Lime’s Gen4 E‑Scooter Rolls into Cities Worldwide, Delivering The Smoothest Ride Yet
2021 has been an exciting year at Lime, especially thanks to the global roll out of our most sustainable scooter yet, the Gen4. Since its launch in Paris, more than 35,000 Gen4 scooters have graced the roads of more than 30 cities, including London, New York, Washington D.C., Munich, Berlin, and San Francisco.
In the short time our Gen4 scooters have been on city streets, we’ve already received feedback from riders about how much they’re enjoying the new vehicles. Riders have taken more than 12 million trips on Gen4 scooters and they consistently see higher ridership than previous generations. The average trip time had increased from 8 to 11 minutes, reinforcing how much easier the scooter is to navigate while the average trip rating has increased from 3.5 to 4.1 stars, a positive sign that we’re on the way to providing the best overall rider experience possible.
The Gen4 improves upon our previous generation model to deliver a smoother ride. We designed the scooter in-house from the ground up, incorporating feedback from our riders, operations teams and cities. The Gen4 aims to provide best-in-class safety, comfort and reliability, setting a new standard for the shared scooter industry. The design is informed by our unparalleled experience delivering more than 250 million rides and operating micromobility programs in more than 200 cities around the world, encompassing a wide range of climates, topographies, road conditions, regulations and use cases.
Immediately noticeable are the Gen4’s swept handlebars, a first for the industry, that provide greater comfort hands and wrists. Reminiscent of bike handlebars, it pairs with dual hand brakes for a quicker braking response that’s more intuitive for riders. A feature receiving a positive reception from cities is the larger front wheel that improves rides over cracks, and warped pavements.
In addition to modular parts that help extend the e-scooter’s lifespan to an estimated five years, the swappable battery provides greater efficiency for our operations, resulting in fewer vehicle miles traveled to pick up scooters with dead batteries, and reduced energy consumption thanks to less weight for each trip. The result is greater reliability for riders with more fully-charged scooters on the street when and where they’re needed most.
The swappable battery will be interoperable with our forthcoming Gen4 e-bike, launching this winter, meaning more efficient operations between modes and more reliable service for our riders.
We even included a feature that helps non-riders as well. The Gen4’s dual kickstand has two legs, one on each side of the base, to help avoid being tipped over when parked. We’ve already seen how this can help to reduce clutter on sidewalks.
With new and improved features, it’s even more seamless for riders to hop on a scooter and go. These include:
- Enhanced Suspension & Bigger Front Wheel - Big pneumatic tires are a critical part of scooter suspension providing a noticeable improvement in ride comfort. While shock absorption is a key factor for the ride experience, it's also important in protecting the vehicle; less shock to the scooter frame means fewer repairs and an extension to the scooter’s lifetime.
- Smarter Brain - Lime’s proprietary firmware - a scooter’s brain - includes an immediate geo-fence response, with self-diagnosing sensors and sidewalk-riding detection capabilities.
- High-Visibility Reflectors - We’ve added reflectors on the baseboard, stem, CCU unit, rear fender and logos to enhance visibility at night.
- Lower Deck Height - We’ve lowered the baseboard to optimize the center of gravity on the scooter and provide an easy step-on and step-off experience for riders. It’s a subtle communication to the rider that the vehicle is approachable and requires less work to get them to their destination.
- Most Powerful Motor to Date - New enhancements to the motor helps riders tackle hills with ease, without having to increase their speed.
These features continue to build upon a foundation of quality and safety, threads embedded in everything that we do at Lime. We continuously improve, test, design and engineer our vehicles to make sure their components provide safe and reliable trips for riders.
We recently announced a new $523 million fundraising round that will help us achieve our mission of building a future where transportation is shared, affordable and carbon-free. A portion of those funds will be dedicated to scaling our best-in-class Gen4 scooters and electric bikes to more cities globally and extending access to more communities in need of sustainable transportation options.