TIER Mobility: With Fantasmo Towards More Order in Scooter Sharing

The Berlin-based micromobility sharing specialist TIER has announced the acquisition of positioning specialist Fantasmo. This expands their investment in developing the world's most accurate e-scooter parking system and takes an important step to address challenges such as riding on sidewalks and on tandems with Fantasmo's future computer-controlled driver assistance system, ensuring that TIER's e-scooters set the standard for regulation compliance in cities. The U.S. company Fantasmo has gained recognition with its Camera Positioning System (CPS), which is said to be ten times more accurate than GPS and can determine e-scooter parking to within 20 centimeters or less.

The two providers had already built a close relationship over the past twelve months. Fantasmo understands itself as a next-generation mapping company and aims to support TIER in curbing irresponsible parking, thereby solving a major problem for city administrations and pedestrians, particularly people with visual impairments. The company initially introduced Fantasmo's CPS in Paris and later in other areas of TIER's network of over 185 cities across Europe and the Middle East, including London, York, Düsseldorf, and Leipzig.

TIER's goal: Standard for proper e-scooter operation

They want to set the bar high for safety and proper operation in the micromobility industry, the Berlin company explained about the cooperation. In Paris, for instance, compliance with parking regulations could be improved with the help of Fantasmo's 3D mapping, which has been in use since spring 2021, and TIER is currently the only provider with a proven technology-based solution to combat irresponsible parking.

"The acquisition of Fantasmo is an important step in our investment in innovative features and technologies that will help make e-scooters more compliant and safer for all road users. Our plan is to expand the positioning technology to numerous cities in Europe and the Middle East in the near future, while simultaneously investing in the upcoming computer vision-based driver assistance system," explained Matthias Laug, CTO and co-founder of TIER.

Jameson Detweiler, president and co-founder of Fantasmo, wants to further develop the CPS-based parking management technology through the collaboration and bring this technology and advanced driver assistance systems directly into the vehicles.

Vision: Driver assistance on scooters

In the near future, the micromobility provider plans to introduce a new driver assistance technology that - combined with the new IoT - will be able to detect traffic violations, collisions, and reckless driving on the scooter. Drivers who do not comply with rules and regulations would be alerted to their violations and could even face fines or bans. The new technology is currently being tested in private and is expected to be introduced in cities around the world in the coming months.

The new feature, which aims to solve the most pressing problem of micromobility in all cities, is enabled by CPS technology and allows for high positional accuracy and centimeter-precise mapping. Unlike other solutions that use GPS tracking, the technology offers an extremely accurate representation of vehicle position, even in dense urban environments where the GPS signal does not reliably work. Combined with the vision sensor, the new IoT platform promises to create the most advanced ARAS system to date.

High-precision 3D maps from the ground perspective

The provider Fantasmo creates 3D maps of cities on foot, for example, by walking 2,500 km of Parisian streets with its camera. Since it maps cities at ground level, its positioning technology is significantly more accurate than satellite-based GPS. As with TIER's previous parking system, a user attempting to park in a no-parking zone or outside a designated parking bay would be unable to end their ride. The feature does not require additional parking infrastructure from cities but merely a complete 3D mapping of the respective city, the provider further outlined.

The purchase price and further financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. In addition to the currently more than 1,200 employees, TIER will integrate all 15 experts from Fantasmo in Europe and the USA. The Berlin company sees the acquisition as the latest step following its previous acquisitions of micromobility operator Spin, Europe's leading bike-sharing provider nextbike, the Italian subsidiary of Wind Mobility, and the Hungarian technology agency Makery. Last October, the company announced the completion of its Series D funding round totaling $200 million. To date, the micromobility specialist has raised a total of $660 million in equity and debt capital.