Why hundreds of shareable e-scooters have vanished across the Bay Area
Hundreds of shareable electric scooters have vanished across the Bay Area in recent years — a pivot from industry promises to revolutionize micromobility in an eco-friendly, affordable way. Hundreds of shareable electric scooters have disappeared across the Bay Area in recent years, largely due to financial issues. Major brands like Lime and Bird have shuttered, declared bankruptcy, and even abandoned communities. In May 2022, Superpedestrian launched a fleet of 200 stand-up scooters and 50 seated scooters in Berkeley, only 19 months later, they were gone. Despite raising $125 million in funding 18 months earlier, the company announced its scooters would stop rolling by 2023. Meanwhile, VeoRide is the only remaining option to rent a scooter in Berkeley until the end of June. The industry's future is uncertain as to whether local governments are politically motivated to address safety and access concerns.
प्रकाशित : एक महीने पहले द्वारा Katie Lauer में Tech
BERKELEY — E-scooters aren’t hard to find, whether they’re zipping down city streets, cluttering public sidewalks or sitting, half-submerged, in a neighborhood pond.
But hundreds of the shareable electric scooters have vanished across the Bay Area in recent years — a pivot from industry promises to revolutionize micromobility in an eco-friendly, affordable way.
While some brands such as Lime and Bird are still powering forward, a growing number of e-scooter companies have quietly shuttered, declared bankruptcy and even abandoned communities outright, often without any explanation.
Rent-a-scooter companies frequently blame this downward trend on financial woes — stemming from both over-investment of private equity and lackluster revenue streams. As e-scooter enterprises continue to take their business and equipment offline, some commuters, tourists and residents have been left to their own devices trying to cope with gaps in service that buses, trains and other traditional modes of public transportation struggle to fill.
But it’s unclear whether local governments are politically motivated — or physically equipped — to help address the complicated safety and access concerns that are exacerbating the micromobility industry’s economic struggles.
In May 2022, the e-scooter company Superpedestrian launched a fleet of 200 stand-up scooters and 50 seated scooters in Berkeley. Nineteen months later, they were gone.
Superpedestrian announced that its scooters would stop rolling by the last day of 2023, despite raising $125 million in funding just 18 months earlier. Joining a host of shared e-scooter brands that folded in major metropolitan areas worldwide, their neon chartreuse “LINK” e-scooters are no longer visible on the company’s app-based maps of Berkeley and Oakland — two of the cities where machines were yanked before being put up for auction.
Meanwhile, VeoRide is the only remaining option to rent a scooter in Berkeley — at least through the end of June. Spokesperson Matthai Chakko said the city is currently working through the “permittee selection process” for the next fiscal year, which will determine the number of operators and e-scooters that will be available for use.
He said that out of the 224,048 total e-scooter trips across Berkeley last year, roughly 22% were taken on Superpedestrian e-scooters. Looking ahead, Chakko said that “the city is open to expanding the available fleet, however, expansion is dependent on operator performance and user demand, among other things.”
The current outlook for e-scooters — which generally cost under a dollar per minute to ride, along with an unlock fee — is a lot less rosy than when the industry first got rolling in California just seven years ago.
Bird e-scooters were the first ones to appear by September 2017, when the company scattered hundreds of them on the streets of Santa Monica within just a few days. Bird was valued at $1 billion within its first year in business and $2.5 billion by 2019.
However, Bird was temporarily grounded after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last winter — only three months after acquiring one of its competitors, Spin, for $19 million.
By April 5, the company announced it had successfully sold its assets and emerged as part of Third Lane Mobility Inc. — now the largest micromobility operator in North America, encompassing both the Bird and Spin brands, which recently won multiple new competitive bids and started service in several new cities, according to the April news release.
The list of shuttered or acquired companies has grown since their 2017 introduction. For example, while Spin, Scoot, Lime and Jump were awarded permits to operate in San Francisco in 2019, only Spin and Lime were still in business in the city by July 2023.
Despite headlines about bankruptcy, acquisitions and an overall lack of cash for some rent-a-scooter operators, the fate of the industry hasn’t dimmed entirely.
According to an annual report from the National Association of City Transportation Officials on the state of shared micromobility in 2022, there were 56.5 million trips nationwide on “dockless” e-scooters, which can be parked anywhere. Compared to 65 million trips in 2021, the report attributes the recent dip to the industry’s recent financial struggles and business shifts. However, the total number of trips has hit 730 million since 2010.
While the South Bay has a slightly smaller list of options, e-scooters operated by Lime, Spin and Bird can be found in cities like San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Redwood City and Millbrae. Wheels powered by Veo, however, are concentrated in the East Bay and Southern California.
Looking ahead, national association said communities must tackle redesigning streets, such as adding wider bike lanes that can better accommodate more people traveling at different speeds in order to help support e-scooters and other micromobility systems.
“One billion trips on shared bikes and scooters is just around the corner,” the report said, “and cities that form strong partnerships with both their operators and the communities they serve will be the ones that lead the way.”
Sandwiched between Berkeley and Oakland, Emeryville has not only maintained a range of options for rentable e-scooters, but the city’s elected officials have made a concerted push for finding safer places for riders.
Former Emeryville Mayor John Bauters said the success of any form of micromobility transportation relies on a local government’s ability — and desire — to invest in infrastructure specifically designed to accommodate those options, such as protected bike lanes and the car-free Emeryville Greenway. He said one of the biggest problems started when American roadways were redesigned to primarily accommodate automobiles.
Despite the benefits of reducing emissions and the costs associated with car ownership, Bauters said people may shy away from accessing e-scooters and other alternative forms of transportation because they lack safe places to ride — on roadways and sidewalks, alike.
“Scooter companies — predictably, in my opinion — are not succeeding because cities aren’t responding to the public desire to have choices by giving people safe infrastructure that matches those choices,” Bauters said. “The people who are choosing to use them — whether it’s because they’re more cost-effective, faster or more fun — they’re being pushed out of using it because the sidewalk isn’t for them, and neither is the street. We haven’t given them a space. Companies fail because there’s only so long in which a person who’s trying to use something that is innovative and more accessible decides it’s not worth it.”