditions and power profiles, similar to WLTP etc., enabling accurate lab-testing of ETW batteries and future vehicle improvements.

References

[1] Geslin, A., Xu, L., Ganapathi, D. et al. Dynamic cycling enhances battery lifetime.
Nat Energy 10, 172–180 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-024-01675-8

[2] K. Westman, A. Aitio, V. Nilsson, P. Johansson,
The battery information format (BIF): A memory-efficient standard for communicating cell usage and status for battery digital twins (BDTs), J. Power Sources, 652, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2025.237538