Lime vs the locals: The scooter debate hots up
Smaller e-scooter players vying for Wellington’s streets are urging caution on a large-scale roll-out.
Six e-scooter companies, two from San Francisco, one from Melbourne, and three from New Zealand want licences to run e-scooters in the capital.
Of the e-scooter brands, Aucklandbased bike-sharing behemoth Onzo will be familiar to most, so too will Lime, a billion-dollar company whose name is now used almost interchangeably with e-scooters.
Another firm, Scoot, which doesn’t have a presence in New Zealand, runs hundreds of scooters in San Francisco and Barcelona.
But there are a range of smaller players in the lineup including New Plymouth-based Blip, Wellington-based Flamingo and Melbourne-based Fuutr.
City officials have suggested giving only two operators licences and requiring each put a minimum of 300 scooters on the street.
Scooter operators would be required to collect a wide range of data on their operation, including on scooter failures, and feed it back to Wellington City Council.
Tima Al-Saedy, who co-owns Blip with her husband Ahmed Al-Jumaily, said excessive numbers of unused e-scooters cluttered footpaths and had provoked anger in the United States. ‘‘Over there, it’s more commercial: let’s build it, let’s make it massive and get money out of it. For us, it’s more like ‘let’s get the most users with a smaller number’.’’ Al-Saedy and her husband’s comparatively modest e-scooter operation would put 120 e-scooters in Wellington at first, but said the company was capable of delivering more.
Melbourne-based Fuutr wouldn’t answer questions before deadline, but said they were in discussions with council to setup its New Zealand base there.
Nick Hyland from Wellington-based Flamingo said they started their discussions with council in April last year, before Lime launched, about bringing dockless e-scooter sharing to New Zealand. Hyland said it was better to keep rules ‘‘flexible’’ around the trial, but approved of moves to cap the number of operators and scooters.
Al-Jumaily also agreed. ‘‘It’s easier to control a smaller number of operators rather than having six out there, it’s just a matter of choosing the right two.’’