Only electric vehicles and many mobility solutions in Brf (housing association) Viva's vehicle pool

The Brf Viva residents will have access to a much wider mobility solution than is the norm in a housing association. There will be four electric cars, five electric bicycles and four electric cargo bikes and another couple of light electric vehicles. There is plenty of bicycle parking and a bicycle bridge from the street, so you ride right into the bicycle parking. A bicycle workshop is also there to make it easy to maintain your bike.

– From the start of the project with Brf Viva, it has been a prerequisite that it is living without owning a car but that there should be other mobility solutions that reduce the need for having your own car. It is very exciting that at Brf Viva, we can now offer a car pool with only electric vehicles, which is very rare, says Mikael Ahlén, Marketing Manager at Riksbyggen Bostad in Gothenburg.

But the mobility solution is not just about offering different types of vehicles in a pool, it goes far beyond that.

– At Brf Viva there are special remote workplaces to make it easier to work from home at times, thereby reducing the need for transport to and from work. The association also has a postal and delivery room, which makes it easier for residents to shop online and therefore saving both time and need for their own transport, says Charlotta Brolin, Sustainability Specialist at Riksbyggen.

Electricity is generated by the solar panels on the roof, which will also partly be used to charge the electric vehicle pool. As most of the energy from the solar panels is generated during the daytime when the usage is low, it is stored in used bus batteries to capture the power peaks that occur in the evening when the residents come home and start the washing machine or put the car on charge.

At Brf Viva, Riksbyggen, Västtrafik, Sunfleet and EC2B are also testing a new digital service that will make it easier for people to combine different modes of transport, such as bicycle, car pool and public transport.

EC2B and Riksbyggen also cooperate in Gothenburg within the EU project IRIS Smart Cities, a five-year Light House project, funded by the EU's HORIZON 2020. In the project, solutions are being tested and developed at Riksbyggen, among others, then copied and replicated in the project's other cities and further across the EU.

Research in Positive Footprint Housing, PFH, is the foundation of Brf Viva. PFH is multidisciplinary research for holistic thinking about innovative sustainable residential and urban development.

The project will result in increased environmental, social and economic sustainability, where acquired insights and lessons get their first practical application at Brf Viva. The project was initiated by Riksbyggen in collaboration with, among others, Johanneberg Science Park, Chalmers, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg Energy, City of Gothenburg and RISE.

For more nformation:
Mikael Ahlén, Riksbyggen, +46 31 704 68 63
Charlotta Brolin, Riksbyggen, +46 31 704 55 08