There are now over half a million e-scooters on European streets, according to Zag’s latest modelling and research.
New data reveals that there are currently 520,000 vehicles available, up from 400,000 in February. With strong upward momentum in the sector, these numbers could hit 600,000 by the end of the summer.
Operator e-scooter numbers
The market leader in 2022 remains TIER, with around 150,000 e-scooters across Europe. This includes 1,000 Spin e-scooters in the UK, following the purchase of the company late last year.
Many of these Spin scooters will be rebranded as TIER and brought onto its platform soon. In fact this process has already begun in Essex, with the launch of 350 TIER e-scooters replacing Spin’s e-scooters in Chelmsford.
TIER also now owns Nextbike, which could well make it the continent’s largest bikeshare company too. When factoring in all the Nextbike bikeshare systems scattered across the world, the firm can claim, with some justification, that it is operating micromobility vehicles in more locations globally than any other.
It is a now a close battle for second place between Bolt and Voi.
Together the companies have around the same number of e-scooters as TIER – maybe a little more now, as Bolt in particular is growing fast. While Bolt first and foremost remains a ride-hailing firm, with micromobility presented as an alternative in its app, the operator is increasingly releasing fleets of e-scooters in towns and cities where it does not operate cab services.
Although Bolt has no e-scooter presence in the UK, the country is likely to be on its target list should e-scooter sharing open up following legislation promised in the next 12 months. Estonian-based Bolt already operates ride-hailing services in the UK and will have a big presence at the MOVE conference in London this week.
The market split
So, 60% of the European market is split between just three companies – TIER, Bolt and Voi – while the top five is rounded out by two American companies, Lime and Bird, which most likely have around 20% of the market combined.
Three more companies together make up a further 10% – Dott, Superpedestrian and Helbiz.
The remaining 10% consists largely of single-country or single-city operators, with the notable exception of Neuron, which is a big player in Asia but has a sole European presence in the UK, where it has just over 1,000 vehicles.
UK potential
The UK could play a major role in this shared e-scooter revolution. The region remains in a tightly controlled trial phase and numbers have remained pretty static at around 20,000 e-scooters since London’s launch almost a year ago – while Germany now has nearly 10 times as many.
Should UK legislation open the sector up, Zag estimates a doubling or even tripling of the numbers to match the footprint of shared e-scooters in Italy or Poland – two countries of roughly similar population, but a fully open marketplace for shared e-scooters.
Zag Daily’s modelling takes a selection of available datasets, app observations and other sources, and models the missing gaps to understand how big the market is and how quickly it is growing. Please note that this is a model and some of the numbers may be a little too high or low. Should more operators reveal their stats, Zag will incorporate these in.
