Micromobility revolution scoots on
Love them or hate them, electric scooters are everywhere — zipping along city streets and cluttering up the sidewalks, much to the dismay of pedestrians and drivers.
And now they have overtaken station-based bicycles as the most popular form of shared transportation outside public transportation and cars in the US.
According to a report released recently by the National Association of City Transportation Officials, riders took 38.5 million trips on shared electric scooters in 2018, eclipsing the 36.5 million trips on shared, docked bicycles.
Riders also took trips on 3 million dockless pedal bikes, which can be picked up and dropped off anywhere, and 6.5 million dockless electric bikes in 2018, but the report notes those numbers are declining.
One reason for electric scooters’ fast growth: companies are jockeying for strategic position in the so-called micromobility revolution, where consumers are embracing shared scooters and bikes for short trips and exploring alternatives to car ownership buoyed by the ubiquity of smartphones.
Riders took 84 million trips on micromobility services in 2018, more than double the number from the year before, according to the report. Electric scooters helped drive that trend, with more than 85,000 of them available for public use in the US compared with 57,000 station-based bikes.
To be sure, scooter companies face challenges from every direction, including vandalism, theft, rider injuries, intense competition and aggressive regulations in cities across the country.
Yet the industry persists and venture capitalists, ride-hailing companies and traditional auto manufacturers have poured millions of dollars into the fledgling business.
The original bike-share systems in the US developed after cities invited them in, said Kate Fillin-Yeh, director of strategy for the National Association for City Transportation
Officials. “In the last year and a half, it’s a very different animal,” she said. “The companies are in some cases trying to beat each other to the market.”
Bird, a Santa Monica-based scooter company launched in late 2017, raised US$418 million and rang up more than 10 million rides in its first year. Lime, which offers shared bikes and scooters, clocked more than 12 million rides and US$467 million in investment in its first 15 months.
Car manufacturers and ride-hailing companies are taking notice, and some have made their own plays in the space with larger ambitions than scooters alone.
Uber bought Jump Bikes, an electric bike and scooter company that operates in about two dozen cities, and last year it invested US$30 million in Lime, which is in more than 100 cities worldwide.
Ford, which bought scooter company Spin in November, said deploying electric scooters will help the company with autonomous vehicles by building critical relationships with US cities as they work together to craft regulations and build infrastructure.
“In this next revolution of micromobility, the cities are taking a more active stance in how they’re going to participate,” Sunny Madra, vice president of Ford’s mobility businesses, told media late last year. “By doing this now in advance of autonomous programs and other forms of mobility that will come up, this is a great way for us to make sure that we’re a part of the transformation of mobility.”