Stockholm’s legislators ruled that the city’s e-scooter fleet must be cut in half by February 1st, from about 23,000 to 12,000, and distributed evenly among eight operators — including Voi, the city’s $1 billion e-scooter pioneer — with each business renting out a maximum of 1,500 devices. Vice Mayor Helldén, who has been campaigning for a reduction in the number of e-scooters in his city, claims that residents had grown tired of abandoned two-wheelers blocking sidewalks. The restriction on e-scooter registrations is the latest step in a patchwork European trend that has seen city policymakers who first supported them somewhat reverse course, as in Paris and Copenhagen. In 2018, Voi introduced its e-scooters on the streets of Stockholm, and by last summer it had 6,209 scooters in use. At the time, early movers like Lime were migrating their U.S.-developed pay-to-ride business model to their first European market of Paris.
Read the full article by Charlie Duxbury on Politico.eu
