Bounce CEO and co-founder Vivekananda Hallekere said
"We have been transitioning to green mobility since early this year and every vehicle added since February 2020 has been electric. We approximately have 6,000 scooters and 50 per cent of these are electric"
The company has built strategic partnerships with several OEMs in the electric and battery space to achieve this green vision.
Bounce currently offers its bikes to consumers under three plans - Short Term Rentals (STR), Long Term Rentals (LTR) and Rideshare. STR allows the bike to be rented for 2-12 hours a day, encouraging better utilisation of bikes throughout the day. LTR enable customers to rent bikes for 15-45 days.
We know of many pure EV rental firms like eBikeGo or Yulu, who only offers electric scooters. But there are older rental platforms like Bounce, Vogo which have a large fleet of petrol scooters.
These petrol scooters need to go and its fantastic that larger shared mobility are moving towards a 100% EV field.
This is a big win for the electric scooter industry. We get many comments from petrol heads, EV cynics saying that electric scooters are problematic, they are not worth it etc.
But this shows that the reality is totally different. Businesses are trusting electric scooters more. This clearly shows the value proposition that EVs offer to businesses is too large to ignore. Ultimately businesses will see which product or technology offers the most value and Electric Vehicles are way superior to Petrol vehicles in terms of economy, efficiency, reliability and performance.
Also having electric vehicles in fleets, will give confidence for individuals to ditch the oil habit and move electric. These platforms can enable individuals to try electric scooters before they buy one.
When these platforms have electric scooters, they might face some challenges
- If these companies can setup some 20-25 open charge points in every city they serve, customers will be more confident of using their platform
- Another important thing for these rental startups is to choose the right electric scooter OEM’s as partners. We would recommend choosing electric scooter manufacturers who are making efforts to localize their scooters and are also investing in RnD. Ultimately that will pay off for these startups.
All in all great news for the EV industry.