Lime's Dockless Electric Scooter Service Has Launched in Brisbane

Overview

Need to get from A to B, and keen to do so on a neon green scooter? Well, you're in luck. After setting up shop in New Zealand, running a test in Melbourne and trialling electric bikes in Sydney, US-born company Lime has now unleashed its motorised two-wheeled transport in Brisbane.

Specifically, Lime is giving its dockless electric scooter service a whirl, initially leaving several hundred — yep hundred — in South Bank and Fortitude Valley. When the outfit launched in NZ, it clocked up more than 300,000 rides within a month, so it's clearly hoping for a similar influx of scooting here. The company has been gaining popularity across the globe, with even Uber signing up as a strategic partner.

With biking Lime's domain, its Lime-S electric scooters are of the stand-up variety — like the ones you probably had as a kid, not mopeds. But, with a 250-watt motor, they can reach speeds of just over 23 kilometres per hour and have a range of around 32 kilometres.

They'll cost you $1 to unlock and 30 cents per minute. In terms of hiring them, it works much the same as dockless bikes services that we've seen. You locate a nearby scooter using the Lime app, unlock it by scanning a QR code or entering an ID, and cruise to your destination. You then park and lock the scooter safely out of the way.

Each of the vehicles is also equipped with a sensor, which can tell the operators its location. And for keeping an eye on battery life, that's something that you can monitor via the app.

In Brisbane, Lime will add more to spots around the city according to demand, and will also collect the vehicles every night from wherever they end up. As far as the latter is concerned, the aim is twofold: to juice up the scooters for the next day, and to reduce both vandalism and street clutter. In other cities like Melbourne and Sydney, the bicycle sharing service boom, which Brisbane City Council has refrained from entering so far, has folks leaving their bikes wherever they feel like it, throwing them into rivers and more has been a problem around the country, which Lime clearly hopes to avoid in Brissie.

In Sydney, the company is currently trialling bikes rather then scooters due to legal restrictions; however the Queensland Government has given Lime an exemption to laws that otherwise deemed its vehicles illegal. Without the arrangement with the authorities, users could've been fined up to $10,444 due to the speed and power of the scooters. The state's road rules mandate that motorised scooters can't travel faster than ten kilometres per hour, or have an electric motor with more than a 200-watt output.