The invasion of the electric scooters goes international: let’s hope they’re here to stay

It started out as a typically Californian fad: adults propelling themselves around cities at 25 km/h on electric scooters that they then abandoned on the sidewalk outside their destination. Some US cities banned them, others tried passing legislation to regulate their use, but less than four months since I first wrote about it, the phenomenon has already spread at unprecedented speed to more than thirty US cities, and is now spreading through Latin America and Europe, with a presence in Madrid, Paris and Zurich.

Last June, I prepared a brief exam case study for my students at IE Business School about Koko Kicksharing, a startup about to launch in several Spanish cities and that gave me the opportunity to understand this type of project: the economic parameters that allow for the investment in each scooter to be recouped in a relatively short time, taking into account rapid wear and tear, theft or vandalism; then dealing with City Hall, as well as the cost of collecting scooters every night, which could be outsourced by creating networks of collaborators who charge them in their homes, along with the importance of having a robust vehicle design that also needs to include a GPS. I also had the opportunity to test the scooter: even somebody as clumsy as me was impressed by the handling, speed and the feeling of control at all times.

This is the kind of capital-intensive business that requires powerful and patient investors willing to wait for the rapid popularization phase to be followed by awareness that reduces theft and vandalism, while cities learn to accommodate demand for these types of vehicles and to do so in a way that benefits everybody. With the main players already highly capitalized unicorns, the acquisitions and investments of giants such as Uber or Lyft in that area, and with mobility apps that already display the location of scooters on maps, these two-wheeled runabouts seem destined to provide a short-range mobility alternative in more and more cities: they’re not overgrown toys and there is no point in trying to restrict them to parks and gardens. Electric scooters and micromobility will be part of the landscape of our cities in the near future: they won’t become the ultimate solution to the cities’ problems, but they will definitely be part of it.

The growth of ride sharing, whether electric scooters or bicycles, highlights the need to discourage car use and encourage sustainable and ecological vehicles. Micromobility, a response to congestion and pollution, requires city hall and tax payers to work together.

In San Francisco, Bird, one of the three companies operating in the city, already has more than 1,600 scooters distributed through the streets of the city, accumulating more than 5,000 trips per day. The busy Market Street has been redesigned to convert its permanently gridlocked four lanes to give priority to public transport and for vehicles with a top speed of no more than 15 km/h, and other areas of the city will follow suit. In European cities, many of which were laid out prior to the advent of the automobile, there are many central areas that would benefit from micromobility and multimodality policies.

Easing congestion and pollution in our cities means reducing the space given over to the automobile, discouraging its use and allocating more and more areas to micromobility, combined with efficient public transport, fleets of rented autonomous and electric cars, restrictions on loading and unloading and more space for people to walk about. Seen in this context, bicycles or scooters suddenly become a serious option. Until we all wake up and smell the fresh air and stop punishing politicians bold enough to introduce these kinds of policies, we will continue to be condemned to live in gridlocked cities that are a menace to our health.

(En espa?ol, aquí)

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