The electric scooter revolution with Lime co-founder Brad Bao

Lime co-founder Brad Bao explains how the electric scooter revolution will evolve. The Verge's Nilay Patel and Andrew Hawkins discuss the seemingly overnight emergence of electric scooters in cities across the country. They explore the tension scooters can create and ponder the future of urban mobility. Vote for Vergecast in the Webby's! as well as The Verge's Why'd You Push That Button? and our wonderful YouTube channel Verge Science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:08Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody, it's Neil from The Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, Verge Senior Transportation Reporter Andrew Hawkins and I sat down with Lime co-founder and Executive Chairman Brad Bao. You probably know Lime. They're one of the big scooter companies that are taking over our cities with the little electric scooters. They're super fun to ride. I love them. We talked to Brad about why scooters, why they appeared so suddenly, where they came from, how he's managing fleets of expensive hardware in cities around the world, what's next for safety, what's next for the company, and importantly, when they're coming to New York. That's the Vergecast interview episode. Check it out.

• 1:44Nilay Patel?

  Okay, we're here with Brad Bao, who's the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Lime. Welcome, Brad.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Thank you, and great to be here. Very excited to talk about the future of urban mobility.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  Yes, I'm very excited to ask you many questions about scooters because I love them. I love them unashamedly.

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  And I don't, New York doesn't have them yet, so every time I go to a city with them.

• 2:06Speaker 03

  We're talking to them now.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly. So, real quick, I just want to start at the very beginning. You were an investor at Tencent, you were in China, that's your background. And you came here and you started a scooter company. Just walk me through the process of starting Lime. Like, why scooters? Why go from investor to being an entrepreneur? All of that, give me the journey.

• 2:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. The, well, first of all, the way I see myself is that I've been an entrepreneur all the time. So, before Lime, that I co-founded a venture capital fund as well, you know? Different forms still of startup. And at Tencent, that I came over here to Silicon Valley in 2003. And I was the first and only employee for Tencent outside of China. So, to me, it's a startup as well, but backed by a big company that I started. And that gave me a lot of thoughts on what technology can do, right? I firmly believe that technology can be leveraged to improve our life, real life. Not just the virtual, in the cloud, but the real life we live in every day.

• 3:08Speaker 03

  And therefore, that is reflected in Lime as well, that everything we do has a positive impact in the real life that we live. And also has a opportunity that we can create for users to connect better with each other, better with the neighborhoods, and better with the city they live in. Every day, we got stuck in the traffic. The congestion is getting worse, the pollution is getting worse, and there's no solution for it. And for us as the user, there's not even an alternative. You either end up like running, or you end up like in a Uber and stuck in the traffic. And that really triggers our passion about how we combine technology

• 3:47Speaker 03

  and provide a very affordable and accessible solution for the urban, you know, transportation. You know, in the US, it's strikingly that in urban environment, that more than 50% of the traffic is less than 223 miles. And 70% of the US traffic is single occupancy. And you add up that together, right? There's no reason we have to travel a mile or two in a 4,000-pound car and produce, you know, the pollutions and the congestions. And I really like one of the... Saying is that you're not in the traffic, you are the traffic.

• 4:26Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  So the question here is that how do we change that, right? We can, you know, complain about the traffic on a daily basis and still live our life the old way, or we can proactively change it. And that's how we started live.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  So you were saying, right before you started it, you actually started as Lime Bike, and your first products were bicycles. Tell me about the shift to scooters. When did you see that scooters were actually more compelling, more interesting? It seems like there weren't any scooter companies, and now there are lots of them. How did you make that shift?

• 4:56Speaker 03

  I won't categorize as a shift, but rather a journey of exploring what is the best for the users. So we started the company as Lime, not Lime Bikes, but, you know, initially where we, the initial product we had was bikes, right? So we put Lime on to, you know, app stores and in the search, and it's just not search friendly, that we show up like ranking thirty thousand or a hundred thirty thousand. And we want to make it clear to the user, therefore, that we change it to Lime Bike for, uh, for the user, you know, discoveries. And then later on, that we launched the e-bikes, and we launched the scooters, we're testing the EVs and many other more, uh, mode of modalities.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  And therefore, that the Lime Bike doesn't apply anymore, so we reverted into Lime. And that, yeah, that's how we came about.

• 5:45Nilay Patel?

  But when did you decide that you were gonna do scooter? Because you're known for scooters. Was there a meeting, where you all had a whiteboard, someone said, I, I found this scooter? Or was it a more rigorous sort of discovery?

• 5:56Speaker 03

  It's a combination of both. So before we started the company, I have a, a kind of like a pyramid, right, of a product, so product metrics. And the product matrix says this, the shorter the distance and the lower the price, that should potentially have the, uh, the broader user case, and which in that case is many pedal bike. And the longer the distance, which, uh, you know, let's say a mile or two with power assistant and all that, at a little bit higher price, it will be e-bikes and potentially scooters. And longer than that, you know, somewhere between two to five miles, which covers mostly, most of the cities, it should be a electric vehicle. And that's still more affordable and eco-friendly. But the other side of that is really when we

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Hear from the users that they they feel they're not only just more free and also saves them more time, but also more importantly is that they, you know, user tell us that they feel they're Superman, they feel they're empowered. But for Lime, it's not about bikes or scooters or EVs, it's about how we concentrate on the product and the user need and developer services that really serve them better.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Hey Brad, this is Andrew.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Hey Andrew.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  About specifically, when did you realize that you had a revolutionary product here? Because I don't think anyone initially thought that the scooters were going to catch on the way that they did, but then eventually it was very clear that this was going to be something that was really going to sort of take over cities in a way that hadn't really been done since perhaps Uber and Lyft came around. And so what was, what was the point that you realized that this was more than just maybe a fun recreational way for people to get around, but was actually starting to have an impact and on the way that people were sort of using transportation as a whole in cities? What was, was there

• 7:52Speaker 04

  like a specific point that you, that you, that you looked at this and said, oh my gosh, this is really a lot crazier than we thought it was going to be?

• 8:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I see the other series of moments that further enhance that and help us to, you know, understand that. But I will refer to a few moments that one is initially we have a really small fleet to test out the market. We only have like 20 ish, right? For the first batch on the first day that we increased dramatically very quickly. But, you know, when we go into the street to deploy the vehicles, it's not we, you know, similar to other services. You put on the street and you, you watch whether users walk up to it and wandering and then pick it up, right? We see users lined up and the scooter never touched the ground. They literally just hand over to the users. So that popularity

• 8:42Speaker 03

  give us a strong hint that how, you know, welcomed the service could be. And the second part that to me personally is really the broader user base. We are committed to provide a service not just to a, in each group, but rather a common. Transportation means for everyone. So the moment we saw that, you know, our female riders that start to pick up way more than a average like bike, you know, commuter in terms of female and more senior citizens jumped up or, you know, like college kids jumped on the scooters. And that's the moment we realized it's beyond just, hey, this is a niche market.

• 9:25Speaker 03

  Some subgroup likes it and it's a fact.

• 9:28Nilay Patel?

  Well, how do you differentiate from the other scooter companies? Because you're all using kind of the same four or five designs, mostly from Xiaomi, I think. And I think the lines are better because they have speedometers. But the product, I mean, the experience of riding a scooter is fundamentally the same. How do you differentiate against a Bird or whatever Uber's doing or, you know, the many other companies that exist?

• 9:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, first, I need to clarify one thing that we're the probably the only company that do vertical integration, meaning that we entirely similar to Apple. We tightly integrated with, you know, the suppliers, with the design houses as well as manufacturers as well. So we have a dedicated team that which I built starting day one, roughly about eighty people right now in China, dedicated to the scooter designs, testings, manufacturings, as well as firmware development and quality controls. And what that gave us is we're the actually the probably one of the only that does not use Xiaomi or Nibar scooters. That all the scooters you see on the street today are designed by us

• 10:33Speaker 03

  and also manufactured by our exclusive manufacturing partners. So it's a little bit confusing, but if you look at our scooters, it's nothing like any others. And we don't use Xiaomi or Nibar at all.

• 10:45Nilay Patel?

  Let me push you on that a little bit. So that obviously increases your cost, right? I mean, if you're paying to develop the scooter, you're not taking the commodity one and rebranding it. Your cost per scooter has to be higher than your competitors. What is the return on that investment? Do you see people say, well, I like these scooters so much better? Are you measuring it? Are you thinking about it?

• 11:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a few things that I wanted to share here. That the philosophy of the company is that what we should focus on, right? We should focus on And we made a determination that we'll focus on user safeties and user experience. And that's what we should focus on and everything that we invest in there. That will be, you know, making us a better company. And the second part is that in terms of the scooters, the scooter is a relatively short and new industry. So there's nothing called a heavy duty scooter or or a shared scooters. There's no such a product is suitable for share at all. And we have to create it by our own. And therefore, we went on the journey to to work our own designs, do the iterations,

• 11:45Speaker 03

  and came up with new generations after new generations. And in this particular point, it's very interesting. I think, you know, a personal scooter that like Xiaomi or nine bar, which everyone else is using, that they're designed for personal use. They're not designed for longevity. They're not designed for abuse. They're not designed to be sit on the street 24 7. They're not designed to withhold the, you know, heavy kind of transportings or sharings. And and those things will gradually contribute to the two things we care the most. One is safety concerns. The other is the user experience. I don't have the number of our, you know, peer competitors, but I my guess is that we our cost is actually lower than them. And our longevity of the scooter life is X time longer.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  And that's the just based on public available data.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  So you're saying you you spend the money upfront on engineering. Your cost per scooter is higher, but they actually last longer and they have a better user experience. That's that's the that's the bet.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Actually, I think our cost is even lower.

• 12:46Speaker 04

  Really? That's surprising.

• 12:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you think about, you know, Apple compares some other manufacturers, buy retail is always the most expensive option you would have.

• 12:55Speaker 04

  How long are the scooters lasting right now on average?

• 12:58Speaker 03

  We don't disclose the details yet. We're still working on that, but I it's a.

• 13:03Speaker 04

  Let me ask you this then. I'll rephrase. I'll rephrase. I I I spoke with the CEO of Bird, Travis Vander Zan, recently. And he told me that they've determined that their scooters need to last on average around six months in order to break even. Would you say it's similar, less so, more so? How would you compare?

• 13:22Speaker 03

  I think that you are touching upon two questions. I will address them separately. Yeah. The first thing is that we already have quite a few cities are profitable. So that give you a hint that, you know, in terms of longevity of the scooter as well as our business model, that is not, we determined what we want to, right? We have. And the second part, we are looking at some of our scooter fleet, which we have iterations after iterations that already achieved that. Uh, six months. The later version will be even better.

• 13:55Nilay Patel?

  We're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back with Brad Baugh from Lime.

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• 15:11Nilay Patel?

  We're back with Brad Baugh from Lime.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  Just going back to what you said about about safety, I had a question on how Lime approaches the safety issue because obviously it is a concern. I don't think that there's really an easy solution to how you sort of guarantee safety for a product that is supposed to be about convenience and availability and obviously the prices is attracting people based on how low it costs to use. So I'm wondering how you how your company is approaching the issue of safety and if there's any sort of innovative ways of looking at how you can sort of promote safety in a way that encourages people to use helmets while also not sort of making it a less convenient service to use. It just seems like if the idea is to

• 16:00Speaker 04

  spread scooters everywhere so that people can just pick them up and use them when it's the most convenient and sort of on a whim, it's going to be really difficult to sort of have a safety issue go along with that. And I'm just wondering sort of how you sort of approaching this challenge.

• 16:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're asking really, really great question. Safety is the number one thing for us as a company. And I think that when it comes to mobility, that safety is the baseline, that without that, nothing matters. And that's why that we focus so much on it. And also in the mobility space, I think the safety is a result of a combination of different things. And in this case, that we are not only doing our part, but also working very proactively and aggressively with authorities, with cities, with urban planners, and also with community as well. I'll give you a few examples that how we approach that. First

• 16:57Speaker 03

  of all, that when it comes to mobility, that no one can guarantee the safety, but it's a combination of things we can further improve it and make it a much safer than any other means of transportation. And that's what we're aiming for. On the hardware side, that's the reason that we build a very extensive team and working on the customized hardware and further improve on the hardware and also our own operation side. On the other hand, that we launched a, you know, respect the right campaign, we devoted over three million dollars for the marketing outreach and education side, and we gave away more than two hundred fifty thousand helmets to help on improving the safety.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  And the other part, I think the interesting thing is that when we look at data really helps, when we look at some of the data that the the safety concern and quite a bit of that also is a result from infrastructures that we are sharing, they proactively sharing the data with the city, it helped them to do better plannings where that bike lane should be, right, how wide it will be. And we can share them with the data that we have seen very positive change in many cities that we were working with, you know, Paris, Austin, Seattle, Portland, you name it, right? Many cities has been leveraged the data we shared and started putting and improving infrastructures. And the the other few things that I wanted to, you know, share here that on the technology

• 18:23Speaker 03

  side, with a service, a connected service like ours, that there's so much more we can do, you know, working on drunk driving detections that we can just slow down the vehicle where we detect that irregular, you know, driving.

• 18:37Nilay Patel?

  Wait, are you gonna like have a breathalyzer?

• 18:39Speaker 03

  Uh, no, I I think there are better ways to do it. The, uh, take one thing, for example, right, our scooters have, uh, have scooters have all kinds of sensors, and one of the sensors could detect whether it's driving in a straight line, or whether it's like making irregular, you know, wobbling and turns.

• 18:56Nilay Patel?

  So you can, you can tell if someone's impaired, if they're, that they're wobbling and you'll, you'll slow them down?

• 19:01Speaker 03

  That's right, we'll do the warning, we can slow it down. We're still working on it, not fully launched, but that's a example of many things that we're improving right now.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  On the issue of of data, I'm glad that you brought that up because, as I'm sure you know, that there's this issue going on right now in the city of Los Angeles where they're fighting a couple of the scooter companies on on access to more data from from, based on location sharing and this concept around the mobility data specification. And I'm wondering, has Lime weighed in on this at all? Because it's, just for the uninitiated, it's about basically providing data to cities about. Where the scooters are being unlocked and then where they're being locked again. So it's about the pickup point and the drop off point. And there are privacy people who have concerns that that's giving cities too much data about users. And so I'm wondering where you, where Lime comes down on protecting the privacy of your users,

• 19:54Speaker 04

  while also providing enough data to the cities so that they can make these determinations about bike lanes and things like that.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. The data, data and the privacy is another very key thing for us as a company. That's a responsibility we have for the users as well as for the cities and community as well. That, you know, we, we definitely weigh the in and also working together with, with the City of L A to, on the data standards. I think there's always a balance we have to strike, right? The demand for the city side and the protection of the users. And what we think they makes the most sense is that how we're going to utilize the data and what matters and what does not. And in this case, for the urban planners, and which we do share data with the city,

• 20:41Speaker 03

  that for urban planning, for monitoring the traffic, that I think is very valuable, that we share the data with the city and help them to, you know, further improve the urban transportations. And in this case, that is not one company or the city alone that can do this. It's a combination of things and a collaboration among us. We should share that the, where the traffic patterns are and when and where that most of the trips happens, but we don't need to, and the city does not need to know who is the individual took those trips. So aggregate data that does help on urban planning side and help to fight the traffic congestions, but that does not necessarily reveal the user, you know, privacy or identities.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  Well, that can be a little bit hazy though, right? Because it's been shown that even with aggregated data, you can sort of pick out points and sort of still track certain people based on the number of, you know, times that they use a specific route, especially if they're, you know, picking up a scooter that's right outside their home, for instance. How can you sort of guarantee that your, your user's privacy is being protected here?

• 21:48Speaker 03

  On that particular, you know, front, that this industry is relatively new. You know, we and also city alike, that we're exploring what's the best options and we will take all that into considerations. And the second part, that this is not that unique. You know, our cell phones knows exactly where we are and how that data is protected. Google Map, you use it every time, how that is protected. And that is some best practice and learnings that we can have and apply that to the situation we have. The key thing is that all about the future of mobile mobility. How, if we know where it should be and if we know that there are certain steps that we have to take to get there, including like leveraging data to do a better planning,

• 22:32Speaker 03

  then we need to figure out a way that while protecting the user privacies and still make the data valuable and also available to the stakeholders.

• 22:42Nilay Patel?

  So I think this gets to the big question, which is you're obviously very passionate about the future of mobility. The scooters are great. I mean, I do love them, but they're very controversial, right? Some, I live in a city that just won't allow them. I was just in Austin for South by Southwest, very controversial in that city. I was in Portland, very controversial in that city. How are you trying to figure out the balance between pushing forward your vision that you're, you're obviously passionate about, along with, you know, people really like these products, next to, well, there are scooters all over the streets and they're tipped over and people don't always take care of them. There's data tracking issues. There is, people throw them in rivers for some reason, which is like the funniest trend.

• 23:25Nilay Patel?

  How are you managing that big controversy to push forward your vision?

• 23:29Speaker 03

  Totally. That's a big and great question. One of the things that Lime does things slightly different is that I would say is obsessed with the vision, obsessed with customers. And that means that when we think about, you should take a look at what the future looks like. And then we walk back, say, what is available today? What is missing? Is the technology ready or not? And then step by step, we build towards that. In this case, there are many things that I think anything new that will be considered as. Some way of nuances and the result of like we as companies, we're still learning, right? How do we do proper parkings? We tried many things. We'll keep on improving and experimenting

• 24:14Speaker 03

  things like, you know, for example, we ask user to take a photo of their parking job and then we will, you know, use image recognitions and other ways to to validate that, right? That's one of the examples and we have sensors, we can detect whether the scooter is fell over or not, and that can help us address those questions. So technology is advancing, our own product and service and operation is advancing. And those are the things that the help us to do a better job, not just provide a very convenient ride, but also take into consideration of the cities, the landscape, as well as the communities. And the second part, I think, is a also, we I

• 24:54Speaker 03

  believe that we also carry the mission that not only just to serve our users, but also serve the city and communities. So the approach we take are in two folds, I would say. The first part is to gradually roll out, right? Not like say, hey, let's just bombard the city with like a hundred thousand scooters and call it done.

• 25:15Nilay Patel?

  But that but wait, but that's how it feels. But I just wanted, that's really interesting. You said that. That is how a lot of people feel about the scooters, that they were bombarded with them.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  And that's how it started too, it seems like, at least initially, until cities really sort of caught on and realized what was happening and then, you know, started confiscating and and pounding and pounding the scooters and and forcing and forcing the companies to, you know, agree to certain parameters and to receive permits and things like that. So but it definitely started out that way where you just sort of bombard a city and then.

• 25:44Nilay Patel?

  So you're you're walking that back a little bit. New strategies.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Let's take take a look at a few things as the, you know, numbers that will probably speak the best for it. That let's take San Antonio, for example, we roughly have about a thousand to two thousand scooters in the in the city. And it because it's new, that it costs a lot of attentions. Guess how many cars we have in San Antonio parking on the street? We have roughly about a million cars parking on the street every single day. And they're in different shape, you know, some are parked well, some are not, right? Different colors and they all, you know, make a lot of noise and give a lot of pollutions.

• 26:28Speaker 03

  In that regard, is that really a number thing or is that a perception thing? So that goes to the second fold that is focused on a community outreach and education as well. That in the sense of like, if the communities does not see this as a positive thing to the community that help to reduce congestions and pollutions, then I think we failed half of our mission. And that's what we also focus on with the, you know, respect the right campaigns and give out helmets and also community education events that we do.

• 27:04Nilay Patel?

  I think the thing that strikes me the most is even you put out a thousand or two thousand scooters, that's a thousand or two thousand pieces of hardware that you've deployed in the city. They have batteries and wheels and they fall over and you gotta charge them. And that means you, you need to have people who do that work too. Are you thinking about that group of people and making them, you know, actually part like Lime employees? Are you, are you saying that's going to be distributed crowdsourced work as well? Are you thinking about how, how to improve their jobs? Like just managing that many pieces of hardware, Vergecast listeners probably think about this all the time, like managing that many pieces of hardware is difficult.

• 27:39Speaker 04

  And it's dangerous too sometimes. I've spoken to some of the, you guys, you guys call them juicers, right? Is that correct?

• 27:45Nilay Patel?

  That's an incredible name.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, which is perfect because it goes so well with, you know, Lime.

• 27:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But tell me about the life of a juicer. How do you, how do you improve it?

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the, you know, what we have is we have dedicated folks, but focusing on the safety issues and emergencies or, you know, the service level agreement that we have with the city and probably we were the first, I'm not sure if they are in or not, but we were the first to, to provide that and to ensure that all the vehicles are checked regularly and to make sure they're safe. And the, you know, you're right, right? As a new business that our service is more than just the hardware alone, it's a entire service layer behind it to support it. Make sure they are checked, make sure they're safe, make sure they're placed at the right place, make sure there's. You know, folks that pick up the scooters when they show up at the wrong places, make sure

• 28:38Speaker 03

  that we have some supporters supported and also insurances, many other things that goes into it. And when it comes to recharges or that, given the nature of the business, they're so, let's say, distributed and it will be difficult to have a central operation to do that. I think gig economy is nothing new and that's the same reason as why that, you know, food ordering deliveries that are utilizing the gig economy, Uber utilizes the crowdsourced drivers, since they're distributed, right? It's very different from a centralized service. And what we are working on is to help, you know, the juicing, we call it, the juicing

• 29:19Speaker 03

  work that are pleasant, safer, and also help them to engage and support each other. We have the team dedicated to support them. And what we were touched was the stories we heard about the life as a juicer, that if you think about the our typical type of, you know, juicing, that it happens at night, right? So it's not competing with the day job, it's not competing even with Ubers or food ordering deliveries that at the peak hour, it's really a flexible economic, you know, opportunity for a lot of folks.

• 29:53Nilay Patel?

  That's heartwarming. It is also some deeply cyberpunk shit, right? Like, right, like, it's a new thing and the fact that they're called juicers is wild and someone shared a novel about it. Give me an example of a concrete step you've taken to sort of make it better for the people who are servicing all these scooters.

• 30:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, one latest thing that, which is from the product side, I'll share with you, is very interesting. So what we found is that the, some of the conflicts, since if we think about the juicers, they don't really know each other in the real life, that the, then the conflict is that a bunch of juicers are going after the same scooter, right? And to them is cash.

• 30:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  If you've got a few folks that come in for the same cash, you got conflicts. And what we did is that we hear them, uh, discuss with them and we launched a reserve feature. So the user can claim that scooter, avoid that kind of like, you know, conflict on the street. And that's one thing we did. And the second thing that we, we did is that we have a dedicated team that is supporting them. So, you know, juicers are our users either way. That we're not only making their, you know, app experience much better and give them more accurate GPS locations. Launching the service, uh, the service and features that help them to do the juicing work much more efficient.

• 31:13Speaker 03

  But also we have a dedicated support team and we have also juicer community management that they feel they belongs to a group that's supporting each other. And they have a lot of things in common, right? That I think, you know, the, the economic opportunity we provide back to the community is we provide it to every single local community we're operating in. And there are certain type of folks that found it really attractive. And in many cases that actually without knowing each other, you know, directly or indirectly, that it becomes a competition. But with, with knowing each other a little bit more, that becomes a support group, if you would.

• 31:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You said you had four generations of the hardware. What are the things you've improved? What are the big changes as you've started to iterate this product?

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, there, there's a lot, right? That I'm also in charge of products, so the list goes probably a thousand lines in terms of the improvement we make. But in a short, right, that the, I think a few things that one of them is safety. That if you look at the, the latest version, Gen, Gen three that we just launched, that we increased the wheel size much bigger and much wider. And that's to fight back on the cracks and also potholes that we often encounter in the city. And we add, uh, the suspensions, the two, two, uh, to the vehicle. Make sure that not only this is a much better and smoother ride, but also, uh, the is safer.

• 32:39Speaker 03

  When, when it comes to like speed bumps or whatnot and make the gravity, central gravity much lower. So the, the rider will be much more stabilized. So safety is number one. Number two is user experience and we add quite a bit of things, including status light. Tell user from afar that whether scooter is available or not, right? Whether it's out of battery or under maintenance. And that's more focused on the user experience side. And the third thing that we add more advanced sensors. And that goes back to, you know, take into consideration that com- communities and the folks that does not use our scooter yet. That, you know, how do we detect the scooter fail over? How do we know where it's parked at the wrong place?

• 33:22Speaker 03

  And the sensors will help us to do that and make our operation better. And the last part is really durability. So we further enhance on the durability of our scooter, even though we're already much longer than the, uh, the other folks. That we'll still keep on improving that. I think to Lime, the most important thing is not about us versus competitors or whatnot. It's we together that are really promoting and, and providing the, the very affordable and available service to the users. And also further educate the, uh, community why this is beneficiary, uh, to everyone, beneficial to everyone of us. And then work with city to improve that.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  And it's more about how we improve compared to ourself yesterday. So we'll keep on innovating, we'll keep on improving. The focus we should have is what a urban mobility will look like in the future. It has to be much nimble and smaller and per tailored to personal travels, not a seven seater, five seater car that take one person across the street. It has to be shared in order to reduce the, uh, occupation of the public space, right? Much smaller and also shared, it has to be electric powered. And it has to be something that's not only very affordable, accessible, but also, you know, readily available. So that's reliable for all the users when they, whenever they need it.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  And those are the things that we want to achieve, but we're still far away from that. So. Lime were devoted and dedicated all the time, keep on innovating part and they'll keep on working with cities.

• 34:58Speaker 04

  Do you think this market's winner take all? I mean, you have competitors who certainly think it's winner take all or there'll be a duopoly. There were a lot of car sharing services and now there's two. There are a lot of scooter companies. Do you think there's always going to be a lot of scooter companies or just one or two?

• 35:12Speaker 03

  I think the nature of the business does, it's so complicated, it will be hard for smaller player to really survive. And even today that we are still keep on improving on the durability of the scooters, the operating efficiencies and all kinds of things, right? So I won't say it will be a winner take all, but I think there will be limited players that going to the, into the future that will be providing majority of the service. I think that also is good for the user as well. Instead of like struggling, you know, which one to take, right? There's always a reliable and available service for them. But that is based on one condition, that company itself has to have a very strong

• 35:56Speaker 03

  values that not to, you know, abuse the leadership position. We are the leader globally in terms of the scooter right now, but we'll keep on reminding ourselves and our entire team that what is the vision and the mission of the company and what are the values that we live by.

• 36:14Speaker 04

  So I'm sure you just saw, but Bird just increased its per minute charge in a couple of key markets, Los Angeles, Detroit and a few others. Is Lime going to be looking at fluctuating some prices down the road as well, do you think?

• 36:26Speaker 03

  First of all, that the, you know, I said a three things. Well, I always wanted to simplify things for, for folks to easy to remember. I said the three A's that for us as a company to focus on improving, you know, the, the first is availability, right? Whenever you need it, wherever, whenever and however you want it. And the second part is accessibility and therefore the we launched like non credit card payment, we launched non smartphone unlocks and all that things for to increase accessibility. And the third thing that we we committed on is to provide if a affordable transportation means. So we'll keep on focusing on that. And does that mean that we don't

• 37:07Speaker 03

  we will commit on the current price? I I think we will do some experimenting as well. Since what is the right price? Nobody knows today, right? We arbitrarily said, hey, 15 cents a minute and everyone follows. And that's what we have today. So I think finding the right balance is the answer. It could be higher, it could be lower, it could be dynamic, it could be, you know, based on the market. That I I think the the experiments is required and data will tell us what will be the right balance. But meanwhile, that I don't think that the we will ever change that our mission to create a service that's affordable to the majority.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  I have a very important final question for you.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  And that is, why do all the scooter companies have four letter names?

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Because we started with lime.

• 37:59Speaker 04

  Oh, I see. And everyone just copied that. That doesn't make any sense.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I I think they are it probably easier to to pronounce or not that the the but we started definitely the one the one of the earliest that we started with lime. And it probably helps other folks to think through it. But then we got also, you know, some of the names I won't even read into that. It's just like random to me.

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  When you see the bird people at like conferences, are you do you like stare them down? Are you friends? Do you do you knock over birds when you see them on the street?

• 38:33Speaker 03

  Definitely not.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  And that's one of the code we as a company we have as well.

• 38:42Nilay Patel?

  You have to follow the code.

• 38:43Speaker 03

  What you will see that I can share with you, this is very interesting that I visit a lot of markets. And when we see the bird or the school or, you know, other companies, school affair on the street or in the wrong place, we will move them to the right place and lift them up. And that is a culture that we at Lime that implementing into the entire company. That is about urban mobility and it's about how we make it the future better. Then it doesn't matter if a scooter is lying in the middle of the street. It's not good for the urban mobility. It's not good for the future and we will help to correct that. Of course, we will not go to, you know, all the way, do nothing else, but do that. But if we pass by them, that we will correct them. And you will see that happen at, you know, every market.

• 39:28Nilay Patel?

  In the end, we are all juicers.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  I think again that the future, you know, mobility, if you look at it, right? It's not us will be able to do it alone. It's a combination of us, our peers together, pushing for the right vision. It's our collaboration with the cities, it's the, the communities and even the non-users that they embrace this vision. They embrace that this city needs less cars, more shared mobility that's greener, healthier as well as less pollution. If they don't, that it will be really difficult for us to get there.

• 40:02Nilay Patel?

  Are you gonna bring these to New York? Cause I'm dying.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, we, we definitely are, but we are again that we work with city to plan the, the proper launch. So we're still working with city on the New York city. We just launched, I think one of the, we launched in Hopoka.

• 40:17Nilay Patel?

  Okay. Which is the sixth borough.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Across the river.

• 40:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a, a lime through the tunnel. It's gonna be great. Through the battery tunnel?

• 40:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:27Nilay Patel?

  Just go for it.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  You need a battery?

• 40:30Nilay Patel?

  R I P.

• 40:30Speaker 03

  I'm sorry.

• 40:31Nilay Patel?

  Uh, do you have, do you have an ETA in New York?

• 40:33Speaker 03

  Initial discussion was around the summer to do a pilot, but I think the, as you mentioned, right, there are regulations need to be changed before we can launch. And those regulations was, I believe was established in the 1930s, that for Mopass, for gasoline Mopass. And it just outdated. And the city knows that, we knows that the, it's just a process if you need to be go through till you order to change that. It's not unique to New York. There are quite a few other places. Miami was like that, and they changed it last year. And similar to many other cities as well, countries. That Germany is like that, but Germany is going to change it in July this year. Or actually, maybe earlier than that, before the summer.

• 41:14Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so I'm looking for sometime late summer, maybe in New York?

• 41:17Speaker 03

  I hope so.

• 41:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, well, that's as good a place as any to end it. Thank you so much, Brad, for coming on. Really appreciate the time.

• 41:24Speaker 03

  Thank you for all the time you have, you know, with me and appreciate all the questions.

• 41:28Nilay Patel?

  All right, that was Brad Bao, co-founder and executive chairman of Lime. Thank you to Andrew Hawkins for joining me and asking better questions than me. I love having Verge reporters on the show because they're all smarter than me. We love getting your feedback in these interview episodes. Tweet at me at MattReckless. Tell me who you want to talk to, tell me what topics you want to cover. This is just an amazing chance to stretch out and really get into it with people. So, love your feedback. I want to go where you want me to go. So hit me up, I'm at Reckless. We got the regular Vergecast coming up for you on Friday. Another interview episode on Tuesday. We'll see you then.

• 42:04Speaker 06

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