Europe’s electric transition still leaves two wheels behind
Why we invested in Pollen
Mobility is probably one of the most visible sectors where we see electrification taking place: the Tesla swooshing by on the street, the new high-speed chargers at the parking lot of the supermarket and the public bus that’s suddenly way quieter as it’s driving electric. There’s a lot happening in this space and for good reason.
Getting around in cities is still highly dependent on fossil fuels and accounts for a big chunk of emissions, roughly 40% of all transport-related CO2. And with urban mobility increasing each year, turning it electric is one of the most practical ways to reduce its impact in the long run, while making it cheaper and more efficient at the same time.
While some modes of transportation have moved quite quickly (over 60% of cars sold in Europe are electric or hybrid these days), others lag behind. Lightweight mobility, like mopeds and motorbikes, is one of those areas. In Europe the electrification rate sits below 3%. But what may be surprising to some is that in many European cities, especially in the south, two-stroke mopeds are a major source of air pollution. It’s not uncommon for them to emit pollutant levels hundreds of times higher than even the much-feared diesel car or truck. So why is hardly anyone switching to electric here?
When the classic EV playbook does not work
In the past, efforts to electrify two-wheelers tried to follow the same recipe as the relatively successful electrification of cars. But that model simply does not translate well.
First of all, electric mopeds are a lot more expensive than fuel-powered ones. Since this is a vehicle category that is supposed to be lightweight and affordable, that higher cost becomes a much bigger issue. The second big friction point is charging. The average electric moped only offers around 60 to 100 kilometers of range, and can take up to six hours to charge fully again. While you often have enough range in an electric car to drive around all day and charge it at night, this limitation makes e-mopeds highly impractical in a lot of real-world use cases.
This is also a clear dealbreaker for any of the bigger moped fleets: logistics operators or fleet owners for two-wheeled transport or delivery can simply not afford such time inefficiencies. Justifying a higher upfront cost and operational difficulty just for the sake of being greener makes going electric a big no-go.
The two founders of Pollen understood that issue. Rui had seen this problem from the operator’s side, launching and scaling Uber in Southern Europe, then founding the food-tech startup Kitch, which was later sold to Delivery Hero. He knows how quickly small inefficiencies turn into real operational pain when you run big fleets. Miguel came at it from the product side, having built the fastest electric motorcycle at Axiis. They founded Pollen to tackle this stubborn sector in urban mobility. They were sure about one thing: if two-wheelers were ever going to make the shift from fuel to electric, the classic EV playbook had to go. And with it, the whole charging process as we know it.
Charging becomes swapping
The solution is battery swapping. Instead of letting e-mopeds rely on slow charging processes, Pollen is building a swapping infrastructure for lightweight vehicles, where riders can replace a universal battery in seconds and keep moving.
Battery swapping is already well established in parts of Asia, especially in big cities across China and Taiwan. But bringing that model to Europe is not as simple as copying what already works elsewhere. The market here is much less dense, with far fewer vehicles on the road, which makes the economics of a swapping network more challenging from the outset. At the same time, there is more fragmentation: different manufacturers use different vehicle models, battery setups, and technical standards. That makes traditional swapping systems difficult.
Rather than designing for one vehicle model at a time and locking out all others, Pollen wanted to build a battery system that can work across the board. That meant solving a series of engineering challenges. Some of them are quite obvious, such as that the battery needs to physically fit into a variety of different vehicles. But there are some invisible barriers as well. Different battery systems use their own unique protocols, kind of like their own language. In addition, e-mopeds come with different voltages depending on their size. Pollen built electronics that allow the same battery to adapt to the vehicle it is plugged into. It can communicate across different battery “languages” and adjust to different voltage requirements, so the same system can power a big 72 volt Honda motorbike as well as a lightweight 45 volt Vespa scooter.
This universality is also what makes the network economics work in Europe. By pooling demand from different fleets, vehicle types, and riders into a single shared infrastructure, Pollen turns a market that is too fragmented for any single-OEM swapping system into one that can actually sustain a network.
Getting e-mopeds onto European streets
Technology is only one half of the equation. The other half is getting it onto the streets.
Pollen is going after the customers where the problem is most painful and the upside is clearest: commercial fleets. They run long hours, often cover more than 100 kilometres a day per vehicle, and cannot afford vehicles to stand still waiting to charge. Think food delivery fleets, post and parcel operators, or platforms that own and manage their own mopeds. These users have the most to gain by going electric, as it lowers their operating costs significantly.
They are also the ones for whom the current charging model often does not work in practice. That is what makes swapping so important. It does not just improve the electric option, but in many cases, it is the thing that makes the switch possible at all.
But for that to run in the real world, the swapping experience itself has to be frictionless. That was the team’s ambition from the start: no waiting time, no QR codes, no apps, no extra steps. Riders simply return an empty battery and pick up a new one, while everything else, from tracking to payment, runs in the background.
That simple user experience is backed by hardware built specifically for swapping. Most batteries are not really designed for constant removal and reinsertion, which quickly becomes a weakness once usage increases. Pollen built the battery from the ground up, including a connector made to endure up to 10,000 swaps, and housed it in stations that withstand heavy daily use and outdoor conditions.
When electric becomes the better deal
There’s no doubt that lowering emissions in the mobility sector is important. But in reality, the way in which people and goods move around, does not change just because a greener option pops up. It changes when that option is also the cheaper one, the faster one, and the one that works in the messiness of everyday operations. With Pollen, electric motorbikes become more affordable to run than fuel-powered ones with electricity prices beating fuel. Charging becomes a simple swap, and the time at the station drops down to seconds, faster than a fuel-up. The environmental impact is just the cherry on top for most users.
The mission of the Pollen team is ambitious: power 100 million trips a day without any petrol and its emissions. Having seen the team work relentlessly, building tech that’s truly customer-centric, and putting out the first stations, we truly believe they can pull it off. We’re proud to support Rui and Miguel on this ride of electrifying urban mobility where it matters.