On either side of the Channel, a love-hate relationship between e-scooters has run a typically different course. The French swiftly embraced them; the English belatedly entered a tentative trial engagement, with a reluctance to commit.
Now London is aiming to go deeper, re-tendering contracts in April for another year – while the Paris honeymoon could end with the firms spurned altogether. Although the French capital was an early champion of the battery-powered trottinettes, an extraordinary referendum this Sunday will ask its residents to vote for or against “le free-floating” rental e-scooter.
The rental schemes are run by the same micromobility businesses as London’s trial operations, Dott, Lime and Tier. Henri Moissinac, the chief executive of Dott, a Parisian based in London since Covid struck, is indignant: “It’s such a sad story that something so useful could be manipulated for the agenda of the politicians. It reminds me of Brexit and the buses.”
He is infuriated at claims the services are used by an older affluent, clientele, rather than the 18- to 25-year-olds he says are typical: “The head of L’Oréal is not riding on a scooter.”
Polling is on a knife-edge, but the operators say they are not too worried for their own businesses: all three run growing, parallel e-bike operations, which would probably mop up much of the traffic – and whatever Paris decides, the wider European and global trend is for more e-scooters.
Britain appears to be heading, slowly, that way. Private e-scooters remain illegal on the road, although an estimated 700,000-1m are in use. While government-sanctioned trials of public shared schemes started back in 2020 and will rumble on until at least 2024, a transport bill to clarify whether they are here to stay has been repeatedly put off – causing some frustration among businesses and safety-minded politicians.
Lady Randerson, the Lib Dem transport spokesperson, told a micromobility conference this week: “The revolution has happened while ministers have prevaricated. It’s the longest trials I’ve ever experienced. The longer they are allowed to drift on without regulation, the more difficult it will be to impose order on the chaos.”
She declared e-scooters “great fun”, even if it was too early to tell if they would play a great role in transport provision. Not all places agree: Coventry and Canterbury have decided to end trials. However, Transport for London, relatively late adopters among the 26 trial areas in England, is scheduled to re-tender and continue schemes into 2024.
Mayor Sadiq Khan said he wants “more, safe rental schemes all across London”. He said: “The reality is the genie is out of the bottle – you can’t uninvent e-scooters. It’s for the Department for Transport to speed up regulation, because that’s what’s causing problems. We don’t want safety being jeopardised by illegal e-scooters.”
The rental vehicles have features that are not mandated in cheaper private versions – bigger wheels, indicators, speed limits – and require user verification, a driving licence. Battery safety is another concern, Moissinac highlights; those swapped out for recharging at Dott’s north London operations HQ are safely stored in sealed fireproof containers overnight.
Carefully riding an e-scooter ahead of the Guardian in a cycle lane from Elephant and Castle this week, Fred Jones, general manager for Tier in northern Europe, was swiftly overtaken: a rider on an unmarked scooter, which nipped nonchalantly between lorries and up the pavement. An everyday sight – and entirely illegal, Jones said: “Most of the criticism of the schemes is stuff people see from private users.”
David Davies, executive director of Pacts, the UK parliamentary advisory council for transport safety, agrees that most e-scooter fatalities have been on privately owned, illegally used models. However, he said the casualty rate from the trials was still three times higher for e-scooter users than bicycles, and the council has called for mandatory helmets: “The injury rate on rental schemes has still been high, and something needs to be done.”
E-scooters’ green credentials also remain “quite hazy”, according to Baroness Randerson, with battery production and the vehicle’s shelf life an issue. Dott is aiming to increase the lifespan of its rental vehicles from an average three years to seven, to tackle the main source of its carbon emissions. A major debate is whether e-scooters will replace cars – reducing congestion and air pollution – or reduce greener active travel, such as cycling or plain walking.
The transport department’s trial data so far suggests that half the trips would have been walked journeys, with around a fifth of e-scooter users hiring them instead of using public transport, the same proportion who rejected the car.
Dott’s peak usage times are highest on Wednesday to Friday evenings, when people might be heading out from work to socialise – suggesting a bit of both function and fun. But e-scooter operators are partly hamstrung by existing provision – not least being able to offer rides in many boroughs of London, or persuading councils to divert lucrative parking spots.
Moissinac pointed to a parked car that has not moved for days: “You could park 12 scooters, serve 40 journeys.” London, he says, has massive potential, but in certain aspects is one of the worst places to operate: “No other city has such dramatic geofencing. It is like gruyere [cheese].”
And in parts, with more holes than cheese. Scooters are “geofenced” – automatically slowed or halted according to their GPS coordinates – across invisible lines to neighbouring boroughs, and barred from parks, stations, some waterside routes and the vicinity of other public spaces, with the user potentially fined; quite a deterrent to a casual ride.
Despite the challenges, the uptake in the UK capital has continued. Jones said Tier’s users have doubled year on year, and trips quadrupled: “Will people use it for more than a bit of fun? The answer of the trial is a resounding yes.”
Tier is targeting profitability but Jones admitted: “Making money here is not straightforward. It’s expensive hardware, a complex operation and a lot of capital investment at the start.”
Lime, the biggest Silicon Valley player, is to invest a further £23.5m into its UK micromobility operations, after turning a profit globally. Alan Clarke, Lime’s policy director in northern Europe, said the investment would largely target e-bikes rather than e-scooters, mainly until the UK policy was clear: “If you look at the number of privately owned scooters in the UK, there’s a huge number of people out there who do want to use them. But at the moment, it’s very hard for authorities to invest and to encourage those schemes to grow.”
