While electric scooter startups are at a standstill in San Francisco, Lime is taking its scooter service to Santa Monica, Calif. — competitor Bird’s home turf. Although Lime was planning to launch its new model of scooter that it built in partnership with Segway in San Francisco last month, it’s now debuting them in the Los Angeles area first.
These Segway-powered Lime scooters are designed to be safer, longer-lasting via battery power and more durable for what the sharing economy requires, Lime CEO Toby Sun told TechCrunch in May. Now, instead of a maximum distance of 23 miles or so, Lime scooters can go up to 35 miles.
“A lot of the features in the past on scooters were made for the consumer market,” Sun said. “Not for the shared, heavy-duty markets.”
On the safety side, Lime enhanced its night-light on both the front and back of the scooter, and has added a light to flash below the deck. Lime has also added an additional brake, to have one on both the front and rear wheels.
Lime, which also has its pedal-assist electric bikes out and about in the LA area, says this is the first multimodal transportation service in LA. This news comes following reports of Lime raising a $250 million round led by GV.