E-scooters fight for their future as more cities mull bans

Advocates say they help combat climate change but safety concerns from residents have made them unpopular with some councils. What next for micromobility?

AFP / KENZO TRIBOUILLARD

A woman uses an Lime-S electric scooter of the US company Lime in Paris on March 3, 2019 in Paris.

E-scooters fight for their future as more cities mull bans

Nazareth Seferian

last update on 21 Nov 2024

For some reason, almost every e-scooter maker has a four-letter name. Lime, Bird, Spin, Wind, Bolt, and Lyft. With cities around the world increasingly considering e-scooter bans, four-letter words seem appropriate.

Lord Mayor of Melbourne Nicholas Reece is one of several to have fallen out of love. “I was a strong supporter of the e-scooter sharing scheme in Melbourne when it started 2.5 years ago,” he said in August 2024. “The truth is that it has not worked out how any of us intended.”

He was speaking just days after the City of Melbourne Council voted to end its e-scooter contracts with two operators. It is not alone in growing wary. Enthusiasm for using these forms of “micro-mobility” to combat climate change has dimmed. Advocates struggle to understand why.

“The biggest source of carbon pollution in the US and in Europe is transportation, and the vast majority of that comes from the use of personal cars and trucks,” said Wayne Ting at the Global Investment Forum last year. Ting is the boss of Neutron Holdings, which owns Lime, which is now the largest micromobility operator in the world.

William WEST / AFP — Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024.

His company’s vision is to let people get from point A to point B using shared electric solutions such as scooters, e-bikes, and mopeds. However, e-scooter bans are now in place in San Francisco and Madrid, while London, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Montreal, and Singapore have adopted strict rules on where and how e-scooters can be used.

A growing industry

The e-scooter industry is worth an estimated $2bn and is expected to grow at more than 5% annually for the next five years. The wider micromobility industry is expected to be worth around $10bn by the end of next year.

Although the rate of user growth has been noteworthy, many feel like it has not yet reached its full potential. From only 10 million e-scooter users worldwide in 2018, there were 77 million by 2022, with 100 million expected by 2025. This includes both those using individually owned scooters and those sharing.

While the number using shared e-scooter services is still growing, analysts worry that pricing is a problem. The average cost of a one-way trip on a dockless e-bike or e-scooter in the US was around $6 last year, yet some users were paying $11 for a 15-minute trip in Arizona, or nearly $9 for a six-minute trip in North Carolina.

The e-scooter industry is estimated at $2bn and is expected to grow more than 5% annually for the next five years

"At these rates, e-scooters and e-bikes are not an affordable everyday option for most people," said the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) in their 2023 Shared Micromobility for the US and Canada.

A bumpy ride

The industry is very competitive, with several big names having already closed. Superpedestrian spun out of the MIT Senseable City Lab in 2013, shuttered its US operations last year and sold its European assets to Norway-based Surf Beyond early this year.

Likewise, Bird—founded in 2017 and one of the big names in the sector—filed for bankruptcy in the US in December. It was valued at $2.5bn in a 2019 funding round led by Sequoia Capital and went public through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company in 2021, but it has lost more than $200m each year since, shrinking its stock value by 80%.

Despite that, the company remains active in the European market, acquiring Spin, another scooter startup, which illustrates the industry's bumpy early ride. Cities that have banned or considered limitations to e-scooter operations have done so based on complaints filed by their citizens. In Melbourne, Reece said the city was "responding to overwhelming concern from our community."

PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP — A picture taken on February 10, 2023, shows electric scooters stored at micro-mobility company Lime's warehouse in Lisbon.

He said residents had urged council leaders to "end the havoc on our footpaths" and "make our streets safe again," adding: "We heard from the head of the emergency department at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. They were having over 40 people a month suffering from e-scooter injuries." The visually impaired feel at particular risk.

Concerns and complaints

E-scooters in cities have been accused of "visual pollution" and safety risks, particularly of presenting tripping hazards, partly because the shared scooters are "dockless", meaning that users can leave them anywhere they want. The e-scooter battery packs have also been a source of worry. Cities like Dublin and London have banned the transport of such scooters on trains because their batteries have been known to get so hot that they explode.

Another complaint is their speed, which can reach up to 40km/hr. An impact at this speed could cause serious trauma, and helmet use when riding e-scooters is not well enforced. A study in France from 2019-22 found that e-scooter accidents had a 9.2% fatality rate, compared to 5.2% for motorcycles, in part because in cities without cycle lanes, e-scooter users often use the sidewalk/pavement.

Yet Ting says, "1.3 million people are violently killed by cars every year—yet we don't talk about it… If there's a plane crash, it's front-page news, but less than 1,000 people die in plane crashes every year". He says the concerns cited by residents can be tackled through efficient partnerships between the public and private sectors.

E-scooters in cities have been accused of "visual pollution" and safety risks, in particular of presenting tripping hazards

A promising future

The "last mile" solutions promise to let people easily connect between their homes and mass transit hubs, reducing the need for car ownership. Cars can be inefficient if used infrequently or if they only ever carry one or two people.

E-scooter advocates say more cars equals more congestion, which means more carbon emissions, which reduces air quality. City officials' biggest transport challenges are congestion, parking, and emissions, Ting says, adding that micro-mobility solutions can help with all three.

Lime has registered 500 million trips so far, which it says has replaced 120 million car journeys and helped to avoid around 40,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. These companies are now looking to use AI technology to help address safety issues, such as front-facing cameras to detect when a scooter rider is using a sidewalk, but the verdict is still out on the future of e-scooters.

Jacinta Allen, the premier of Victoria (the Australian state where Melbourne is the capital), does not share the opinion of the Melbourne City Council. "On balance, there was a benefit to having scooters as part of the suite of public transport options, whether it's buses and trains and trams," she said. "I hope they reconsider."

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