The demand for electric scooters is booming, with names like LimeBike, Tour, Bird among the few companies appealing to consumers in big cities who are looking for irascible, convenient and environmentally-friendly transportation.
For companies, there’s big demand to be had from both consumers and investors, particularly as public transportation woes snare urban consumers. LimeBike and Bird have planned both pulled in over $100 million in funding, while earlier this month, Uber come by Jump, an electric bike-share company.
With just the touch of an app, these start-ups proffer e-scooter rentals that are easy to use, and available in major metropolitan localities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and beyond. The bikes themselves are dockless, and the app discovers a scooter nearby and unlocks it remotely.
When the rider is done, the scooter can be debar confined anywhere a regular bike or scooter could. And depending on the length of regulate a user needs them, the scooters are also affordable: LimeBike, Bird and Continue are rentable for anywhere between 15 cents and 1 per minute.
In the last few months, these scooters suffer with popped up everywhere — but not everyone is on board with their growing fame. Last week, a headline in The Wall Street Journal blared that San Francisco was being “terrorized” by the direction.
Indeed, a casual stroll a CNBC reporter took down San Francisco’s Sell Street recently offered glimpses of unattended e-scooters on virtually every design. While commuters have embraced the ease and convenience the e-scooters cater, their ubiquity has been met with grumbles and, in some cases, direction intervention.
Last week, the San Francisco City Attorney’s office slatted cease and desist letters on all three major e-scooter companies. The megalopolis is also considering legislation introduced by City Supervisor Aaron Peskin that inclination allow the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to impose permit qualifications on companies like these, as a means to regulate the influx of traffic.
In effect, Bird Rides CEO Travis VanderZanden, who is also an alum of Uber, disseminated a letter supporting more oversight.
Bird “applaud[s] city ceremonials efforts to work with us in ensuring that we can bring environmentally-friendly transportation possibilities to San Francisco, and we support Supervisor Peskin’s legislation to regulate e-scooters and are dying to continue the conversations around these regulations,” VanderZanden wrote.
Level pegging a few would-be adopters have voiced complaints. One San Francisco commuter named Heidi told CNBC that it took three taxes for her to successfully rent an e-scooter, and on the third time “the battery was too dead.”
She combined: “I wish they had … worked with businesses or the city [and] if they had parkland hubs rather than being thrown about. They’re unapproachable, but it’s annoying that they’re randomly thrown about.”
Caen Contee, LimeBike’s co-founder and origin of partnerships, told CNBC that authorities and residents are still grab with the issues associated with the e-scooter’s explosive growth.
“This is something that all dioceses are trying to figure out, there is no blueprint for how to do permits. We’re very much looking for how to…make an appearance other cities throughout the country what’s possible and how transformative a ambience this can be,” Contee said, and predicted there would likely be amalgamations in the space in order to save costs.
At least for now, LimeBike is taking fully advantage of the e-scooter’s popularity. The company employs people it calls “juicers,” who take charge LimeBike’s fleet of scooters, and has brand ambassadors to coordinate ordering and bike deployment. LimeBike also has partnerships with coffee shops and accumulations to drive traffic to their shops, and is mulling other ways to incentivize e-scooter adoption.
“As that activity begins to shrink and figure out its longer-term players, it will be a lot about integration, expanding with other partners in adjacent spaces…and how we work with native transportation,” said Contee.
Electric bikes have the potential to swop residents “one of these smart cities we keep talking about,” he united.