Mr. Matthew Pencharz:

Voi was founded in 2018. We are Europe’s leading micromobility operator, offering shared light electric vehicles, EVs, in 70 European towns and cities in 11 countries. Voi's vision is towns and cities made for living, free from congestion, noise and pollution. Voi's founding belief is to work with towns and cities to help deliver their policy goals and deliver safe, sustainable micromobility to everyone. Every scheme in every town is delivered in partnership with our towns and cities. We have had zero rogue launches, where vehicles have appeared seemingly from nowhere without permission from the local authorities. These operators have sadly given micromobility a poor reputation. Voi is the antithesis of this. Voi has worked with EY on our life cycle carbon analysis and succeeded in driving down those emissions by some 85% in a year. Since January 2020, our service has been certified as carbon neutral. Working with our supply chain partners, we committed, at COP26, to become net climate-positive by 2030 without relying on carbon offsets. As Europe’s largest micromobility provider, Voi has experience operating in very different regulatory environments, from the more free-market Nordic approach to the highly regulated trial environment in the UK that members heard about in an earlier session. With four years' operating experience, Voi has learned the lessons of what works and what does not, and how to deliver the very best service whatever the regulatory environment.

Voi would bring these learnings to Ireland to deliver the best scheme that meets the policy outcomes of modal shift away from single occupancy cars to reduce congestion and pollution and meet the carbon mitigation targets set both locally and nationally. Voi's operational experience has made ours the most efficient service, leading the industry, ensuring maximum utilisation of our vehicles, to deliver a safe, sustainable, convenient and affordable service to lure people out of cars. We are working with visually impaired charities, such as the Thomas Pocklington Trust and the Royal National Institute of Blind People, RNIB, in the UK and the Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted, to eliminate the impact of our service on other vulnerable road users. We have co-designed our parking racks with the RNIB in order to make them more noticeable for those who are visually impaired or blind. Voi is also working with the RNIB to be the first operator to test a sound the vehicle makes while moving. We are also working with Irish technology company Luna on a pavement riding detection system, which is currently being piloted in Stockholm and Northampton. Across all our markets, Voi has seen 14% of our rides replacing car trips. In the UK, which has similar levels of car dependency to Ireland, we have seen 39% of rides replacing car trips. The legislation currently being considered with the establishment of a new vehicle category for powered personal transporters, through the Road Traffic and Roads Bill 2021, is a huge step forward for Irish transport, helping towns and cities to vastly reduce their carbon emissions, pollution and congestion through modal shift away from car use, as well as helping to support the recovery of public transport with micromobility acting as a true first and last mile solution. We commend the Government and the committee on their work on this legislation. After listening to the previous session, we largely agree with most of our operator colleagues on the Bill and regulations. We believe it should be progressed as quickly as possible to empower towns and cities to set the finer detail in their tender, as appropriate, for the individual conditions.