Neuron Mobility’s founder Zachary Wang wants to bring e-scooter sharing back to Singapore

Electric scooters (or e-scooters) have gotten a bad rap, but it didn’t exactly whistle from the ground. You’ll only need to wade through reports of off-the-rails e-scooter riders gunning down pavements, ramming into unsuspecting pedestrians, to appreciate Singapore’s stringent regulations governing the use of such Personal Mobility Devices (PMD).

Those restrictions also explain why Singapore-headquartered e-scooter sharing start-up Neuron Mobility doesn’t operate in the Lion City, despite its growing global footprint. Since its inception in 2016 — when it launched the world’s first docked e-scooter sharing system in Singapore — the firm has jettisoned its Southeast Asia expansion plans, due to similar regulatory hurdles.

Its 39-year-old co-founder, Zachary Wang, takes these setbacks on the chin. “I have children and understand the anxiety that a fast-moving vehicle on a pavement can create,” shared the father-of-two. “But Singapore is trending towards a positive direction, through measures such as building more bike lanes. In time to come, you’ll see that our innovations are going to work out here.”

Such feats of technology — which include front-facing AI-powered cameras to detect riding on footpaths; sensors that help mitigate unsafe riding practices in real-time; as well as a button that activates emergency services in the event of an accident — are Wang and his co-founder Harry Yu’s answer to safety concerns surrounding e-scooter riding. The company develops and builds its own e-scooters, thus allowing for agile iteration according to different city regulations. For instance, the devices can be programmed to function only on designated paths.

But while their start-up is now recognised as a leader in micromobility solutions in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Canada — with Wang named EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 Singapore — the ride hasn’t been bump-free, by any measure. Balking at a rash of complaints against rule-flouting riders, the City of Melbourne council moved to ban e-scooter operators in the Central Business District (CBD) in 2024 — though they’re allowed in neighbouring purlieus. It’s the kind of resistance Wang has grown accustomed to, as an early mover in an arguably volatile industry. But he isn’t one to be stonewalled.

“Bringing this new mode of transport into cities requires a lot of education with the public and also making sure we are a responsible operator providing a service that is as safe as possible,” he said, noting that his team works in close collaboration with local city councils to enable the seamless integration of vehicles into everyday lives. To prevent haphazard parking, for instance, Neuron Mobility’s e-scooters are equipped with geofence detection capabilities, which create virtual boundaries and trigger responses when a device enters or leaves a specific area.

Ultimately, he says it’s about ensuring that the devices do not encroach on the space and freedom of non-users. “Hopefully, we can gain more social acceptance that will allow e-scooters to become a major force in connecting the first- and last-mile of many cities.”

GREEN WHEELS, KEEP ON TURNING

As smart cities including Singapore ramp up their carbon neutrality efforts, multi-modal transportation that integrates multiple forms of transit for efficient and sustainable urban mobility is having its day in the sun. But this wasn’t the case in 2009, when Wang was a fresh mechanical engineering graduate from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with fire in his belly and a sweeping view of green transportation’s possibilities.

His interest was piqued while designing and building Singapore’s first hydrogen-powered electric car as part of a clutch of 10 students who raced their vehicle at the Shell Eco-marathon Europe competition. Wang and his teammates’ tour de force was a zero-carbon emission single-seater propelled by an electric wheel hub motor, which could achieve twice the energy efficiency of conventional internal combustion engines.

“Hydrogen gas is produced from water, so it’s literally an electric vehicle that runs on water — how fascinating is that?” mused the native of Hubei, China, who was invited to study in Singapore on a government scholarship as an adolescent. “This put me at an intersection of renewable energy and electric mobility, and I told myself that I want to spend my career focused on either or both of these areas.”

But venture capital funding for start-ups was limited, as was interest in the green mobility sector. “You may have an ambitious goal, but you still need people and capital to achieve it, and it just didn’t exist at the time, which is why I started my first business before I went on to Neuron,” recalled Wang.

The young automotive engineer hedged his bets on the ratcheting adoption of renewables, and bootstrapped solar power company Rezeca Renewables. “I knew that more machinery and production would drive down the cost of solar energy, compared to the volatile price of traditional energy generation. Once it passes the parity point whereby solar power becomes cheaper than conventional energy, it’s a question of, ‘Why not?’” he reasoned.

Running a young start-up in a nascent industry, however, he would have to pass through the common gauntlet of cash flow issues. “I remember telling myself, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to make this work, even if that means selling the house or the car’,” he recalled, adding that there were occasions where he forewent his salary.

Thankfully, his earlier prediction reached full flower, and he did not have to resort to liquidating those assets. Business burgeoned in tandem with Singapore’s surging solar capacity, which in 2020 had charted a thousand-fold increase from that in 2008. By then, he’d already established Neuron Mobility. Wang eventually handed the reins of his first venture over to his wife, a former teacher and business graduate he’d met at NUS.

“I had a lot of confidence in convincing her to leave teaching, because operating a company is often not that different from operating a house or family,” he suggested. “Over the years, I’ve seen her decision-making skills and she’s much better at the operational side of things than me,” he elaborated, quipping that it might have been his spouse who’d hired him rather than the reverse.

LEAD WITH MOXY

For the most part, Wang leads Rezeca Renewables strategically rather than micro-managing. “I would say that more than 95 per cent of decisions that companies make from day-to-day are reversible. If we make a mistake, let’s just learn and do better next time,” he asserted.

While that may sound like a stock answer from your typical Steve Jobs-quoting (which he doesn’t shy from) entrepreneur with vaulting ambition, Wang’s self-assurance doesn’t seem contrived. Growing up as the only child of a doctor mother and entrepreneur father, he was “given a lot of encouragement, which somehow created the illusion that I was special.” For as far as he can recall, the die had been cast in his entrepreneurship journey. So, when it came time to rustle up a resume toward the end of his university education, he put the task on the backburner.

“I get a much bigger sense of achievement from placing myself very close to the outcome of things,” said Wang, who became a naturalised Singapore citizen during the pandemic. His confidence, on the other hand, was cultivated over time. “When in doubt over an ambitious target, I’ll mobilise every resource to achieve it. The more times I’m successful, the more it reinforces my beliefs and gives me the conviction to set bigger goals,” he said.

For now, this means blazing trails in more cities, though Neuron Mobility’s North Star — to make urban transportation and lives more convenient — has not shifted. To be clear, he’s gearing up for an uphill battle, if you consider the mercurial policies and restrictions underfoot — even in highly regulated cities.

But the company has always been something of an underdog, having once been penalised by Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) for providing unlicensed e-scooter sharing services. This time, however, Wang hopes to stay between the lines and make an aboveboard comeback, backed by the right infrastructure and watertight policies. If anything, its sustainability efforts — which include providing swappable batteries and recycling retired vehicles — may give it an additional leg to stand on.

Gazing out from the bare boardroom of Neuron’s nearly vacated office at Thomson Road, as they prepared to move into their new premises, Wang gestured toward construction cranes juddering in the distance — a precursor to the upcoming north-south corridor expected to facilitate a car-lite lifestyle when it’s ready in 2027.

“At some point, we’ll probably be back here; it’s home for us,” he said.