Throughout 2019, a number of mobility companies launched in additional markets, while many pulled out of areas that no longer served them. Meanwhile, transportation startups continued to raise more money even as they laid off employees, a sign that industry consolidation has officially begun.
In October, Bird raised a $275 million Series D round at a $2.5 billion valuation. Prior to that round, Bird raised more than $400 million in funding and reached a valuation of $2 billion last June. Lime also raised more money last year with a $310 million round in February led by Bain Capital. That round valued Lime at $2.4 billion.
Despite Bird’s treasure chest, it laid off up to 5% of its workforce in March, followed by cutting up to a dozen Scoot employees in December. Lyft, similarly, also laid off up to 50 people on its bikes and scooters team in March. So it’s no wonder why Spin employees took the steps to form a union; roughly 40 workers in charge of deployment, charging and repairs are now part of Teamsters Local 665.
As we mentioned, consolidation began in the scooter space. Last year kicked off with electric scooter startup Grin merging with Brazil-based Yellow, which had expressed ambitions to get into electric scooters. As part of the merger, Grin and Yellow rebranded as Grow Mobility. In June, Grow hit 10 million trips across its bikes and scooter operations. In the U.S., despite rumors of Uber looking to buy Bird, Bird remained independent and instead acquired Scoot in a deal worth around $25 million last June.
Now that we have the high-level details out of the way, let’s take a closer look at which cities, states and countries saw the most scooter activity since our roundup last December.
U.S.-based and international scooter operators alike launched in a number of markets in Europe and Latin America. Lime has even staked its claim in Africa as the first operator to plan a deployment on the continent in Cape Town, South Africa.
Worldwide, we’ve seen a number of operators deploy scooters in Europe and Latin America. All of that activity has been in Brazil, thanks to Grow Mobility and Lime, and in Germany, thanks to Bird, Lime and Voi, which recently raised an $85 million round. Still, the country with the most scooter activity is in the U.S., where 117 cities have scooter fleets.
Worldwide (2018):
And now (note increased activity in Latin America and Europe):
In the U.S., California has the highest saturation of scooters, with 13 cities offering access. The second-most saturated state is Florida, where operators have deployed across 10 cities. Virginia and Texas are tied for third place. On a city basis, Austin leads with six startups allowed to operate, followed by Santa Monica and San Francisco with four each.
In San Francisco, the city turned its pilot permit program into a permanent one; in September, JUMP, Lime, Scoot and Spin won permits to operate in the city. As part of the program, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency requires all scooters to be lock-to and each for company to use W-2 workers, both full-time and part-time, for operations. Skip, previously granted the rights to operate shared scooters in San Francisco, did not receive a permit this time around.
The timing was unfortunate for Skip, which had recently put resources into developing its first custom electric scooter. About a month before San Francisco made its decision, Skip announced plans to begin testing its first scooter built completely in-house. At the time, the company hoped it would be ready to deploy them in San Francisco within a couple of months.
The unveiling of Skip’s new scooter came shortly after the company announced plans to bring its scooters back to Washington, D.C., following some battery-related issues that led to fires. (The scooter fire in D.C. was caused by a damaged battery, though, it’s not clear if it was intentional or accidental.)
But Skip was not the only company to face issues last year. In November, Los Angeles temporarily suspended Uber’s permit to operate its JUMP electric scooters after months of conflict over the city’s data-sharing policy. In other cities, Uber also pulled its scooters from San Diego, where the city called a moratorium on scooters until it could figure out a fiscally responsible and thoughtful plan.
Nationwide, then:
December 2019:
Other takeaways from the above maps:
- Bird pulled out of 38 markets and entered 36 new ones — many, across the pond.
- Lime pulled out of 11 markets and entered 69 new ones.
- There are currently at least 20 electric scooter operators worldwide.
Looking ahead into 2020
In Q1, we’ll be closely watching Superpedestrian, which recently closed a $20 million round for its smart scooters and vehicle intelligence platform that it plans to sell to operators. Superpedestrian has yet to announce operating partners but said it is on track to launch in multiple markets in January.
Superpedestrian scooters can last up to seven days without recharging, assuming about five to six rides per day, its CEO Assaf Biderman previously told TechCrunch. But its key offering is the vehicle intelligence platform, which is designed to detect more than one hundred situations that could lead to malfunction, triage each issue and then determine what response to take in order to prevent vehicle damage and rider injury.
That means Superpedestrian’s software is continuously monitoring for things like water penetration, cut internal wires, battery cell temperature imbalances, braking issues and more. Superpedestrian’s software is also able to quickly enforce local speed limits via geofencing. This could be huge for operators, which are still struggling to achieve comfortable unit economics.
Meanwhile, we can expect to see more companies working on automatic repositioning, charging stations and more. On the worker front, we may see more workers take steps to unionize in order to ensure better, fairer wages.