E-scooter companies innovate to avoid sidewalk problems
E-SCOOTER companies are flipping the switch on more advanced monitoring tools meant to fix a major issue plaguing the micromobility industry: sidewalk clutter.
Almost as soon as the dockless rides came to the nation’s metro areas in 2018, electric scooters by companies such as Bird and Lime wound up in parts of town that frustrated homeowners and public officials. Many of the early scooters were prone to break down and often ended up blocking sidewalks and roadways. Some e-scooter oppositionists and vigilantes tossed them into rivers and lakes as the last-mile convenience turned into a micromobility mess.
More than three years later, after government crackdowns and pedestrian collisions rattled scooter companies, e-scooters are being innovated. Companies are deploying pay-per-minute vehicles meant to keep people from abandoning them all over the place.
On Wednesday, Spin announced new tiny wheeled rides that allow scooter operators to remotely move the vehicles if they end up somewhere they are not supposed to be. The company chose Ninebot-Segway to build the bikes and the autonomous technology start-up Tortoise for the software. The companies say the development is key to creating more order in city streets.
“There has been a lot of fanfare around the potential of remote-controlled e-scooters, but this partnership marks a turning point . . . to bring them to city streets,” Ben Bear, chief business officer at Spin, said in a statement.
Spin has been expanding and investing in new tech since Ford bought it in 2018 for a reported $100 million. Tortoise, a mobility software company founded in 2019, has regulatory approval to operate in 14 cities including an Atlanta suburb where it began testing last year. Segway, as a provider to Bird and Lime, says it has 70 per cent of the global e-scooter hailing market.
Spin, Bird and Set are set to launch a pilot programme in Boise, Idaho, where up to 250 three-wheelers can roam around town without a rider this spring.
The test could lead to a future ride-hailing service with which people can use an app to summon an unmanned e-scooter to their doorstep, Spin says. The partnership was also created to address people littering public spaces with abandoned scooters.
The project follows product announcements from other micromobility companies seeking to solve the problem. On Monday, two Irish firms, Luna and Zipp, teamed up on next-generation rides that “know” whether they were parked improperly. The collaboration is meant to reduce insurance costs and municipal fines, the companies said.
This month, TIER partnered with the mapping firm Fantasmo on a new scooter parking system that will allow users to end rides only within a specific area.
The companies are vying to inject more monitoring and safety into an industry beset by collisions and vandalism.
E-scooters sent 29,600 riders to the emergency room in 2019, up from 15,500 the year prior. Scores of people do not like them. They’re at the center of content posted on an Instagram account dubbed “Bird Graveyard,” where hundreds of photos and videos show people vandalizing e-scooters in public. The account has almost 100,000 followers.
Some e-scooter companies pay third-party firms to round up stray scooters each night and put them back in designated zones. Spin says it hopes its new remote-controlled fleet will cut back on operational costs associated with maintaining and repositioning e-scooters, which are worth a few hundred dollars apiece.