Four additional unveilings planned in coming months including first public shared e-scooter scheme on the island of Ireland.
E-scooter legislation
Zipp Mobility (www.zippmobility.com), the Irish micromobility startup, has confirmed that it plans to create at least 30 additional jobs in the coming year as it is set to launch e-scooter services across Ireland once new e-scooter legislation is passed into law.
The announcement follows on from a successful year for the company in which it secured €1.1 million in seed funding, including €250,000 from Enterprise Ireland, unveiled e-scooter operations in three UK locations (Aylesbury, High Wycombe and Taunton) and grew to a staff of 20 in Ireland and in the UK.
The company is currently operating a fleet of 450 e-scooters in the UK, which it expects to increase to 600 units in the coming months. In the past two months Zipp Mobility customers have completed more than 30,000 journeys and travelled more than 85,000km, using the company’s e-scooters.
Zipp Mobility, which was founded in 2019 by Charlie Gleeson, is headquartered at NovaUCD, the Centre for New Ventures and Entrepreneurs at University College Dublin (UCD), with UK offices in Buckinghamshire and Somerset.
'Great achievement for young Irish startup'
Charlie Gleeson, CEO and founder, Zipp Mobility, said: “This last year has been a very successful one for the company and we are currently operating in more UK locations than some of the bigger industry players which is a great achievement for a young Irish startup such as Zipp.
"We look forward to an even more exciting year ahead and we already have four additional launches lined up for the coming months, including the first public shared e-scooter scheme on the island of Ireland.
“With new e-scooter legislation set to be passed in Ireland early this year our plan for 2021 includes completing a Series A funding round and launching our service across the country creating at least 30 jobs in the process.
“E-scooters offer a cleaner, low-carbon alternative to cars and provide customers with a green alternative to getting around. We estimate that our customers, who travelled the equivalent of twice around the circumference of the Earth in the past two months, replaced about 9,000 car journeys and removed about seven tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, which are very encouraging statistics.
Ambition to lead Irish e-scooter-sharing market
“Our overall vision for Zipp is ‘mobility done right’ and our aim for the year ahead is to lead the Irish e-scooter-sharing market and expand our operations internationally.”
Since the onset of the pandemic, all of Zipp’s e-scooters have been equipped with anti-viral handlebar wraps that kill 99.98% of coronaviruses to help eliminate COVID-19 transmission risk. Zipp has also implemented a strict daily disinfection regime for its e-scooters.
Zipp’s commitment to 'mobility done right' includes the company running all of its operations in-house with no outsourcing, it said. It only uses electric vehicles to manage its fleet and has optimised operations to be up to 10 times more energy-efficient than its competitors, it claimed.
Zipp is also committed to green operations through its ‘end-of-life’ plan, recycling and reusing all parts when the e-scooters fall beyond repair.