American bike and scooter share company Lime has secretly soft launched in Sydney overnight with bright green electric assist bicycles appearing in various places around the Sydney CBD.
Electric assist bikes work by helping you ride once you start to pedal. Lime bikes claim to have a top speed of almost 24 km/h. The 24 km/h top speed complies with NSW licensing regulations surrounding mopeds and electric bikes which state the motor must cut out when it reaches 25 km/h.
Share bikes are controversial in Australia with many fans as well as people who dislike them.
The primary point of controversy is that most share bikes in Australian cities are not required to be stored in specific docks areas.
What happens quite often is that they are often dumped in the middle of streets after a booking is finished. Another common occurrence is bikes being thrown into trees, rivers etc.
Unfortunately some Australians are selfish jerks and unless they get punished for their behaviour, it’s likely these new Lime bikes will also be damaged en masse.
The cost is $1 to start and then 30 cents per minute. Each bike on the map shows it’s estimated kilometre range remaining.
If you want some free rides Google for “lime invite codes” and you’ll find plenty of options that give you 3 or 4 $1 vouchers. If you can’t find any codes that work try my code RJ5LPL7.
There are two ways to sign in to Lime, with either SMS or Facebook login though anecdotally we hear the Facebook login works better – however if you have some (understandable) trust issues with Facebook login the SMS option exists.
Ausdroid readers who would like to try these new Lime bikes out before they get trashed can sign-up and start using them via the Android or iPhone apps.
Who charges them?
I took one for a ride home yesterday. As you’d probably expect it’s not a premium experience – the pedal assist was fun, but 24km isn’t really very fast when you’re on the road with cars and trucks, so you had to work quite hard to keep up with traffic going up hills still. There’s also only the single speed, no gears. The biggest issue I had was the app, which was probably understandable given it was their first day – the trip counter kept going even after I’d locked the bike, it eventually finished about 20 minutes after I’d… Read more »
That’s $6 they over charged you. Not impressive at all.
It’s not really their first day, the same bikes and app are already being used in over 100 other cities
I love how their photos and video encourage people to just dump them on the footpath in the road of pedestrians.
So much for entrepeneurship, when the Chinese try it their equipment is trashed and they get run out of town, now the Americans who are late to the party can set up unopposed
AFAIK the bike share companies that left Sydney recently were funded from Singapore, China and Australia
Some people think that these Lime e-bikes will be treated better by the public but my guess is the helmets will disappear quickly, they will be damaged by being thrown onto the ground and stripped for parts
Exactly, that battery is worth hundreds, sure they have probably purchsed in volume and not that great batteries but still worth a bit. The motor as well looks fairly standard so again easy to strip the bike remove the gps tracking etc and fit your bike with it.
I just walked past some Lime bikes and already a mere few days after launch the helmets had all been stolen.
A broken business model that’s sucked investors into billion $$ losses.
Many of the initial share bike offerings have packed up their saddle bags and gone home. While there are some jerks who ruin it, the services had a lot of faults. I tried many of them and 8 times out of 10 it wasn’t a great experience, and that’s why they failed. I’d like to think Lime does better, but think it may be another one to turn sour, unfortunately.