Uber Adds Electric Scooters To Its App (cnet.com)

Uber is planning to partner with the bike-sharing company Lime to start renting scooters through its app. The announcement was made in Lime's new $335 million funding round. CNET reports: Uber didn't disclose how much it's investing in Lime, but Lime said it's "sizable." With Uber and Lime as strategic partners, the scooters will be co-branded and available in the Uber app. Uber launched a similar partnership with Jump bicycles in January and eventually acquired the dockless bike rental in April.

Scooters have become a controversial topic as they take over more and more cities across the U.S. As regulators hurry to write laws around the new form of transportation, lots of people say they love being able to scoot block-to-block around congested cities. Other residents complain that riders don't follow the laws of the road and endanger pedestrians by riding on sidewalks and leaving the scooters wherever they feel like it -- blocking parking spots, bike racks and wheelchair accesses. Here's what Uber's head of new modalities, Rachel Holt, had to say about the partnership: "Our investment and partnership in Lime is another step towards our vision of becoming a one stop shop for all your transportation needs. Lime already has an expansive footprint, and we're excited to incorporate their scooters into the Uber app so consumers have another fast, affordable option to get around their city, especially to and from public transit."

Comments

Sharing Disaster

[labnet]

The share bike thing has been a disaster in Australia. Mostly because we are not very mature, so bikes have ended up in rivers, blocking footpaths, damaged and being such a nuisance is that councils are fining bike share companies $2500 per bike found littering public land.
It might work better in asia where there is more social responsibility, but not in OZ and probably not in the USA either.

Re:Sharing Disaster

[trawg]

Yes, we have those in Brisbane and rarely see them used. Our climate is hot in summer, helmets are mandatory we have lots of hills and the bikes look like something your grandmother would only ride.
It takes a lot of infrastructure to implement and limits you to specific geographic points cf. share bikes which have no 'home' and get dumped, stolen and busted.

Also in Brisbane - just moved back here after 4 years overseas. Signed up for CityCycle for the first time and am using it several times a week.

I am not worried by the mandatory helmets - I carry one with me when I expect to use them, but in 3 months or so I am yet to run into a situation where there aren't the freebie helmets available.

Agree with your other issues though. I am definitely not looking forward to doing it in summer. It's almost too hot to ride them now in the middle of winter! The only thing that makes it feasible is I live near the river & everywhere I go on it is flat. But the bikes are sooo heavy that even going up small hills means sweat.

The big difference between CityCycle and the other schemes I think though is the fixed bases. I don't really like the idea of bikes (and/or scooters) just laying around everywhere; I think it's actually a little more convenient to have fixed bases (though of course I can say that because there are two within 2mins walk of my place).

All that said, I'm loving CityCycle. $5/mo means I have saved a ton on buses and trains (both of which are also readily available for me). But I'll see how much I use it in the summer :)

what about an damage waiver? uber can rent a car

[Joe_Dragon]

what about an damage waiver? uber can be like the rent a car places and bill 3-4 people for the same damage.

Lawless uber

[goombah99]

Uber seems to think itself above the law. It's one thing to say "hey that law is bullshit". It might be. But it's not the right of a large corporation to subvert local laws just because they seem to get away from it.

Uber should sell pot from it's vehicles and set up a prostitute order service. What would be the difference? All blue laws are bullshit laws unless of course you like them.