After announcing plans to add electric scooters to their portfolio a month ago, MyTaxi revealed the location of their pilot as Lisbon.
Customers in the Portuguese capital can rent a scooter from a fleet of hundreds. For Daimler, this may open a whole new venture labelled Hive and is in competition to its current Taxi services.
For now they run the kick scooters under a new label, Hive, and Daimler embedded the service in a dedicated app of the same name. Yet Mytaxi CEO Eckart Diepenhorst told German media that this model will either kick-start a new service via Hive or else they may integrate it into the existing MyTaxi ride-hailing offer.
The pilot is new territory for Daimler and the CEO confirmed as much. While they use electric scooters made by Segway in Lisbon, Diepenhorst stressed that it would be "crucial to develop our own hardware" especially when moving into regions with more adverse weather conditions.
Indeed Hive may expand as early as next year depending on the market and the experiences they are making just now. The MyTaxi CEO also pointed to the importance of a good working relation with the respective city. He added it had been a decisive factor when opting for Portugal.
To rent an electric scooter via the Hive app comes at the cost of a one euro base fee and 15 cent per minute afterwards. Half an hour thus adds up to almost 5 euros. This is the normal market rate and the same Lime in Paris is asking. The electric scooters of both Lime or Hive can be left anywhere.
MyTaxi will consider to rolling out their Hive fleet of electric scooters across Europe if things work out in Lisbon.
We are not sure if Hive is the right choice of names for this venture given the popularity of the Hive smart home devices.
1 comment:
Is there a more pathetic sight than grown adults riding along on a scooter? Also, if they are propelled by a motor, I assume they need to be covered by insurance, particularly, if used on the roads. It is getting very dangerous with all these idiotic people and the risk to prospective riders/drivers/cyclists will be a problem & not least to pedestrians - who already have to put up with cyclists riding on the pavements. The problem is that we have spineless authorities who for one reason or another 🤔don’t want to refuse access to all these minority companies & forms. It’s all about saving the planet & non fossil fuels, etc. However, and particularly, related to electric cars, where do they think the power comes from to charge the vehicles? I’ll give a clue: P-W-R S-ATIONS still fuelled mainly by G-S & C-AL!!! (Also, why do all these consultations, doing the rounds at the moment, let all & sundry comment on road proposals & schemes in London. Surely, it is fair that only those who reside in London, should have a say? The election for the mayor & London assembly is
- I believe - confined to those residing in London boroughs, so why are the rules different for consultations, that principally affect those who live in London & particularly, the areas concerned? I would assume the legal justification for this has been explored, as it does seem unfair that those living outside London or areas concerned, can have a say?)
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