When Bird first launched its e-scooter sharing business, no one had ever thought that this tiny e-scooter would drag the government and micro-mobility startups in the legal battle. One can, however, argue that the rapid development in the adoption and the deployment rate of e-scooters created chaos in cities where authorities weren’t prepared to lock horns with the upcoming transportation revolution.

E-scooters have invaded many cities badly. Improper parking, ruthless e-scooter riding, and a pile of nonfunctional e-scooters started putting the lives of residents at risk. And when finally news of fatalities caused by e-scooters started popping up, city councils of many major cities put an instant ban on e-scooters and a few remaining city councils imposed rules to regulate the use of e-scooters.

But now, when micro-mobility startups and riders are obeying the laws and micro-mobility startups have many strategies to cope up with the poorly parked e-scooters and ruthless e-scooter riders, local authorities of many American, European, Australian and Canadian cities are planning to legalize e-scooters. The size of the global micro-mobility market and the number of people preferring electric and affordable modes of urban transportation also persuaded authorities of these cities to reconsider the e-scooter policy.

These all cities are very potential micro-mobility markets and if you’ll build an e-scooter app and launch it in any of these cities as the early bird, you will be able to dominate the market at a surprisingly fast pace.

The best cities to build an e-scooter app and start e-scooter sharing business in 2020-21

• Atlanta

According to the latest news, a bill that will enable Atlanta city council to decide the future of e-scooter in Atlanta has been passed on the Senate floor. It came after a study committee met to find out the consequences of the move that would legalize the e-scooters in Atlanta.

According to the bill, devices weighing less than 100 pounds, powered by an electric motor and do not exceed the maximum speed of 20 miles per hour are classified as the e-scooters in Georgia.

Georgia State Senate, Steve Gooch said that they want to encourage this new technology. They don’t want to over-regulate the industry by putting a lot of barriers in the way.

Considering this statement of Gooch and growth of the US micro-mobility market, our business experts expect that a proper set of rules legalizing the e-scooters in Atlanta will be put forth before the summer of the year 2021.

• Chicago

Chicago is way ahead than Atlanta in the race of adapting e-scooter culture. In fact, Chicago has successfully run a pilot program for four months in 2019 to observe the benefits and pitfalls of e-scooters. In the pilot program, the Chicago council allowed 10 micro-mobility startups to deploy a total of 2500 e-scooters across the city.

Recently, the Chicago city council released the 98-page evaluation document which focuses on safety, reliability, and enforcement of policies. Though they have discovered many steps necessary before the city can implement a permanent e-scooter sharing program, they can not simply ban the e-scooters without being affected by the success of the pilot run!

• London

London, which is considered as the most profitable ‘banned’ micro-mobility market will finally become the most profitable ‘legalized’ micro-mobility market, anytime soon. According to the latest news published in The Times, electric scooters will be legalized on roads and cycle lanes for the first time in the UK. Several cities of the UK are expected to launch a consultation in February on how to regulate the e-scooter and ensure safety. They are most likely to first launch the pilot project with the potential nationwide introduction.

The UK is indeed lagging behind the rest of the world. While e-scooters are legalized in many cities of European countries, the e-scooters in the UK are still prohibited on public roads.

Though many industry experts and local politicians believe that the UK should now place itself parallel to the rest of the world, micro-mobility startups have to wait at least one more year as regulations are still far from decided and imposed in the UK!

• Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra

Three major global cities – Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra – will soon experience the first wave of the transportation revolution. And out of these three cities, Canberra will experience it first as e-scooters have already been legalized in Canberra last year.

Talking about Melbourne and Sydney, residents of these two most livable cities have already been asking the government to promote carbon-free transportation methods. And it is not just the coincidence that Uber ‘s Jump is planning to launch its e-bike sharing business in these cities!

Uber’s e-bikes have three gears and a top speed of 32 km/h. They all are equipped with swappable batteries, GPS tracker and sensors to distinguish any mechanical issue.

But in Australian cities like Melbourne and Sydney where public transportation is free in downtown and buses are connecting remote areas with the metro train stations, it will be a challenge for micro-mobility startups to build large user bases.

• Toronto

Toronto city council decided to run a pilot project of the e-scooter sharing business in 2019 and only invited Bird to be the operator. During the pilot run, Bird offered free rides to all riders. But due to the provincial Highway Traffic Act which does not allow the use of e-scooter on roads and Bird’s e-scooters which don’t meet the federal of provincial safety standards, the city council did not launch the permanent program with Bird. 

However, looking at the interest of many other major Canadian cities like Montreal and Calgary which have legalized the e-scooters, our business experts are anticipating that the Toronto city council will probably reconsider the idea of banning e-scooters (if there is legal scope available to revamp provincial Highway Traffic Act!).       

You can read our dedicated blog to know how to start an e-scooter sharing business in Canada (Montreal, Calgary) and the cost of app development.

How can Coruscate bring you in the fit state to conquer these markets in 2020-21?

Coruscate is the top e-scooter app development company that has developed 10 e-scooter apps for different markets. We accommodate 100+ app developers, app designers, IoT engineers, business experts, and legal advisers who offer services beyond app development.

Our business experts help micro-mobility startups to decide on the business models, draft the business plan, select the hardware and study the market. Whereas, our legal advisers help micro-mobility startups to acquire the permit.

Considering the different needs of startups, we provide three different app development approaches.   

• To develop the custom e-scooter app with all custom features, we charge somewhere between $15000 to $25000.
• The price to develop a clone version of some popular e-scooter apps starts from $10000.
• And our subscription plan for the white label e-scooter app starts from just $500.

To know more about our pricing structures and get the personalized quote, please feel free to contact us. Our one of the senior business experts will welcome you with the free e-scooter app demo and free consultation.

Note: We do not make clones of any exact application, clone means to us is how better we can execute your app idea with existing app features and experience.