It is official. Electrical scooter rental companies are actually banned in Paris, and the three main operators – Lime, Dott, and Tier – have formally pulled their scooters out of town. Electrical scooter leases have been below fireplace in Paris for fairly a while now, as increasingly residents complained about points pertaining to security, intoxicated driving, and parking.
The three corporations have been granted working licenses again in 2020, nonetheless, the rising variety of complaints pressured the native authorities to take motion. Metropolis Mayor Anne Hidalgo in the end put the choice on the palms of Parisians by having them vote for a choice. A whopping 90 p.c of voters have been in favor of the ban, and so it was determined that each one electrical scooter leases would stop by the tip of August, 2023.
In keeping with a current report by Forbes, in complete, there have been greater than 15,000 electrical scooters deployed inside France’s capital metropolis, and the three main operators took totally different approaches when it got here to clearing them up. Dott was the quickest to behave, beginning clearing operations as early as mid-July and shutting down on August 21. Lime adopted swimsuit, withdrawing all of its scooters by way of August, whereas Tier reportedly waited till the final two weeks in order to maximise the time it had left in Paris.
Now, the query stays: what is going to occur to Dott, Lime, and Tier, and what is going to occur to the 15,000 electrical scooters – lots of which have been nonetheless in good situation – that when roamed the French capital? Properly, for starters, Dott, Lime, and Tier will proceed to function in Paris, however now not supply e-scooter leases. As a substitute, they will shift their focus to e-bike leases – one thing that the nation has a way more favorable outlook in direction of. In any case, Paris has invested closely in biking infrastructure over the previous few years.
As for the electrical scooters, nicely, chances are high they will be reassigned to different elements of France the place e-scooter sharing remains to be permitted, as highlighted by a narrative from French publication Le Repaire des Motards. Extra particularly, Lime may deploy its extra scooters within the Ile de France area, whereas Lime may ship its fleet to Lille. After all, the motion of those scooters to different European international locations can also be a chance.