- Lime plans to expand the launch in 25 cities in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
- Uber offloaded its 5.8 e-bikes to Lime as a part of a $170M investment.
- Kraus, the president of Lime, says Jump was a great bike that Uber developed.
Lime declares the allocation of $50M towards its bike-sharing operation. It is an investment to develop a new e-bike. Also fund the expansion to another 25 cities from North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. If Lime reaches its goal, its bike-share service will be functional in 50 global cities by the end of 2021.
Features of the e-bike:
Lime’s latest e-bike, 6.0, comes with a battery that the user can exchange with Lime’s newest scooter. The list of additional updates in the e-bike includes enhanced motor power, a mobile holder, and a new handlebar display. It also includes an electric lock which replaces the former generation’s cable lock and an automatic two-speed transmission. They are planning to launch and scale these two bikes in the summer.
The hardware upgrade in the new e-bike has been derived from 5.8. Jump developed this bike and was up for deployment in 2020. The launch did not happen because Uber, which owned Jump, offloaded the unit to Lime as a part of a $170M investment round in May.
Joe Kraus, Lime President’s statements:
Joe Kraus, the president of Lime says in a recent interview, “Jump made great hardware. And we made some further improvements on top with the new bike.” The operational funds powered the hardware upgrades and expansion. Kraus said they did not require new finance from outside investors. According to Lime, it managed to achieve its first full quarter of profit in 2020 which made the funding possible.
“We have figured out how to be profitable and we are funding this,” Kraus said.
Along with the addition of a new motor to the bike, it also changed its location with a goal to make the handling easier at low speeds, yet had enough power to scale the hills, said Kraus. The swappable battery happens to be the most important upgrade that indirectly leads the profitability, Kraus adds. “When our operations team is roaming around the city, they can take care of bikes and the scooter fleet, which allows us to both operate profitably and continue to have affordable pricing,” he added.
Lime announced electric mopeds
Lime’s investment in e-bike operation comes a month after it announced plans to include electric mopeds to its micro-mobility platform. The startup plans to own the spectrum of inner-city movement from jaunts, corner stores to long-distance drives of up to five miles. Lime will launch this concept with the deployment of 600 electric mopeds through its platform in Washington, D.C. this spring season. The company also works with officials to pilot the mopeds in Paris. Eventually, they plan to offer mopeds in a “handful of cities” within the next several months.
“This idea of how to serve more trips five miles within a city is part of why we continue to do multimodality,” Kraus said. “When we add a new modality like bikes into a scooter city, or when we add scooters to a bike city both modalities go up in usage.”
