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NEW – After bikes and scooters, Paris now has a new means of self-service locomotion: the electric scooter. The American start-up Lime signs this novelty. We've tested it, and you're told what it's really worth.
– Christopher QUAREZ
He has been growing neon green everywhere in the streets of Paris since the beginning of summer: I mean Lime electric scooters [19659005] (lime, note ). A new means of personal transport, easy to use – that's what the American start-up promises – and self-service. This is the first time that this type of scooter is rented in free floating: that is to say that the machine can be borrowed and deposited at any place, without any fastener is necessary.
But we have seen with bikes, this new type of service does not really have the expected success in France. Witness the fiasco of Gobee.Bike these famous green bikes. In the space of a few months, the service was removed from several cities in France – including Paris – because of theft and repeated acts of vandalism. We do not predict the same future for these two (small) wheels, but it is clear that on some points, it is related to it.
Scooter, where are you?
Sunday afternoon, under a blazing sun. The opportunity is too good to play the lazy and swap a pedal for a simple wrist. The first step is to download the application: a few clicks, a phone number and you're done. A geolocate map then the scooters available on a map of Paris. You choose according to the proximity and autonomy, 4 km on average.
And here, first difficulty, and not least: find a scooter. This step, let's be honest, ended in a bitter failure. It is nice to follow several times the point indicated on the map, each time, arrived at destination, no scooter but a gate! Understand: users leave the machine in their building courtyard, protected by a code: impossible, under these conditions, to get the scooter … The experiment runs out, after a good hour of research: scooter point for us today.
Questioned, Lime France badures us that we have taken this point into account. "The algorithm can detect that a scooter was used several days in a row by the same user and in the same place, in which case Lime has planned several steps to prevent the privatization of the scooters: it will start ringing , then a message will be sent to the user asking him to share the scooter.If this is not done in the following days, the account of the user will be blocked, preventing him from using the scooter ", explains Arthur-Louis Jacquier, director of the start-up.
1 euro commissioning + 15 cents per minute
Ok, let's be honest and imagine that next time we'll find one. So once in hand, how does it work? With one click, on your smartphone, you start and stop the race by scanning the QR code on the handlebar of the scooter. The rates are as follows: 1 euro commissioning + 15 cents … the minute. On a journey of 20 minutes – this is the average time I put with Vélib – so count 4 euros. Twice as expensive as a bus ticket. Due to several uses on a day, it can quickly encrypt! An opinion shared by several users on Twitter.
The rules of the road: some basic rules
Practical and all-purpose, it would be tempting – it must be admitted – to sneak between cars and on the sidewalks in a race against-la- shows. But at 24 km / h, top speed of the machine, the shock with a pedestrian or a car can hurt a lot. Thus, before the grip, the application recalls some basic rules:
– Do not ride on the sidewalks
– Use bike paths available [19659006] – Park in accessible places without blocking pedestrian areas and wheelchair access
– Wearing a helmet
And failing having your own helmet , Lime offers them their … provided that "you have 10 euros or more" on your account. In this case, you can get one "in one of the indicated locations".
The National Gendarmerie, on its Twitter account, allowed itself to refresh the memory of users: "Electric scooters not exceeding 25 km / h are considered bicycles and must respect the traffic lights reserved for pedestrians, take the protected pbadages and ride at a moderate pace ".
You have been warned!
Christopher QUAREZ
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