Electric scooter apps face legal ban on UK roads

Electric scooter sharing companies are popular in San Francisco.
Electric scooter sharing companies are popular in San Francisco Credit: Bloomberg

Silicon Valley companies looking to bring their electric scooter sharing services to the UK are facing a legal block, as electric scooters are not legal to use on UK streets.

Electric scooter sharing apps, where customers pay per minute and pick up a scooter from where it was left on the pavement, have become extremely popular in San Francisco and other US cities.

Lime, one of the two biggest scooter hire start-ups in the US, announced on Thursday that it planned to launch in Paris this week.

However, it said it could not follow in the UK because electric scooters are not legal to use on roads or pavements here.

Transport for London said that it was unlikely that electric scooter sharing companies would be able to expand to London because of current regulations.

UK laws place restrictions on vehicles with motors, meaning they are typically classed as mopeds and require riders to hold a licence to drive them. Segways and so-called "hoverboards" have also been banned from British roads, with riders being fined £75.

Dockless bike services have become popular in London Credit: Bloomberg

Companies including Lime and fellow start-up Bird operate fleets of thousands of electric scooters, which are collected to charge overnight. The scooters cost $1 (76p) to unlock and then around 15 cents per minute of use.

Investors have been eager to fund electric scooter sharing start-ups, which are seen as a potentially efficient urban alternative to public transport and apps like Uber. 

Bird recently raised $150m in a funding round that valued the company at $1bn. That made it the quickest technology company to reach a $1bn “unicorn” valuation as the company was only founded in September.

The companies have been keen to expand outside of the US, with the UK seen as an attractive market. Bird has hired former Uber employee Patrick Studener to lead its expansion into Europe.

Index Ventures partner Martin Mignot, an early investor in Bird, said that “our hope is that cities across Europe see electric scooters as a way to deliver a convenient and pollution-free transport option, making cities more enjoyable to live in.”

“This is a once in a generation opportunity to rethink how we get around. The status quo with the current levels of traffic, pollution and congestion is clearly not working.”

Lime has said that it will operate a bike sharing service in the UK until laws around electric scooters change.

Several companies operate dockless bike sharing schemes in London, where people pay to use bicycles and then leave them in public places after their journey.