In the future, there will be no private cars in cities. That’s according to Bolt’s CEO and Founder Markus Villig.
Many European cities have already passed legislation to reduce traffic — from London’s congestion charges to Paris making every first Sunday of the month car-free.
The move to ban all private car use would provide major environmental and social benefits from a reduction in noise and environmental pollution to a rise in safety.
Markus hopes bolt will help make this change happen. He founded Bolt in 2013 as a competitor to Uber. Bolt has since become the first European mobility super-app operating in over 45 countries with over 100 million users.
00:00:01:11 - 00:00:30:09
Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Crazy Intel. It's not a podcast about big ideas. I'm your host Michael Stuff out. An investor at first minute Capital. This is a bite sized episode recorded at a Founders Forum event up in Scotland. And I'm speaking to Markus Delic, the founder and CEO of Bolt, the unicorn Startup, last valued at $8.4 billion that offers Micromobility car sharing and food delivery services.
00:00:31:11 - 00:00:38:06
Speaker 1
I started by asking him what was his big crazy prediction for the future.
00:00:40:21 - 00:01:07:11
Speaker 2
I'm a big believer that in 20 years most cities are going to ban private cars, and I think the reason for it is that we're running out of time, both in terms of the sustainability of it, in terms of climate change and emissions. But actually most people are neglecting all the other problems that cars create in terms of just the noise pollution accidents, the parking spaces requires that just the damage it creates to local economies and pedestrian space and nature.
00:01:07:11 - 00:01:11:12
Speaker 2
And we really need to turn that around. So I hope Bolt is going to make that happen.
00:01:11:20 - 00:01:18:12
Speaker 3
What kind of time frame do you think? Do you think like how how does it start to happen? What are the first steps that we see that happening?
00:01:18:21 - 00:01:41:10
Speaker 2
Well, great news is that cities are already realizing that private cars need to be reduced, if not outright banned. So we see that happening now in London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin and an increasing number of cities and realities that the bolt is one of the only companies that's actually driving that change and really supporting this mission and then really helping the cities move away from private cars into shared and light electric mobility.
00:01:42:07 - 00:01:54:10
Speaker 3
What do you think happens to a city? What does the city look like without it? Private cars. It's just a lot more a lot more gardens. A lot more is a lot more beautiful. I mean, I love the idea, but what do you think?
00:01:54:10 - 00:02:15:11
Speaker 2
The cities are going to be awesome. So overall, I don't even have a driver's license myself. Despite us being by far the largest European transport platform with a million drivers, because I truly believe that what we're doing is the right thing. So what we essentially want to happen is that cities would be much more dense. And the reality is that if you look at the urban landscapes today, the vast majority of the space is dedicated to cars.
00:02:15:11 - 00:02:33:16
Speaker 2
Either it's just the roads for them or it's the parking spaces for them. But actually, if you move people away to use just, they would walk, they would bicycle, they would take electric scooters and so on. And then occasionally, sure, they might need to rent the car or use it on demand, but you can just really compress the city, make it much more dense.
00:02:33:16 - 00:02:51:23
Speaker 2
Had a lot of nature there. You can have shops on the streets and so on and really everybody wins. And we've seen this time and time again when cities do this change, eventually there is pushback. People are upset about it. But six months down the line, everybody is super happy about these changes that you get rid of the cars and really make the city much more lively.
00:02:52:16 - 00:03:01:10
Speaker 3
Let's say What? What do you think of the blockers to this happening in the next 20 years? Like what are the key things standing in the way?
00:03:02:06 - 00:03:18:14
Speaker 2
I'm an optimist, so I'm truly believing that this is going to happen anyway. But what's both rolling that is going to be to accelerate it. So very similar to overall transition to electric mobility. I think that it's anyway going to happen over the next 50 years, but companies like us just need to make sure that we can shave a couple of years off that.
00:03:18:14 - 00:03:34:16
Speaker 2
And that's going to make a massive difference in terms of practical things that need to happen. Of course, one is just to convince the regulators that there's going to be a great thing, because I think that especially teenagers and the young public, they're already behind this idea anyway. The people don't want to buy private cars and then take on that hassle anymore.
00:03:35:15 - 00:03:37:11
Speaker 3
I for one, am absolutely for it.
00:03:37:22 - 00:03:38:07
Speaker 2
Awesome.
00:03:38:07 - 00:03:42:09
Speaker 3
Hope it happens. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it.