Australia

Independent analysis finalised, Beam strengthens its process and offering

Independent analysis finalised, Beam strengthens its process and offering

12 February, 2025

As the longest-running e-mobility provider in Australia and New Zealand, Beam Mobility’s (“Beam”) mission is to enhance customers’ access to vehicles and enable greater mobility in a safe, efficient and seamless manner.

In August 2024, Beam engaged Corrs Chambers Westgarth (“Corrs”) as external legal advisors following concerns raised by certain councils regarding the use of the “unknown” status provided for in the Mobility Data Specification (“MDS”) data standards applied by Beam to report the availability of its vehicles.
 
On behalf of Beam, Corrs engaged Pitcher Partners to conduct an independent analysis of this issue. That activity has now been completed and Corrs has written to every partner council in ANZ about the results, offering a settlement or adjustment to affected councils.

In a demonstration of its commitment to transparency and continuous improvement, Beam has also released an overview of the external report undertaken by Pitcher Partners examining the extent of the use of the ‘unknown vehicle status’ (Attachment A).
 
The following recommendations have been made to improve Beam’s data governance and compliance processes, as part of Corrs’ work with Beam. These recommendations have been approved by the Board:

  • Appointing an internal compliance officer, who is to be a point of contact for councils, ensure adherence to reporting standards and who is empowered to report directly to the Board;
  • Conducting ethics and compliance training for all employees and directors;
  • Implementing strict controls and approval processes for changes to data reporting methodologies and product changes;
  • Engaging an independent third party to audit Beam’s vehicle reporting against agreed methodologies; and
  • Implementing an enhanced whistleblowing process to be overseen by non-executive directors of the Board.


Beam, in addition to the measures listed above, has implemented a number of procedural and governance initiatives to improve its processes and offerings to councils, customers and partners.
These include: 

  • Enhanced oversight for councils: Beam has implemented independent auditing data from Vianova, a globally recognised leader in micromobility compliance. This tool captures and reports all vehicle statuses, allowing the council to scan and verify vehicle details through Vianova’s mobile app. The app provides real-time data on vehicle status, history, and compliance with regulations, which can be viewed on the Vianova online dashboard. 
  • Operational Dashboard upgrades: Cap monitoring dashboards with automated alerts, available to our operations team. These are immediate alerts that warn the local operations team when the cap is approached for enhanced monitoring.
  • Automated prevention of deployment: Beam has introduced safeguards in its operational systems to proactively prevent vehicle deployment that automatically disable deployment parking spots as the cap is approached. Once the number of vehicles on the ground approaches the limit, all deployment spots are deactivated.

A Beam Mobility spokesperson said:

“The year 2024 offered an important opportunity for our organisation to reflect on our practices, people, and operating plans into the future. Importantly, this self-reflection includes us acknowledging that, as we grew and expanded rapidly into new markets, our processes and procedures did not evolve to the same level of sophistication which resulted in mistakes including the violation of our operating agreement in some ANZ markets.
“Our relationships with councils and customers are at the heart of the service that we provide, and in reflecting on the mistakes we made we are committed to using these learnings to make our relationships stronger, our operations more transparent, and our business an overall better and more credible partner for all stakeholders.
“Our focus for 2025 is on rebuilding trust with our partners - governments, councils, regulators, customers and the community. We have made important, lasting changes to our business and look forward to working closely with councils to ensure transparency, and ongoing improvement.”

The evolution of Beam’s governance measures, data reporting, capture processes and transparency initiatives is an ongoing process which will ensure that over deployment events cannot occur in the future. Beam intends to implement these industry-leading transparency measures to bring a new standard to partnerships with local governments. Please find attached the external Pitcher Partners report.


Pitcher Partners Overview Report

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