Electric scooters: transport revolution or new urban nightmare?



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The boom in shared bicycles has led to more and more "occasional cyclists" on the streets – including in Brazil, where this means of transport is multiplying in capitals like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

The offer of this type of vehicle

Meanwhile, another segment is interested in this niche: it is that of electric scooters, which advance as a practical and ecologically correct option, while raising concerns and Restrictions

The Rise of Scooters

Electric scooters are considered a more convenient option to move around the city and even more "clean", that is to say, less polluting such as a car or a motorcycle, for example.

The sharing of these vehicles, also called electric scooters, is considered the last phenomenon of urban mobility.

Bird, the first company to have introduced them in the United States, celebrated its first wedding anniversary in September, recording more than 10 million trips made internationally.

The number of users reached 2 million in US cities and European capitals

Last month, the product was launched in Mexico City and the arrival on the Brazilian market is also planned, with competition.

The system in Brazil is already proposed, for example. , from Yellow, which currently operates in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and SCOO, which makes vehicles available near the main bike paths of São Paulo and announces on the site that "soon" will be in all the country.

Bird told Forbes that just two months after his debut in Paris this summer, more than 50,000 Parisians had signed up.

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The inhabitants of the capital The French company can now choose between electric scooters Bird and Lime – a company with more than 13 million trips calculated in cities such as Auckland, New Zealand , Santiago, Chile, Portland, the United States and Singapore. 19659002] Commissioning s Silicon Valley, lime and bird are worth $ 1.1 billion and $ 2 billion respectively.

Potential

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The Rise of the Bicycle Sharing System Shows the Potential of Companies Investing in

According to the MetroBike Bicycle Sharing Consulting Firm , there are currently 18 million bikes for public use worldwide, compared to 2.3 million registered in 2016.

The Bike-Sharing Map website lists more than 1,600 bike sharing programs from Tehran to Havana , from Cape Town to Abu Dhabi.

It is estimated that only China has 10 million bicycles in more than 300 cities to clean some of the world's most polluted air.

Electric scooters want to have a share of this market, helping pbadengers to make the journey.

Users pay for the time and values ​​of the equipment.

Conquering Traffic

In his favor, Bird states that nearly 40% of car trips in cities are less than 5 km away and are therefore potentially substitutable for another mode of transportation.

At the launch in Mexico City, the company said it found that the 20 million inhabitants of the capital "suffer from the worst traffic jams and pollution in the world", motorists progressing at an average speed of 10 km / h and taking 2.5 hours to get to work.

In addition to helping traffic management, electric scooters are easy to park.

The companies that offer this service adopt the "no dock" model, which means that there is no specific place to take or leave the scooter. You leave it where you want after the ride and find the closest using a mobile app that also serves to unlock the vehicle.

This technology is already used in the most modern bike sharing systems and points between the advantages that led this type of service to a boom in China

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Environmental Advantage [19659005] Another argument in favor of these scooters is an environmental argument

The environmental stake is large

5,500 tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere – one global warming gases – which equates to more than 1,000 cars driven for one year.

Meanwhile, Lime is committed to making its fleet completely "carbon-free", purchasing renewable energy credits to offset the carbon emitted when recharging their electric bikes and scooters.

Criticism and Restrictions

But not everything is synonymous with flowers like electric scooters. Authorities in American cities, such as Miami, San Francisco, Washington and Denver, have limited the number of electric scooters on the streets and even suspended car sharing programs.

to find a way to regulate them.

Questioned by BBC News Brazil on the rules in force in his country concerning the use of electric scooters – in other words, the places where it is allowed to circulate with them, where they are prohibited, what speed is allowed and what equipment The Ministry of Cities has indicated, unspecified, that the National Traffic Department (Denatran) does not yet have specific regulations for this type of transport.

"The Thematic Chamber on Engineering (CTE) is studying the possibility of including this new modal and its circulation rules in the mobility manual, but the work is not yet finished (it there is no specific time limit either, "he said. (19659002)

The agency also reported that some traffic engineering companies in the country do not consider the electric scooter as a regulated vehicle, as is the case with the skids, but watch their traffic in the streets. ), for example, monitors the driver's position: if he does not cross the road in the safety band. "

According to the Ministry," it will be necessary for the National Traffic Board (Contran) to verify specific regulations and establish, according to their characteristics: the weight, speed and power of their battery to enable them to circulating in cycles and bike lanes "

Surplus supply

Turbinado with money from investors and without bearing the cost of the transaction The system is cheap for companies, which favors an excessive supply of this means

Criticism was also issued.

659002] In August, Madeline Eskind, an employee of California Twitter on Twitter, published a photo of an abandoned Bird Scooters in Los Angeles, dubbed "The 2018 remake of Alfred Hitchbad's birds" – a pun on the name of the company.

The clbadic thriller that she talked about revolves around thousands of islands that establish themselves in a city and begin to attack the inhabitants.

Eskind's piece is viral, inspiring. Similar positions on social networks and creating a skirt just for the company.

Risks

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It was not long ago, there are images of stacked mountain bikes – in a kind of "bicycle cemeteries" in China – reported that marketing around shared mobility can be exaggerated.

In Paris, where traveling on narrow sidewalks at a top speed of 25 km / h with high-speed trains, these vehicles may pose a risk to pedestrians, a bill prohibits their use in such spaces.

Alexandra Ossola, editor of the Futurism website, said that they could be fun for some but not for everyone. 19659002] "Scooters may seem fun for the wearer, but they are horrible for everyone," she wrote.

Judging by his good start, the e-scooter service could become an integral part of the

* Adaptation of the text of the journalist Pablo

* Adaptation of the text of the journalist Pablo Uchoa and Initially in English for the world service of the BBC.


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