In This Article:
(Bloomberg) -- Scooter companies should be on top of the world: They have massive user growth, global adoption and investors happy to subsidize billions of dollars in losses.
But there are some major issues that plague the industry: the logistics of recharging fleets of thousands of electric vehicles every day, and city regulators considering kicking the companies out of town for clogging public thoroughfares.
A new company, GetCharged Inc., wants to tackle both problems, and has brought on some scooter heavyweights to help.
Noa Khamallah, who previously held senior posts at Lime as well as its European competitor Voi Technology AB, has been hired as co-founder and vice president of government affairs and global strategy, based in Paris, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
GetCharged, which goes by the shorter name Charge, also now counts Caen Contee as a close adviser, who’s assisting with recruiting and fundraising, the people said. Contee was on the founding team of Lime, a scooter leader last valued at more than $2 billion. Contee and Khamallah will work alongside New York-based Dan Waldman and Andrew Fox, both co-founders of year-old Charge, and who were also early investors in Lime.
A spokeswoman for Charge declined to provide a comment for this story. Contee and Khamallah’s connections to the startup have not been previously reported.
Read more: Europe’s Cobbled Streets Breaking Scooters and Business Models
Charge, which provides cities with docks for scooters, isn’t the only company to tackle the complicated logistics of scooter growth. Another startup called Swiftmile also does, and Lyft Inc. has tested its own version. Right now, however, most scooters remain dockless, forcing companies to deploy workers to collect the vehicles and juice them up overnight -- a costly and difficult undertaking.
Charge is working with design agency Boyce Products Ltd. to develop the physical docking stations, one of the people said. The structures are akin to bicycle racks in principle -- scooters can be parked there when a user is finished, or when a battery needs topping up. The company will also encourage users to park scooters in pre-determined locations visible on an app, rather than leave them anywhere on the sidewalk.
Users would be incentivized to use either the docks or the parking areas, as a way of helping startups manage the battery life of their scooter fleets, as well as reducing clutter caused by dumped vehicles that draw the ire of city officials and citizens alike.