Modelling the urban mining potential of micromobility: A Finnish case study

Abstract

Electric micromobility, or e-scooters and e-bikes may offer an alternative to the use of private cars. These micromobility devices, while lighter and less resource-intensive than cars, still require different metals and minerals. In this paper, we build a dynamic material flow model for shared e-scooters and private e-bikes in Finland, with an emphasis on their batteries, as these contain many critical raw materials. Our aim is to quantify the future urban mining potential of micromobility. We use Weibull distributions to model the lifetimes of micromobility devices and their batteries and discrete-time Bass diffusion to model the uptake of e-bikes as an innovation. In our baseline scenario, the outflow of used e-scooter batteries will be approximately 25,400 units and the outflow of used e-bike batteries some 217,000 units annually. For both types of devices, the main drivers of uncertainty are battery lifetime and the volume of future sales.