Blip Scooters launched in city
New Plymouth has joined the electric scooter craze, with 50 of them now available for hire in the city.
Blip Scooters, the company behind the three-month trial, is not expecting any of the trouble that affected rival Lime Scooters in other parts of the country. However, their launch weekend did get off to a less-than-perfect start when the iPhone app needed to use them failed to work.
Blip Scooters were distributed around New Plymouth on Saturday morning and by 3pm Ahmed Al-jumaily, cofounder of the Taranaki startup, estimated around 80 people had given them a go.
Al-jumaily was not expecting to face the same serious issues that Lime had experienced.
Lime Scooters were briefly removed from Auckland and Dunedin after a glitch caused unexpected braking, injuring a number of users. They are set to be re-introduced next week.
‘‘We are not concerned at all because it’s a completely different brand and completely different model,’’ Al-jumaily said of his scooters, which are manufactured by Segway.
The scooters, which go at up to
15 kilometres per hour, are operated by an app and cost $1 to unlock and a further 30 cents per minute.
While the iPhone app failed to work, the Android version was a success.
New Plymouth locals Cheyenne Shelford, 20, and
27-year-old Teone Phillips rode from Merrilands to the Wind Wand yesterday and said the scooters were easy to use.
‘‘It’s pretty straightforward,’’ Phillips said.
‘‘It’s handy to get around quick,’’ Shelford added.
The couple estimated their trip cost them $10 and said they would definitely be using them again.
‘‘It’s better than a taxi,’’ Shelford said.
Although many people on New Plymouth’s Coastal Walkway were using their own scooters and bikes, Al-jumaily believed New Plymouth was still the right place to launch the business.
‘‘What we’ve seen today is that there are a lot of people interested and a lot of people who haven’t ridden an e-scooter before.
‘‘A lot of people actually said they would be using it to commute from home to work, which is a really positive thing.’’
On Saturday Al-jumaily and his wife and co-founder Tima Al-saedy were at Puke Ariki landing educating riders and giving out free helmets to promote safety.
‘‘Basically it’s all about communication and education,’’ he said.
‘‘We believe limiting the speed helped out a lot in terms of safety.’’
The three-month trial is set to end in June, but Al-jumaily hopes to expand the business if it is successful.
‘‘But we don’t want to oversaturate the market and have them lying around not being used.’’