The market is fiercely competitive: e-scooter providers continue to expand

Thursday 17th December 2020

The market is highly competitive
E-scooter providers continue to expand

For some they are a welcome mobility option, for others the scourge of the sidewalks: E-scooters will not disappear from the German city centers in this lockdown winter either. On the contrary. Many providers have raised new money and want to expand.

Despite the corona crisis, the e-scooter rental company Lime wants to stick to its expansion plans. "Our goal is to defend our market leadership," said Germany boss Jashar Seyfi of the German press agency. "It is not enough to just sit back and relax. We have to act on different fronts." With around 40,000 vehicles, the company has almost doubled its fleet in Germany this year. A large part consists of the e-scooters. According to Seyfi, electric bicycles make up around 15 to 20 percent of the fleet.

Lime is now represented in around 30 cities. More are to follow. In the coming year, Lime also wants to bring a new generation of scooters onto the streets that will be equipped with a replaceable battery. The vehicles would then not have to be collected every time for charging. Seyfi is also planning new vehicle types. "Another electric vehicle will be added to help us cover even more cases." Third-party providers should also be able to be integrated on the company's own platform.

Animal collects money

With the plans, the US-based company is preparing for future competition in the still highly competitive European market for e-scooters. The competition from Europe is particularly strong here. While smaller providers such as the German company Circ have now been taken over by larger ones or have disappeared completely, the Berlin start-up Tier announced in November that it had collected 250 million US dollars (around 205.6 million euros) from investors. The Chinese media group Softbank, which is known for long-term involvement in the mobility market, was there. "The financing will mainly be used to expand the leading coverage in cities in Europe and to accelerate expansion into strategic growth markets," said Tier at the time.

A few weeks ago, the Swedish competitor Voi was also able to collect 160 million dollars. And the Estonian start-up Bolt recently announced that it would set up around 130,000 additional e-scooters and e-bikes in Europe, including in Germany. Both Lime and Tier state that they are now operating the service profitably. "We made money with every trip in the third quarter," said Seyfi.

But the image of scooters, which are often accused of blocking sidewalks and bike paths, is changing slowly. In Berlin, a bill is currently being discussed by the Transport Senate to regulate the offer. Accordingly, scooter sharing platforms should then need a fee-based special permit if their customers should also be able to park vehicles on sidewalks. Seyfi naturally views such tendencies "with great concern". "That will lead to our planning security going down," he said. "We then have to consider what investments we can continue to make." Despite such debates, he remains confident. The offer will be reduced in the cold season. However, the scooters will not disappear entirely from the streets this winter – despite low temperatures and despite Corona.