GNSS EMobility: Balancing Precision, Price, Power, and Packaging

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) provides a well-understood, widely deployed and accepted way to accurately determine a precise location. It therefore underpins navigation, tracking and tracing of goods and assets and, with billions of GNSS devices already deployed, it has become pervasive. However, GNSS applications are not one-size-fits-all and organizations are challenged to find and deploy suitable solutions that meet the constraints of their applications. 

In eMobility, which this paper focuses on, ride-sharing providers have to carefully balance accuracy, cost, the power demand and the dimensional footprint of a GNSS module to ensure they select the optimum solution. Often, GNSS alone is not enough to pinpoint the location of small eMobility vehicles such as eScooters so eMobility organizations typically augment GNSS with additional sensors and algorithms. 

eMobility encompasses electric cars and trucks and public transport in addition to ride-sharing and hailing services such as those from Uber and Lyft plus micromobility solutions such as eBikes, eScooters and eSkateboards from companies like Bird, Lime and Didi, which are also offered by Uber and Lyft. In addition, new vehicle types such as last mile delivery robots are facing the same sorts of challenges as the micromobility market. 

Consultancy firm McKinsey & Company reports that stakeholders have invested more than US$5.7 billion in micromobility start-ups since 2015, with more than 85% targeting China1. The firm predicts enormous uptake for these services, as users recognize micromobility is faster than car-based trips and they enjoy the freedom of traveling in the fresh air. 

All services succeed or fail based on the customer experience they provide. This starts right from the first interaction so eMobility’s first challenge is to make the vehicle easy to find. 

Learn more today by downloading Quectel’s White Paper.