“For or against scooters”: what economic consequences for operators if the “against” wins on Sunday?

With the “vote” organized this Sunday, April 2 on the subject of whether or not to maintain self-service scooters in the capital, the future of the 3 Parisian operators – Dott, Lime and Tier – is up in the air. What do they risk losing the Parisian market? What would be the economic consequences for them if Parisians decide to vote against scooters?

A booming market: this is what the 3 operators of free-loating electric scooters – Dott, Lime and Tier – under contract with the Parisian municipality since 2019 could lose. Considered dangerous, responsible for a certain disorder in the streets of the capital, electric scooters have indeed been in the hot seat since the Parisian executive announced that their contract, which ends today, may not be renewed. To decide, the mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo therefore preferred to let the Parisians choose.

Leave Paris, but not Ile-de-France

And if the latter – who will have to answer the question “for or against self-service scooters?” – majority vote against this Sunday, the 3 operators, pioneers of shared mobility and at the head of 15,000 electric scooters, will have to pack up on September 1st. But they will not leave the Paris region for all that, since they will continue to deploy in the inner suburbs, where their service is particularly popular, especially around stations for “last kilometer” travel and because they are also the head of a large fleet of bicycles.

“If we lose the market, we will continue to operate with our fleet of bicycles”, confirms Erwann Le Page, the European director of public affairs for Tier, who specifies that their electric bicycles are now present in more than 80 municipalities on the island. -de-France, and nearly 57 RER and Transilien stations in the region. In short, according to him, it will be a question of “thinking about intelligent methods” to continue to develop in Paris which, as he recalls, is a pioneering city in terms of soft mobility.

As for the question of what will happen to the employees of the company, while around 800 people work today for the 3 operators, Erwann Le Page replies that the management “will try to do the best”, promises that “social comes first” at Tier and that “all solutions will be studied” to keep jobs. “It is in the DNA of our company, when we were confronted with the Covid crisis, we recorded 34 euros in turnover in March 2020, and we kept all our employees”, a-t he particular explained for the example.

Same speech on the side of Lime, which says it has “a large fleet of bicycles”. “There is a very strong demand in Paris for scooters but also for bicycles, we have increased our fleet accordingly, going from 7,000 bicycles in 2022 to 10,000 today”, announces Hadi Karam, the general manager of Lime. France, which also ensures that, since 2022, all Lime mechanics “have been trained in both vehicles”. “An advantage” and “an agility”, according to him, which could well save jobs.

they “will continue to use the scooters”

However, he hopes that the scooter market will not escape them this Sunday, saying that there was “always more demand for electric scooters”. “It’s been repeated for a long time, people will continue to use scooters,” he explains, pointing out that it was impossible at this stage to assess the modal shift if it’s the vote ” against” which wins. “We don’t yet know if Ile-de-France residents will buy their own electric scooter. […] but there are 400,000 unique users every month who will have to find an alternative”, launches Hadi Karam.

But for him, imagining that Paris – “pioneering city which has set the bar very high and today copied by many world cities” – can part with electric scooters seems unthinkable to him. “It would be a shame for Paris to lose its leadership, while other European cities like London and even in the United States with New York or Washington are launching their first call for tenders. It’s a global trend, and that’s what’s happening in 250 cities around the world, ”says the CEO of Lime, referring to his group’s record year in 2022: 466 million dollars in turnover.

Except that in Paris, it is the mayor in person who is now campaigning against scooters, attacking the model “I take, I throw”, which according to her is “expensive, with very questionable durability, and poses a problem insofar as its use replaces walking, for example, does not replace the metro or the bicycle”. A position against the current of that of the government, while the Minister Delegate for Transport has just presented his national plan for the regulation of electric scooters, which he describes as “a new tool for sustainable daily mobility”.