Taxify launches dockless electric scooters for hire in Paris

Taxify’s Bolt scooters in Paris.
Taxify

• Taxify, the European rival to Uber, is expanding into
  dockless scooters and launching them in Paris under the new
  Bolt brand.
• It marks an explosion of the scooter war in the French
  capital, where US startups Bird and Lime have already started
  to operate.
• Scooter startups are currently barred from operating in
  London, where electric scooters are illegal.
• Taxify CEO Markus Villig echoed rivals in saying that
  scooters made more sense for short city trips than
  cars.

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There’s a new front in the dockless scooter war.

European ride-hailing firm Taxify is to launch electric scooters
for hire in Paris this week, expanding beyond private hire cabs
for the first time and jumping on a major Silicon Valley
bandwagon.

The company will roll out a fleet of dockless scooters in the
French capital this week under the new brand name of Bolt.
Passengers will be able to see Bolt scooters available for hire
around the city through Taxify’s main app, and hire them for
€0.15 a minute, with a minimum fare of €1.

Taxify

The scooters will come with inbuilt GPS, and passengers will be
able to “unlock” them by scanning a QR code on the vehicles.
Taxify said it would collect scooters every evening for
recharging and maintenance.

Paris has become the primary jumping off point for scooter
startups launching in Europe because electric scooters are
currently illegal in the UK
thanks to the Highway Act 1835.

Established US startups Bird and Lime have raised huge amounts of
money from venture capital and flooded American cities with
scooters before pushing into Europe in recent months, starting
with Paris.

Taxify CEO Markus Villig said his firm has the advantage of
500,000 users in Paris already. He also said regulation didn’t
pose much of a challenge to launching.

“You need to have good relations with a city to deploy hundreds
or thousands of scooters,” he told Business Insider. “We have
been in talks with the local mayor for months and they are
essentially very welcoming of scooters.”

Bird
launched in Paris at the beginning of August with a similar
offering to Taxify, while Lime launched
in the French capital at the end of June.

Asked about the competition, Villig said the goal was to persuade
rivals onto the Taxify app.

“Currently we own all our scooters, but we have an ecosystem
where we can plug in other providers,” Villig said. “At the end
of the day, our goal is to be a transportation provider… giving
passengers as many options as we can.

“The journey should start with ‘Where do you want to go?’ and we
then offer them a range of options. But we don’t have to do it
all ourselves.”

Taxify

Uber, which is also expanding from ride-hailing into electric
bikes and scooters, has already struck a similar partnership with
Lime.

Taxify said it planned to launch scooters in other European
cities, and Villig told Business Insider the firm was in talks
with London’s transport regulator about a British launch. The
company is already barred
from operating its ride-hailing service in London thanks to
issues with its licence, and is
currently fighting to relaunch in the capital.

Villig said: “We’re in talks with the city on both the
ride-hailing front and on launching scooters. It’s quite obvious
that in the long-term, small vehicles are much more efficient
from a traffic point of view, [and] environmental impact, [and] ease of use… It’s a matter of how fast cities will realise this
and regulate.”

Both Bird and Lime are currently lobbying for a change in the law
to allow scooters in the UK.

Taxify eyes IPO

Taxify raised $153 million from auto firm Daimler in May to fund
its expansion. Asked if the company planned to follow Uber and
Lyft down the IPO route, Villig said a float would probably
happen but the company was still in the building stages.

“Definitely, as we need further funding, an IPO is one of the
options for us,” he said. “We are currently still in the
developing phase [and that is] a bit longer down the line.”

He also said a long-term partnership with Daimler could involve
exploring autonomous vehicles.