Lyft Launches E-Bikes For Post-Pandemic Commuting

There is optimism about the 'micromobility' market, although public transportation usership appears to be rebounding, as is urban car ownership.

A crucial question is whether e-bike providers like Lyft will hit the right cost-benefit ratio or end up overcharging and killing the market. JL 

Laura Bliss reports in CityLab:

As fears of Covid-19 found people looking for transportation alternatives, a slew of manufacturers entered the e-bike market in the U.S., and sales of electrically assisted bicycles took off during the pandemic, growing 145% from 2019 to 2020. There are ongoing challenges of balancing the cost of keeping vehicles charged and serviced with the right price point for consumers. Rising rental rates from micromobility providers, including Lyft (may mean) shared e-bikes are moving out of reach for riders when the focus should be on expanding access.

As U.S. workers trickle back to the office, a new e-bike joining Lyft’s bikeshare fleet is aimed at helping them get there. 

Launched in San Francisco on June 6, this updated model features a number of accessibility and durability improvements over the current battery-boosted bikes that Lyft rents by the minute in nine U.S. cities. Among them: a much longer battery life, a lower center of gravity, and a saddle that can better accommodate smaller riders. There’s no gear shifter: The electric motor mounted on the rear wheel has sensors that automatically adjust to the rider’s torque, cadence and speed. A digital console mounted on the handlebars will alert riders to things like local speed limits and out-of-bounds parking zones. Reflective white paint, like the kind found on traffic signs, provides an extra jolt of visibility. 

“We obviously learned a lot over the last few years,”  said John Zimmer, Lyft’s president and co-founder. “This is the first piece of hardware we designed from the ground up to take those learnings and create an experience that is super safe.”

The first 100 bikes will arrive in San Francisco’s Bay Wheels system as part of a multi-week public beta test, according to the company. A wider rollout is slated for Chicago’s Divvy system this fall, with more cities added by the end of the year. New models will replace old e-bikes as they wear out.

There’s a lot riding on these sleek new two-wheelers, which come nearly three years after Lyft’s acquisition of Motivate, the largest bikeshare operator in North America, and two years after introducing the first e-bikes into its fleets. That roll-out was rough: In 2019, dozens of reported brake-related injuries in New York City led Lyft to pull roughly 1,000 electric Citi Bikes from the streets, a move it repeated in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. (That brake issue eventually led to at least six lawsuits.) The company pulled its Bay Area bikes again a few months later due to a few vehicles catching fire. A spokesperson said that the new bikes have been exhaustively tested to meet U.S., Canadian and international safety standards. They also feature parts that are easier to disassemble and repair, and internal sensors that flag repair needs to technicians.

E-bike technology is facing a pivotal moment: As fears of Covid-19 found people looking for transportation alternatives, a slew of manufacturers entered the e-bike market in the U.S., and sales of electrically assisted bicycles took off during the pandemic, growing 145% from 2019 to 2020. Recent studies pointing to their aerobic benefits and glowing reviews from new users have burnished expectations for continued growth.

E-bikes have also been credited with bringing more riders into bikeshare programs, which have endured a rockier year. Spurred by transit service cuts and free commuter programs for essential workers, a wave of first-time users came to bikeshare during the pandemic — including thousands of women, who have been historically less likely to ride. Shared e-bikes proved particularly popular, with the motor making it easier to travel longer distances or negotiate steep grades. Still, economic shutdowns and fears of the virus hit overall ridership, with trips on six of the nation’s largest docked bikeshare systems down 45% in spring 2020 over 2019 levels. 

With reopenings, however, has come rebounding use: In May, both Citi Bike and Divvy broke previous single-day ridership records.

After a battering year of mergers and foldings, the broader micromobility universe is seeing other forms of fresh activity. The docked e-bike startup JOCO popped up in New York in April (prompting a lawsuit by the city), New York City’s first e-scooter pilot program kicks off this summer, and Lime launched a monthly subscription service worldwide and 100 electric mopeds in Brooklyn. The Australia-based Zoomo is expanding e-bike rentals aimed at delivery workers in several U.S. cities, and Amazon is working on a trike also built for urban cargo.

Still, the mass adoption once breathlessly predicted for such shared conveyances looks to be a ways away. In dense, transit-oriented places like New York, the ongoing Covid-19 subway ridership slump may be playing an outsize role in getting more riders into the saddle, since relatively few people own cars. But even there, new car registrations are rising, as is traffic congestion. And in cities that were already more vehicle-dependent, such as Los Angeles and Denver, it could be harder to convince commuters to try a public bike instead of a solo drive. 

“It’s going to be interesting as people come out of their homes and hovels to go back to work,” said John MacArthur, a researcher who studies sustainable transportation at Portland State University. “Is this a time to tell them, ‘Hey, have you thought differently about how you went to work before?’ I think it’s possible, but I’m not sure how we do that.”

Horace Dediu, the industry analyst who coined the term “micromobility,” sees the winds blowing more favorably toward privately owned e-bikes and scooters. “A lot of that is based on people’s unwillingness to share objects, but I think there is also a longer-term question about whether people value having their own mobility product,” he said. 

There are also the ongoing challenges of balancing the cost of keeping vehicles charged up and serviced with the right price point for consumers. Rising rental rates from micromobility providers, including Lyft, makes MacArthur worry that shared e-bikes are moving out of reach for riders when the focus should be on expanding access. He thinks that could be done with public subsidies. 

“I see bikeshare systems as public transit that should be funded and looked upon as public transit, not as a standalone function that has to be in the black all the time to operate,” he said.

Lyft’s new bikes hit the streets five years after Zimmer published a set of ambitious predictions for his industry, including the idea that a different mobility innovation, the autonomous vehicle, would be in widespread use by now, with the end of private car ownership in major cities on the horizon. Instead, Lyft recently sold its AV program to Toyota as it aims to become profitable by year-end. (It is still working on a self-driving taxi fleet management platform.) And while bikes in general were a Covid-19 success story, public transit’s ongoing challenges make a car-free future less certain than ever. 

Even if he had the details wrong, Zimmer said he still believes in the same vision of a future where cars are less dominant. “I’m confident we’ll prove over the long-term that we can make cities more for people,” he said. “It may not be as fast or as clear a timeline as everyone wants, but I think we’re still making progress toward that.”