Shotl and Solar Impulse: beyond 1000 profitable environmental solution

For the past five years, the Solar Impulse Foundationhas focused on identifying and labelling different startups, companies and products that address sustainability challenges such as climate change or carbon emissions while still remaining profitable.

Since its foundation in 2017, Shotl has also demonstrated concern about the environmental impact of low-ridership fixed public transportation lines, which led us to apply for the prestigious label for our demand-responsive transit (DRT) platform. Shotl obtained the award in February 2020 after a thorough evaluation by Solar Impulse Foundations’s team of independent experts.

Solar Impulse Foundation was created by Bertrand Piccard after completing a flight around the world in a solar-powered airplane, demonstrating that this type of achievement was not beyond the reach of environmentally friendly technologies. The idea was to raise awareness among governments, companies and entrepreneurs about the need to care for the environment and face the future with clean technologies.

This perfectly matched both the idea behind Shotl and our objective of providing a valuable transportation option in areas where public transportation is often insufficient and highly subsidised. Shotl’s mission has always been to develop and continuously improve a platform that makes collective transportation as flexible and convenient as private cars, as well as help reduce the number of private vehicles in cities in the near future. This will eventually lead to cleaner, greener, carfree cities and, as a result, a reduction in CO2 emissions and improved human health.

Solar Impulse’s initial challenge was to reach 1000 solutions that could be awarded their label, and Shotl is proud to be among the first batch. However, having achieved this objective doesn’t mean our work is done. New challenges are arising all the time and we need to continue to protect the environment while remaining profitable. Also, help those users who most benefit from Shotl’s model of shared mobility - such as the elderly, people with reduced mobility and students - to access efficient, cheap and clean public transport.