Thousands more rental e-bikes are due to hit London’s streets as a new company attempts to compete for riders.
Voi, which already operates e-scooters in the capital, is currently in talks with borough councils over where and when it can launch the new bikes.
It comes after the company warned earlier this summer that providing rental e-scooters in the city had become “financially unsustainable”, as the smaller and more heavily-regulated vehicles “cannot compete with” London’s less-regulated bikes.
Voi - who intend to keep providing their e-scooters alongside the new bikes - will be competing against existing operators like Lime, Forest and Transport for London’s (TfL) Santander Cycles for a share of the capital’s riders.
James Bolton, Voi UK’s general manager, said: “It’s not just a case of coming in and undercutting [on price], that’s not what we want to do.
“We want to come in and compete fairly, and if as a result of that, that means prices reducing overall across the industry in London, that’s obviously a fairer outcome for the consumer, and that’s something boroughs are very interested in.”
He added that the company was seeking to take a “ground up approach” by asking boroughs what arrangements they’d be comfortable with in terms of parking requirements and size of fleet.
Mr Bolton also said Voi would take an interventionist, “re-balancing” approach to the bikes, with the goal of “trying to generate as many rides as possible with as few vehicles as possible”.
The company plans to do this by using electric vans to transport the bikes to the locations where its algorithm says they are likeliest to be used at particular times of day.
He said this would help avoid the bikes “clogging up pavements, clogging up the parking spots - whereas if you can achieve that with fewer vehicles… we just think that’s generally a more responsible way to operate”.
In a letter to mayor Sadiq Khan earlier this summer, Voi CEO Fredrik Hjelm said that if the regulations governing the use of e-scooters in the city were not improved, the company would be forced to either completely withdraw from the capital or to “invest in and deploy 20,000 e-bikes across London”.
However, Mr Bolton admitted that the firm would have looked to introduce e-bikes in any case.
“Even if the scooters were being successful, we’d always look at it from a consumer perspective, saying, ‘Can we offer more choice to our users?’,” he said.
He added that the figure of 20,000 was only illustrative, and was chosen as a medium point between the fleet sizes of existing bike operators.
As well as several locations in Europe, the company already operates bikes in Liverpool, Cambridge, Oxford, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight.
It is unclear when the bikes will launch in London, with Mr Bolton saying that would depend on when legal agreements with the boroughs can be signed.
Voi said it still wanted to see improvements to the management of e-scooters in London, including the provision of more parking spaces, reducing the minimum age restriction from 18 to 16, create a level playing field with e-bikes when it comes to speed and access restrictions, and encouraging more boroughs to allow the scooters.
Helen Sharp, TfL’s e-scooter trial lead, said: “The capital’s trial of rental e-scooters has been carefully designed to ensure the high safety and operating standards that London needs. This includes controlled parking in designated bays, as we know that poor and uncontrolled parking can cause significant safety issues for many Londoners.
“We are working to make improvements to the existing e-scooter trial, including providing funding to implement more parking in boroughs and a trial of reduced geofencing.
“There is currently no regulation of dockless e-bike rental in London and these services do not have to meet the same high safety and operating standards as rental e-scooters.
“We continue to encourage the Government to grant powers that allow transport authorities to manage the micromobility rental market, which would enable us to use a single approach to manage rental e-bikes and e-scooters, making transport in the capital safer and more reliable.”
