The Rise Of The Electric Scooters

Economical and Convient Transportation

They’re everywhere… zipping down busy streets, running on sidewalks and racing past bicycles in the bike lanes. They’re lime green electric scooters and you will find them in most large cities in France and probably most of Europe as well. You’ll see young men racing each other down streets and  couples sharing a scooter. On one day we saw two couples take a spill off their scooter, no injuries but it seems to require some coordination between the riders. You’ll see them leaning against buildings or dumped in alleys or standing in neat rows near major attractions. While long racks of rental bicycles have become common worldwide these scooters are a new phenomena.

We haven’t seen them much yet in major U.S. cities and oddly that’s where they hail from. Seattle to be precise and the company is called Lime (visit their website HERE). We spoke with one man in Lyon who said his son is making good money collecting them at the end of the day and charging them at his home. All of this seems to us a real accomplishment considering that two years ago we didn’t notice them at all.

While I am not sure that this senior couple is brave enough to take advantage of these scooters it does strike us as a really convenient and inexpensive way of getting around considering the cost of taxis and even Uber. We took a look at a scooter in Paris and learned that it costs €1 to start the scooter and €0.15 per minute to operate. That means that a one hour ride will cost €10 or less than $12. We’ve been told it’s really easy to set-up, you scan a code with your cellphone and set up an account. When you no longer need the scooter, you just log out of the rental and just leave the scooter where you are.

While we have read for years about auto clubs that intend to saturate a market with cars that would work like this, to our knowledge they have never materialized. This system seems to be really working and we expect to see these lime green scooters in every city worldwide.