The British company HumanForest will present its new e-bike fleet in London at the beginning of August 2021

The rental e-bikes will be available in the London Boroughs of Islington and the City of London. Users can also start and end their journeys in the London Boroughs of Camden and Kensington & Chelsea. In addition, there will be additional district openings shortly after the launch.

Appointment of Will Jansen as Head of Roots

In addition to the launch, HumanForest has also announced the expansion of its team and named Will Jansen, former Head of Operations at Zipcar, Head of Roots – a newly created role.

He will be responsible for ensuring the high performance of the fleet and helping to develop the blueprint for global expansion over the next year. He will take over the function from July 2021.

Commenting on his appointment, Jansen says: “I come from a car sharing background and have experienced firsthand the positive effects that offering viable transport alternatives can have on people. I believe that micromobility makes a major contribution to achieving the goals of reducing emissions, congestion and noise pollution and is currently still at the beginning of its great growth potential. “

A “human forest”

Agustín Guilisasti, formerly Cabify, moved to London to do his Master of Data Science and wanted to familiarize himself with his new city. Frustrated with the limited and expensive last mile solutions available to him, he was inspired to create HumanForest, a sustainable transportation movement that everyone can access and enjoy.

To make travel affordable and accessible, HumanForest’s advertising revenue model means users get 10 minutes for free every day. Customers then pay £ 0.15 per minute to use it for the rest of the day.

How does the advertising revenue model work? HumanForest is working with companies to make the free ride possible. Drivers receive advertising when they open the HumanForest app and also when they finish their journey. For the partners, this is a new communication channel that opens up target groups, addresses consumers according to location or other attributes and, above all, helps.

HumanForest’s new bikes have long-distance capabilities with replaceable 80 km batteries, an integrated phone charger and an application-based locking mechanism. The company estimates that its bikes allow up to 7,000 trips and emit nearly 4 tons of CO2 into the London air every day.

It currently has 14,000 active users, according to the company’s website, which it claims are increasing by 46 percent from week to week. And has already made 27,000 journeys in two districts, avoiding 10 tons of CO2, which corresponds to more than 400 trees planted.

Agustín Guilisasti, founder and CEO of HumanForest, says about the development: “We are very happy to be launching our new e-bike fleet this summer. London is the perfect city for our bikes with ambitious goals to reduce noise, traffic and pollution that are in line with our ethos of affordable and sustainable transport. ”

Commenting on Will Jansen’s appointment, he added, “We are delighted to have Will on the team for an exciting and busy time as we prepare to launch in London and lay the blueprint for next year’s city expansion.”

Had to stop working in London

Last year in September 2020, HumanForest had to stop its e-bike sharing service in London due to “mechanical” problems and a customer accident. In addition, the company had to lay off some of its employees due to the suspension.

In a statement, the company told TechCrunch, “We didn’t know the bike was broken. There were problems of a similar nature where tampering or minor mechanical problems were suspected. We performed additional mechanical checks that we believed solved the problem and informed the supplier. After the minor accident, we stopped operations immediately. The supplier is now investigating whether there is a more serious problem with the e-bike. “

The startup had also mentioned in an earlier statement to TechCrunch: “There was an accident last week. Fortunately, the customer was not injured. We immediately took all e-bikes off the road and informed the investigating supplier. The safety of our customers is our priority. We have therefore decided to launch a new e-bike in spring 2021. “

Allegedly, the company did not provide any information about the nature of the defect.