Group Ride Billing Synchronization for Electric Scooters
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional group rental systems for electric personal transport devices often result in time delays and increased costs for users, as individuals must separately activate their scooters, leading to asynchronous starts and unfair billing among group members.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that allows users to initiate a group ride with synchronized billing, where the start of billing is delayed until all users have located their electric transport devices, ensuring that each user pays the same amount by synchronizing the rental process across all participants.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If each user separately activates their scooter in conventional group rentals, then users can independently access their devices, but this causes time delays and increased costs for users who activate early
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by having all users locate and activate their scooters before the group ride officially begins. The billing start time is set to after all users have located their devices, ensuring everyone is ready before the ride commences and eliminating waiting time for early activators.
2Adaptability or versatility
If users activate scooters at different locations and times, then each user has flexibility in finding their device, but this results in unfair billing where early activators pay more
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates equipotential billing conditions by setting a common billing start time for all group members. This ensures that regardless of when individual users activate their scooters, everyone is charged from the same starting point, making the billing fair and equitable for all participants in the group ride.
3Reliability
If the group waits for all users to locate their scooters before starting billing, then billing fairness is improved, but this requires a centralized coordination system
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses feedback mechanisms to monitor when each user has successfully located their scooter. The billing start time is dynamically determined based on this feedback - it begins only after the system confirms all users have located their devices. This automated feedback loop ensures fairness without requiring complex manual coordination.
Data Source
AI summary
A method and system for synchronizing the start of group ride rentals of electric transport devices is described. In one embodiment, a method for initiating a group ride for a plurality of users of electric transport devices includes receiving a request from a first user of an electric transport device to initiate a group ride from a first location to a second location. The method also includes adding one or more additional users to the group ride. Each user is associated with a separate billing account with a service provider for the electric transport devices. The method further includes delaying a start of billing for each user included in the group ride by the service provider until each user has located an electric transport device.