Cities and transport systems are not neutral. Throughout Western history they have largely been planned and built by men around male-dominated travel patterns. This legacy is visible in everything from street lighting to public transport schedules, and it has often meant that women’s needs – for safety, care-related trips and flexible mobility – have largely been under‑served. Initiatives on gender‑mainstreaming in mobility reveal structural biases and design choices that systematically disadvantage women, like public vehicles not adjusted to women’s needs and routes ignoring multi-stop trips.
Yet women in innovation don’t always need to focus explicitly on gender challenges to make an impact. Diverse startup leadership and founders naturally bring their varied backgrounds to shape solutions, spotting overlooked problems, challenging entrenched assumptions and creating technologies that better service broader user needs more effectively. Research conducted by the Boston Consulting Group found that women entrepreneurs tend to outperform their male counterparts by 10% despite a sizeable gap in investment and numerous articles have been written about diverse teams outperforming homogeneous ones in both innovation and financial metrics.
Today, a growing number of women founders and leaders in EIT Urban Mobility’s investment portfolio are building technologies that make mobility safer and more sustainable. Their companies tackle core challenges such as safety for vulnerable road users, resilient infrastructure, decarbonisation of hard‑to‑abate modes, and predictive maintenance for critical assets. These innovations make visible the people redefining how and for whom our cities work and illustrate why diverse leadership is essential for the next generation of urban mobility.
Intelligent road infrastructure with ASIMOB
ASIMOB, co‑founded by Estíbaliz Barañano, addresses a challenge that is less visible to the everyday user but crucial for safe and efficient mobility: the condition and performance of road infrastructure. The company provides AI‑powered monitoring solutions that use sensors, connected vehicles, and computer vision to assess road quality, signage visibility and other safety‑critical elements in real time. This helps road operators detect problems early, prioritise maintenance and manage networks more efficiently.
By automating the detection of issues like faded markings, damaged signs, or deteriorating surfaces, ASIMOB reduces both the cost and the response time of maintenance operations.
Safer streets with Luna Systems
Luna Systems focuses on improving micromobility safety for riders of two‑wheel vehicles, especially e‑scooters and bikes, which are rapidly expanding in cities but often without adequate infrastructure or protections. Under the leadership of Maria Diviney, Co-founder and COO, Luna has developed advanced computer-vision technology that can be integrated into shared micromobility fleets to detect road hazards, pavement riding and near‑miss incidents. This data gives operators and cities granular insight into where risks actually occur, allowing them to adjust infrastructure, speed limits and operating zones with far more precision.
Instead of relying only on historic crash data, which is often incomplete and slow to arrive, Luna Systems’ innovation allows municipalities to access real‑time intelligence on conflict points, unsafe behaviours and infrastructure gaps along two‑wheel routes. For women and other vulnerable users, who disproportionately report feeling unsafe on the road, this shift from reactive to proactive safety management can be transformative, supporting more accessible street design for all.
Decarbonising winter mobility with Vidde Snow Mobility
In northern and mountainous regions, vehicles like snowmobiles that can withstand snow and inclement weather are a critical but highly polluting component of the transport system. Vidde Snow Mobility, led by CFO and Co‑founder Yalda Mirbaz, tackles this challenge by developing electric snowmobiles that drastically reduce emissions and noise compared with traditional internal combustion models. These vehicles are aimed at tourism operators, local communities and industries that depend on snow transport, offering a cleaner way to move people and goods in harsh winter conditions.
Vidde’s innovation is not only in electrifying a niche vehicle category; it is in demonstrating that even hard‑to‑abate segments of mobility can be decarbonised without compromising performance. By combining robust design for extreme environments with sustainable propulsion, Vidde shows what a just and green transition can look like in places that are often overlooked in mainstream urban mobility debates.
Dynamic electric roads with Elonroad
Elonroad, led by CEO Karin Ebbinghaus, offers a radically different approach to decarbonising transport: electric road systems that charge vehicles while they drive. The company has developed conductive charging rails that can be installed on or in the road surface, delivering power to vehicles equipped with a compatible pickup system. This reduces dependence on large onboard batteries, shortens charging downtimes, and can enable continuous operation for vehicles such as buses, trucks and fleets.
Combining infrastructure, vehicle technology and digital control into a coherent system that can be integrated into existing roads Elonroad addresses key barriers to electrifying heavy and high‑utilisation vehicles, which are major contributors to urban emissions. For cities, this opens a pathway to more sustainable logistics and public transport without overwhelming the grid or taking away necessary public space.
Predictive rail maintenance with PANTOhealth
PANTOhealth, co‑founded by Mina Kolagar, focuses on the reliability and safety of rail systems by applying data analytics and AI to a very specific but crucial component: the interface between pantograph and overhead line. This interface is subject to intense mechanical and electrical stress, and its failure can cause service disruptions, costly repairs, and safety risks. PANTOhealth’s solution continuously monitors performance data and uses predictive algorithms to identify anomalies before they become critical.
This seemingly niche innovation has wide systemic implications. By enabling condition‑based maintenance and early interventions, PANTOhealth helps operators reduce downtime, avoid incidents and optimise asset lifecycles. For passengers, especially those who depend on rail as their primary transport mode, more reliable services translate directly into greater freedom and security. And providing more reliability can in turn encourage more rail users – providing an alternative to individual car use and more sustainable systems.
Why diverse innovators matter for diverse cities
These women‑led startups operate in very different corners of the mobility ecosystem – from road infrastructure and micromobility safety, to winter vehicles, electric roads and rail. What they share is a focus on solving structural problems that have too often been treated as inevitable: crumbling or opaque infrastructure, unsafe streets for cyclists and scooter riders, high‑emission vehicles in sensitive environments, and unreliable public transport.
Our cities are inherently diverse. People of different genders, ages, abilities, and socioeconomic backgrounds move through them in different ways and under different constraints. If the teams designing new mobility technologies and services do not reflect that diversity, blind spots will persist and entire groups will remain underserved.