Bewego: car sharing to get to work and reduce your carbon footprint

Sustainable agriculture, sustainable energy, sustainable cities. Nowadays, everything is associated with this word that has such good consequences for the health of the planet, the environment and people. However, a few years ago this was not the case.

May López Díaz is an expert in sustainability and was one of the first people to talk about sustainable mobility. She reminds us that “thanks to the Volkswagen emissions scandal, people started to take CO2 into account, but three years ago no one was talking about sustainability – the world changes very quickly and fortunately now it is something everyone is aware of”.

Her career in European sustainability projects and sustainable mobility has culminated in being Director of Companies for Sustainable Mobility and expert advisor for the European Commission. In 2016, while working on sustainability and sustainable mobility at SEUR, she had the idea of setting up a shared transport programme to get to the office, with some features common to other tools: “I also wanted carbon footprint traceability.” She met Carmen García, President of the Woman’s Week Foundation and a reference on equality issues, and together they decided to create a project that would also address the gender perspective.

So in 2017 Bewego was born, a sustainable car sharing initiative whose potential to generate financial savings for companies whilst at the same time promoting sustainability has led to them being chosen for the Madrid local authority’s El Despertador acceleration programme for SMEs and freelancers, in which BBVA participates as a mentor.

Reducing our carbon footprint

López believes that the best thing about their startup is being “a Spanish sustainable mobility company run by two female experts who are well-placed to talk about issues of gender, mobility and sustainability”. This sustainable transport project, which has been given recognition through the ECOFIN 2017 Prize in the “Products and Services” category and the Muévete Verde 2018 Prize from Madrid City Council, also wants to change the world by promoting decarbonisation.

“Before the mobility restrictions and remote working, there were 40 million trips to workplaces being made every day. Of these, 60% were in a private vehicle and 60% with a single occupant. The potential for improvement is massive”, says López.

Her shared mobility initiative seeks to improve people’s quality of life and air quality and the environment in cities. “Their sustainability angle is essential, for example, to clean up Madrid’s air. Also, every shared car is equivalent to taking two or three others off the road. This cuts down on traffic jams and parking problems, hours of productivity lost daily, and it saves on costs”, explains Nacho Villoch, Open Innovation Senior Ecosystem Builder for BBVA Open Innovation, who was on the panel that selected the winners of El Despertador and is one of the programme’s mentors.

Companies are an essential driver for this. As part of a commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, it is important that organisations provide their employees with ways to mitigate the environmental impact of their journeys. “Mobility will be a challenge to ensure the sustainability of any organisation that needs to move products, services or staff. It’s not only workers who can use it, but also external staff who are hired, partners and even suppliers”, notes López.

Their downloadable app makes it easy to track your carbon footprint, measuring the environmental impact and contribution of the people and companies where you work. The platform also picks up the type of vehicle to know how much it pollutes.

A mobility social network

As well as travelling to work, another aspect that has been severely limited by the pandemic is interaction and socialising. López recounts how, quite naturally, with Bewego a kind of social network was emerging.

“In the end, it connects people who live and work close by, who don’t know each other, but who potentially have many things in common: their children’s school, their favourite restaurant or the place where they go to do sport,” she says. And it’s not only for workers – it can also be used for universities and students, or even for rural getaways.

López also points out that the technology she uses is very intuitive and easy to understand: “We work with a QR code that generates rewards to encourage use, with which people can earn points to redeem against gifts and discounts. Now, with the pandemic, the use of this technology has become even more democratised”. The entrepreneur believes that it is vital to familiarise people with the technology and that all companies have seen that it is the only option to survive, because “digitising means opening the doors to the world”.

“Because sharing takes us further”

Bewego’s slogan picks up on the purpose of this startup, which wants to go further by differentiating itself from other competitors on the market and covering needs that previously have not been addressed. For example, increasing women’s safety and ensuring their well-being on shared trips.

“There were allegations of sexual harassment on other mobility platforms and we saw that it was a necessity for users to decide who to travel with. So our app includes a gender criterion” Lopez says. Carmen García’s role was key to this.

As the application was being developed they recruited customers and improved the service thanks to satisfaction surveys. Now, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, they have had to put the business on hold, but they are trying to see this as something positive, as the co-founder explains: “The pandemic has paralysed everything, but I still believe in shared mobility and any crisis is an opportunity. We’re taking advantage of this lull to redefine ourselves a little and, thanks to El Despertador, to look for possible collaboration opportunities”.

For example, their kind of project allows them to establish synergies with vehicle companies to combine services and offer their solution in a de-localised way, without geographical limitations. With El Despertador they have the perfect opportunity. Over the six months of the acceleration programme, as Nacho Villoch points out: “We’ll do some mentoring and proof-of-concepts to improve their projects and help them grow”. By sharing resources and technology, sustainability and open innovation will take us further.