A dock-less bike-sharing business is expanding its services as 2,500 e-scooters are set to hit the streets of Auckland, New Zealand in the coming months.
According to a recent report, the e-scooters, which are allowed on the footpaths or on the road, will join the 1,541 bikes that are already available around Auckland.
The release of e-scooters will revolutionise the way Aucklanders travel around the city.
The system is being designed in such a way that it will be super quick, easy, and cheap to pick up e-scooters for short journeys multiple times a day.
An initial order of 500 e-scooters was made, which will hit the streets first. An additional 2,000 are to follow in the coming months.
With a 250W motor, the e-scooters are capable of top speeds of around 30 kilometres per hour. One recharge will cover 30 kilometres of travel before it is due for a recharge.
Similar to how the system for their bikes work, the system will also be dock-less. The users simply need the Onzo app to unlock the scooter from wherever they were left by the previous rider.
Having e-scooters is great as it makes traveling easier and fun. Compared to bikes, which are not allowed on footpaths, e-scooters can travel on footpaths and do not require helmets.
They are perfect to pick up anywhere, anytime. They are very useful for last-mile journeys, between the bus stop and the office, for instance.
The recharging of the scooters will be crowdsourced by the company to the public at night. The users will be paid to bring the depleted e-scooters home so that they can charge them overnight and leave them in designated areas for other people to use afterwards.
Riders can breathe easy with the knowledge that they are not contributing to pollution in the city since almost 80% of the electricity in New Zealand come from renewable sources.
The future of transport is in the use of electric vehicles. And although many Kiwis would love to drive around Auckland in a Tesla, the reality is that the e-scooters may just be more efficient at getting the passenger around downtown.
Moreover, it is way more fun to travel around on a scooter rather than being stuck in a car in traffic.
According to the website of the New Zealand Transport Agency, e-scooters fall on the category of a low-powered vehicle that do not require registration or a drivers licence as long as the maximum power output does not exceed 300W.
The e-scooters should be driven as near as possible to the edge of the roadway when being used on the road.
The company is coordinating with city councils around the country about launching the e-scooters in other main centres.
