How fast is the US electric scooter-sharing craze growing?
Fast enough for the vehicles to be declared a nuisance and kicked off the streets of San Francisco and a handful of others cities to allow local officials to mull regulations — and fast enough to draw big investments to allow nimble start-ups to reach billion-dollar valuations.
In Washington, the electric scooters have become a fixture on city bike paths, zipping along at speeds of up to 25km per hour, sometimes veering onto sidewalks despite warnings to the contrary.
The scooters are “dockless,” meaning that they can be rented and left at any location, unlocked with a smartphone app that also indicates the location of the vehicles, in a model similar to new-style bicycle-sharing apps and Taipei-based WeMo Corp’s (威摩科技) citywide electric scooter-sharing network.
Most systems charge US$1 to unlock the scooter and US$0.15 per minute, so a 10-minute trip would cost US$2.50.
“The economics work very well” for customers, as well as the companies, said Sanjay Dastoor, founder and chief executive of Skip Scooters, one of four start-ups authorized by Washington to deploy up to 400 dockless scooters.
Dastoor offered no specific figures, but said that riders get inexpensive transportation for short-term trips and companies are able to recoup the costs of the scooter quickly.
Just this year, dockless scooter programs have been launched in a dozen US cities and at college campuses.
Some have said that the gadgets, a tech-infused version of a child’s kick-scooter, could become an elegant solution to “last mile” transportation to fill gaps in public transit and discourage automobile use.
“I’ve been working on last-mile transportation for the last seven years and have been looking for the magic of the right vehicle, and I think this is the moment,” Dastoor said.
Investors have taken notice and begun pouring cash into scooter start-ups at an unprecedented rate.
According to research firm Lagniappe Labs, Bird Scooter is aiming for a US$2 billion valuation in its latest funding round and Lime was seeking US$1 billion.
Even for Silicon Valley, the pace of funding is staggering, giving birth to scooter “unicorns,” the term used for venture capital-funded start-ups achieving valuations of US$1 billion.
Ride-sharing giants Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc are reportedly interested in scooters as well.
Scooter-mania has been made possible by improvements in battery technology — although they still need to be recharged daily — and low-cost GPS chips that connect with smartphones.
Some reports have suggested a healthy profit margin for scooters, which cost less than US$500 and can pay for themselves in a few weeks with rental fees.
Silicon Valley-based Lime planned a scooter launch in Paris on Friday after working with local officials on the deployment of the trottinettes electriques, which have a similar pricing structure to those in the US.
“What we’re proposing is a smart mobility solution that’s been missing here in Paris,” Lime France manager Arthur-Louis Jacquier said.
Some local officials are less than thrilled by the scooter invasion, which in some cases has surprised cities, and led to sidewalk clutter and hazards.
San Francisco earlier this month ordered all scooters off its streets as it pondered new regulations on insurance, parking and a plan for low-income residents.
Denver, Nashville and Santa Monica have taken similar actions.
San Francisco plans to issue permits, city transportation official Tom Maguire said, adding that companies offering scooters “must demonstrate how they will minimize their impact on San Francisco’s sidewalks, while maximizing their transparency to the public.”
Companies need to work responsibly to avert a backlash on scooters, said Euwyn Poon, cofounder of the bike and scooter-sharing group Spin.
“Scooter-sharing offers tremendous potential for solving first/last-mile transportation problems, but if we don’t clean up our act as an industry, there’s a chance we’ll blow it,” Poon said in a blog post.
The regulatory effort in San Francisco and elsewhere appears misguided, University of California-Davis Institute for Transportation Studies director Daniel Sperling said.
“The issue of scooters cluttering up cities is off-base,” Sperling said. “We have cities strewn with cars, but people have become accustomed to that.”
He said scooters would not end up as a fad, but would play a role in urban mobility, even if they would not necessarily replace bicycles and shared vehicles.
“It offers people more choices,” Sperling said. “And the more choice people have, the more willing they are to give up their cars.”
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