A Swedish-founded e-scooter sharing company that runs rental schemes with UK cities and councils, including large operations in Bristol, Bath and Oxford.
Voi runs shared electric scooters that people unlock with a phone app and ride around town, then leave in a marked parking spot. It works with councils and city partners, so the scooters are part of a local transport trial or scheme rather than something that simply appears on the streets. In its first UK trial in 2020, rides cost £1 to unlock plus 20p a minute, and it also offered a £10 a month pass for people on low incomes and free rides for key workers. It said it would work with the Cambridgeshire Cycling Campaign and with disability groups such as RNIB when judging where infrastructure was needed.
The company was founded in Sweden in 2018 by four people: Adam Jafer, Douglas Stark, Fredrik Hjelm and Keith Richman. Its chief executive, Fredrik Hjelm, has described e-scooters as a "liberating new form of transport". Voi says it wants to give people greener alternatives to driving and to cut pollution and congestion in cities. It also says it uses the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a guide and has been carbon neutral since January 2020 (company claims).
Voi launched in the UK in 2020 with a trial in Cambridge and the wider Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area, and has since grown to be one of the biggest UK operators. A 2022 interview describes its Bristol scheme as the country's largest, with just over 3,000 scooters, a 60 square mile zone that includes Bath, and 10 million journeys, run from a single warehouse in north-east Bristol. The same piece says Voi operated in 16 other UK cities. Job listings have also shown UK fleet roles in London and Oxford. Voi's group headquarters is in Stockholm, so the UK is one of several countries it works in.
The people we could read about work in practical, hands-on jobs. The UK operations team is described as having an in-field division of around 200 people across the UK, led by a Head of Fleet Management Operations, and an analytics and strategy division. People in the field charge and repair scooters, move them to where riders need them and talk to customers. In 2021 Voi named Jack Samler as its UK General Manager. Voi also trialled electric tuk-tuks and cargo bikes to collect and swap batteries, which suggests a team that enjoys solving everyday problems.
If you like cities, transport, data and gadgets, Voi is a good company to follow. Its UK roles include fleet specialists, warehouse teams, operations managers and analysts, and it also needs customer, marketing and communications staff. Many of the people quoted in interviews started in operations jobs in other micromobility companies and moved up, which shows how varied the paths can be. In 2021 Voi said it was hiring 25 people in places including Liverpool, Cambridge, Bristol, Oxford, Portsmouth, Southampton, Birmingham and Northampton, in fleet specialist and warehouse roles, and claimed more than 200 UK job opportunities created since 2020. It was also piloting computer vision to spot scooters being ridden on pavements or parked badly, so there is a technology side too.
Website: www.voi.com
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