Lime hopes to return to Auckland streets in the "near future" following its acquistion of Jump by Uber, which closed Monday - both with its own scoootes and Jump's. Photo / Chris Keall
Lime hopes to return to Auckland streets in the "near future" following its acquistion of Jump by Uber, which closed Monday - both with its own scoootes and Jump's. Photo / Chris Keall
Lime says it closed its deal to buy Uber's Jump e-scooter and e-bike business in NZ on Monday.
The company's government relations manager, Lauren Mentjox, says she now hopes that both Lime and Jump e-scooters will be back on Auckland streets in "the near future."
It did not clip Jump (which was licensed for 735 scooters for the January to June license). It was simply that with the Lime-Uber deal in mid-flight as the extended license was put together, there was simply no entity for it to deal with.
We last saw Jump by Uber e-scooters and bikes in Auckland in March, before all-comers disappeared from streets under the level 4 and level 3 lockdowns.
E-scooters from Beam, Nuron and Flamingo returned mid-May as the city rolled into level 2, but Jump by Uber remained on the sidelines as its purchase by Lime was finalised.
Now, with its new ownership status finally confirmed, Jump can potentially rejoin the fray from September.
Earlier, Auckland Council environmental health manager Mervyn Chetty and council principal specialist Veronica Lee-Thompson said the local body was implementing short term licences while it waits on central government to finalise new e-scooter and e-biker laws under its slow-moving "Accessible Streets" initiative.
Buying each other
A complex deal announced on May 4 saw Uber lead a new US$170m funding round for Lime (the raise valued Lime at US$510m or 79 per cent less than its pre-pandemic worth).
As part of that deal, Lime agreed to buy Jump for an undisclosed sum. And in 2022, the situation could flip - because then, Uber will get the option to buy Lime outright.
The financial machinations are convoluted, but with a simple outcome: Uber will go from having two e-scooter and e-bike businesses: Jump (which it owned) and Lime (in which it is a substantial shareholder) to one.
Lime got the hard word from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission yesterday, with the Aussie regulator saying "Lime misrepresented to consumers that its Gen 2 [Generation 2] e-scooters were safe to use when in fact it did not disclose to consumers a safety issue it was aware of."
Lime failed to report an excessive braking issue, caused by a software bug, that caused at least 50 injuries, the ACCC said.
Like other operators, Lime is off Aussie streets as a pandemic precaution.
"If Lime recommences its operations in Australia, it has also undertaken to supply only Gen 3 or other later models," the ACCC said.
The braking issue saw Auckland Council order Lime scooters off the city's streets for a month in early 2019.
Herald Graphic
Are there still second-generation Lime scooters in NZ?
"We currently operate generation 2.5 scooters in New Zealand and recently launched Generation 3 scooters in Christchurch," Mentjox says.
"The sudden stopping issue that affected generation 2.5 scooters under very rare circumstances over a year ago, which is referenced in the ACCC undertaking, was resolved with firmware upgrades in March 2019."
"Since that time, we have observed no additional incidents or firmware bugs of this kind and generation 2.5 scooters continued to operate safely in New Zealand and Australia."
Since Lime lost its licence in November 2019, all of the operators have upgraded to the Segway Max or equivalent super-sized e-scooters - which also have longer range, better suspension and more stability than their predecessors.
Lime designs its models inhouse, but the Gen 3 is similar in size and features to the Segway Max.
