Lime brings electric bike and scooter sharing to Australia

Electric scooter and bike sharing company Lime has rolled into Australia, launching in Sydney on Friday.

The Californian company’s bright green, dockless electric vehicles have been released into the streets, with 300 e-bikes distributed through Sydney to start and e-scooters to come soon.

Melbourne will be next, with preview electric scooter rides offered for locals heading to and from the Melbourne Cup horse race on Tuesday, and a three-month scooter pilot launched at Monash University in Melbourne earlier this week.

Although folks across the U.S. have endured Lime for over a year, Australians might not be familiar with how they work. The vehicles run on a replaceable lithium battery, which can be swapped out by one of 50 operations employees across the city every two days. The bikes can reach up to 23.8km/h, even on hilly terrain.

The service works through the Lime app, which allows you to scan the area for vehicles. As far as pricing goes, it’ll cost you $1 to unlock a vehicle and 30 cents per minute.

Lime says it’s been working with local authorities in Sydney to make sure they can weave into the existing transport network.

“Lime’s electric bikes have become hugely popular in cities, similar to Sydney, such as Seattle, whose community is looking for cleaner, cheaper and more accessible transportation,” said Mitchell Price, director of government affairs and strategy in Australia and New Zealand, in a press statement.

“The advantage of our electric bikes is they work together with existing public transit by increasing the accessibility of public transport so people can rely less on personal cars.

“Sydney’s need for innovative transport solutions, which cater to the first and last mile, gives us confidence we will see high uptake of Lime electric bikes within the community,” he added.

Although it currently operates in more than 100 cities around the world, in Canada, Mexico, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and more, Lime’s Australian endeavor marks a further foray for the company into the Southern Hemisphere. Lime launched its e-scooters into the New Zealand cities of Auckland and Christchurch in October, as New Zealand’s first ever scooter program. Lime saw the cities cap scooter numbers in Auckland and Christchurch are 1,000 and 700 respectively.

Like other cities across the globe, including Sydney, Lime worked closely with the New Zealand Transport Agency, Christchurch City Council, and Auckland Transport to integrate the scooters into the existing transport system.

“It’s [the scooter program] exactly the kind of thing we want. Zero emissions, and a lot of fun.” Christchurch Councilwoman Vicki Buck said in a press statement.

The introduction of a new ride-share program may trigger some negative feelings for Australians

The introduction of a new ride-share program may trigger some negative feelings for Australians, who have watched cities around the country struggling to deal with mass dumpings of bike-share vehicles over the past 12 months — a terrible trend observed globally, but most notoriously in cities in China. Implementing scooter caps like New Zealand’s may alleviate some of these fears, and the fact that Lime is working with local authorities from the get-go is positive — , including those in Australia, had to clean up the bike-sharing mess after the fact. 

Lime itself has seen decent legislation implemented in some U.S. cities attempting to control scooter dumping. Some cities have identified geo-fenced areas as no-parking zones, and Lime is rolling out new screens on its Generation 3 e-scooters that will make it clearer to riders where these zones are. 

Australia seems to have implemented these no-parking zones, as the app shows areas in red where you can’t park the bikes and scooters.

Aside from the well-worn bike-share path, there’s also the question of whether Australians will pick up the electric scooter trend, which has had a year to settle into the U.S with Lime, alongside competitors like San Francisco-based scooter-share startups Spin and Scoot, the Uber-owned Jump, Lyft-owned Motivate, and Santa Monica-based main player Bird.

Singaporean bike service oBike withdrew from the Australian market in June, with Chinese company Ofo following suit in July.

Whether they’re ready or not, however, Lime has landed.