The other electric scooters and beyond

The key is multimodality — mobility in our cities can benefit from both electric scoopers and electric moped scooters.

“Scooters have been a hit with consumers,” says Euwyn Poon, co-founder and president of Spin, a scooter-sharing startup that operates in 18 cities in the US and has a fleet of over 30,000 vehicles.

Spin is not alone. Electric scooters from LimeBike, Bird, Skip — and of course Spin — are becoming indeed very popular here in the United States, although not without issues in terms of permits and partnerships with cities. They’re also entering the European markets as we speak, with Lime and Bird already in Paris, France and both exploring new markets — Lime eyeing Turin, Italy and Bird Tel Aviv, Israel. In Paris, Lime has just celebrated the first 100,000 rides a little over a month after the launch.

Lime and Bird have also attracted a great deal of venture capital investments, both becoming unicorns very fast.

But another type of scooter, the electric moped, is also getting more traction in a few markets, even in the US where mopeds aren’t exactly commonplace in general.

Flaming red electric ride-on scooters from Scoot have proven to be incredibly popular in San Francisco — where electric kick scooters have temporarily been stopped by the city. Scoot claims that their scooters have covered nearly 5 million miles and counting in the city. In addition to Scoot, Muving has also launched in the US starting with Atlanta and plans to open in Miami, while Scoobi is now operating in Pittsburg, with a business model quite similar to both Muving and Scoot, and even use the same GenZe 2.0 scooters as Scoot.

Muving stats for 2017, as posted on their LinkedIn page.

Muving, a Spain-based company, shows how the dockless electric moped market in Europe is more mature that the US, and how it could evolve in American cities. Muving, in fact, is already present in 12 cities in Spain, including Barcelona and Madrid. eCooltra, another Spanish company, manages a fleet of more than 3,000 electric mopeds with a presence in five cities: Barcelona and Madrid in Spain, Lisbon in Portugal, and Rome and Milan in Italy.

In my native Italy, home of the iconic Vespa, MiMoto already has operations in Milan and has announced a launch in September in Turin, the same city that Lime has chosen for its debut in Italy for its Lime-S electric scooters.

The market is moving fast. It is evolving fast as well.

Scoot, for instance, is introducing an electric kick-style scooter to its fleet of electric motor scooters and electric bicycles.

“Cities all over the world are being transformed by shared electric vehicles like Scoots,” wrote Michael Keating, founder and CEO of Scoot, in a post here on Medium. “They are becoming cleaner, quieter, more affordable, more convenient, more fun, and, when the vehicles are managed and regulated well, they are becoming safer. Shared electric vehicles do all of this by making driving less necessary, not by turning sidewalks into roads. The rules San Francisco is adopting make sense. The companies that can play by them will also play a part in making this city, and so many others, better places to live.”

Scoot is also expanding in Europe and after Barcelona it is eyeing several markets, with job vacancies in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, and the UK. It is also embracing a multimodal strategy and, in addition to electric mopeds and kick scooters, it eyes electric four-wheeler vehicles to create what they defines as “the 21st century subway system.”

Lime, whose fleet already includes bikes, electric-assist bikes, and electric scooters, is trying to achieve the same.

Tweets via Have A Go

The startup is developing a new type of vehicle known internally as a “transit pod.” According to Bloomberg, the concept is in early stages and the design is still in flux: “Lime’s plan is to build an enclosed, electric vehicle that could hold one or two people, resembling a smart car or a deluxe golf cart. The vehicle wouldn’t be a car, exactly; it’s not even clear whether it would have three or four wheels. But it would drive in normal street traffic, and could hit a top speed of about 40 miles an hour, said Brad Bao, Lime’s co-founder and chairman.”

Tweet via Emily Castor Warren.

Multimodality has been working for Lime, whose One Year Report “pulls back the curtain on the rapidly growing world of dock-free electric scooter and bike rentals,” a post by John Wachunas@Spinlister on Lime’s blog reads. “Using anonymized data gleaned from rider surveys and the Lime platform, we examine our exponential ride growth through many lenses, including average trip distance, preferred vehicle usage, cost, socioeconomic status, transit connectivity, trip purpose, destination and much more.”

Lime announced that it had surpassed six million rides since their inaugural launch in Greensboro, North Carolina in June of 2017.

“Behind the trips themselves, however, are stats and stories from millions of smart mobility users that reveal a richer narrative,” the blog post reads. “For example, did you know that more than a quarter of Lime riders report using Lime to connect to public transit on their last trip? Or that over half of riders come from households earning less than $75,000 per year?”

The future of mobility and smart cities in Europe_Turin, Italy is experimenting with autonomous cars and electric scooters, while London, UK is looking to become the…_hackernoon.com

The future of mobility in our cities is going to be exciting!

I can’t agree more with Martin O'Malley, former Governor of Maryland and transit advocate: “This is about more than solving traffic problems in our cities. It’s about figuring out new ways for people to move — ways that are more sustainable, healthier, and use fewer resources than, say, building a new freeway. We should be willing to work with anyone who is offering us an alternative to the personal vehicle. When it comes to mobility, we need an all-of-the-above approach to getting people out of cars.”

What O’Malley highlights is how important it is for companies and local and city administrations to work together and partner to improve and smarten mobility in our cities. This is the true challenge to move the industry forward and to really have an impact in an industry that needs true disruption.

“In order to create an ecosystem that can ensure the success of a virtuous cycle between these new modes and established public transit, government needs to lead,” writes gabe klein in Forbes. “City government should be at the forefront of shaping the rollout of these systems in collaborative, co-creative ways. Thus far, cities are understandably slow to adopt — dipping their toes in the water while they pilot, learn, and recalibrate.”