The new e-trekkers are already available for rent in at least 14 German cities, just one month after legal permission was granted. In large cities, there are usually several rental companies active, in some smaller cities only one provider.
This was the result of a survey by the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. After a good four weeks, Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) criticizes the implementation of the driver’s license for electric scooters, citing Berlin in particular. The federal government has banned "driving on sidewalks" "and provided for a fine," the minister told Bild. "Unfortunately, however, there is too little control in the German capital, for example."
Scheuer said: "Every municipality has the possibility to do this." In certain zones, for example, cities could also exclude e-scooters altogether. "It would all be possible. There is still a lot to jerk together." Each city is also free to set up specific stations where the scooters must be parked, he said. "Berlin has decided otherwise and said it doesn’t matter where they are located."
The list of cities with electric scooters for hire at the beginning of July included Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Bonn, Munster, Erfurt, Lubeck, Augsburg, Herne and Potsdam.
Berlin-based rental company Tier already announced plans to significantly expand its offerings in the coming weeks – "both the number of scooters in cities, and the number of cities overall". Circ, based in Berlin, said, "We are currently in contact with more than 80 other German cities and look forward to establishing further partnerships."Lime from the USA summarized, already after the first weeks this kind of the locomotion is well accepted.
It is difficult to estimate how many e-treadooters there are in total in the cities. Some companies publish figures, others do not. From Tier, it says: "The fleet size in the cities varies: for example, we are in Cologne with 400 scooters or in Berlin with 800 scooters."From the company Voi from Sweden, which rents in seven German cities, it says: "We have started in each of these cities with about 50 to several hundred e-scooters." Lime and Circ, on the other hand, do not give any figures.
All companies emphasize how environmentally friendly their offer is. But whether a scooter rider actually decided not to drive a car is hard to clarify. According to initial observations, most drivers in Berlin are tourists near tourist attractions or young people out and about in the nightlife – neither group is a classic driver in the big city. Also, many scooters are scrapped after just a few weeks.