After a year, Lime boasts 6 million scooter and bike rides
Love it or hate it, it's been a year since bike-shares flooded the United States.
Other countries, such as China and Australia, were already inundated with the services, which let users unlock bicycles with a smartphone and leave them anywhere when they’re done. (They’re called “dockless” since they don’t have to be locked to a dock.) But the U.S. didn’t see them until this year.
Lime, which used to be called LimeBike, is celebrating one year in business. It offers bikes, motorized scooters, and electric-assist bicycles in 70 cities. So far, people have taken more than 6 million rides on its vehicles in the U.S. and Europe.
The company says those rides have saved 5.25 million pounds of CO2 from entering the atmosphere and has saved commuters, on average, 80 percent on car ownership costs. (Lime's calculus is based on a $28 average daily cost to own a car in an urban U.S. area. If you replace car rides with public transit and Lime scooters, e-bikes, or traditional bicycles, Lime says it'll cost you about $8 to $4 for a day of commuting.)
The praise-heaping comes just after Uber announced a major investment and partnership with the scooter company. Lime's e-scooters will be available to rent through the Uber app.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi spoke at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen last week about e-scooters and e-bikes. "[It's a] much better use of assets than a car to take you all over the place," he said. Uber competitor Lyft is also getting into scooters with its Motivate acquisition.
Meanwhile, fellow dock-less transportation company Ofo announced a major downsizing in North America. The Chinese company is pulling out of several American cities, but will remain in Seattle, San Diego, and New York.
In San Francisco, Lime was one of three companies with scooters lining the sidewalks. Its in the mix to be one of the selected scooter-share services in the city, but a decision isn't likely until August. Until then, Lime and its ilk have been banned from operating in the city.
But other cities are still scooting along. Lime says San Diego had 1 million rides in five months. In Dallas, Texas, Lime riders have pedaled or scooted 530,000 miles.
After one year, Lime's all about the scooter and e-bike craze. Now let's see if it lasts.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
