Rental ebike programs booming in Australian cities as e-scooter ‘moral panic’ sees take-up stall | Consumer affairs

Amid what some are calling a “moral panic” over safety, e-scooter rental operations are declining across Australia, while rental e-bikes are soaring in popularity.

Sydney led the e-bike boom; Here, the number of vehicles on the streets almost doubled in 2025, as US operator Lime appointed thousands more people.

E-scooter rentals have become more common in Australia than e-bikes; The devices were authorized in all capital cities except Sydney by early 2025. Operations were frozen for the year due to security concerns, reduced access and unpopularity.

Major operator Neuron and its subsidiary Beam reduced their total fleet by around a tenth during the year to around 12,500 e-scooters across 24 locations.

Perth has pulled nearly 1,000 rental e-scooters from the streets after a man died in an e-scooter crash. A study conducted in Western Australia later found that e-mobility could be subject to strict regulation.

In Bendigo, 250 of Beam’s scooters were taken off the streets after users made fewer than 55,000 trips. missing expectationsThe City of Adelaide said its 2,000-strong fleet would see passenger numbers fall from 543,000 to 514,000 from 2024 to 2025.

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Neuron and Lime have withdrawn their scooters from Melbourne’s Yarra, having been forced out of the city’s CBD in 2024, after the council increased fees.

Zipidi’s industry consultant Stephen Coulter attributed the e-scooter slowdown to “moral panic” over safety and injuries.

“You experienced moral panic, which caused some [local governments] “Overreacting like the City of Melbourne withdrawing them overnight in September 2024,” he said.

Coulter said state governments could help e-scooters return in 2026, with the Victorian and New South Wales governments approving share scheme operators, while WA and Queensland would respond to state inquiries.

Meanwhile, Melbourne residents are switching to Lime’s e-bikes, Coulter said.

“In the absence of scooters, bikes are being acquired and operators are getting better at adjusting them to customer needs,” he said.

Cities that previously used only e-scooters have turned to bicycles. Hobart is adopting Beam bikes in May, Canberra has invited applications for e-bike and e-scooter operations and Adelaide will issue a similar invitation this year.

Will Peters, Lime’s head of Asia Pacific, said the company was discouraged by Melbourne’s removal of its e-scooters but remained hopeful about increasing its e-bike rollout.

It is limited to operating 1,200 e-bikes in inner Melbourne but has recently launched bikes and scooters in the Darebin municipality and is eyeing the chance to expand into nearby Merri-bek.

Peters said Lime had seen the biggest increase in Sydney, where e-scooter use is illegal, including on shared programmes.

The company has more than doubled its Sydney fleet to at least 7,000 e-bikes by 2025, according to Guardian Australia analysis of publicly available data; but industry sources have suggested the real figure may be higher than 10,000. The company declined to share fleet data.

Lime is bidding to further increase ridership in Sydney and plans to expand west to Parramatta by offering redesigned bikes and subscriber discounts.

“How can we make Sydney the best market?” said Peters. “I think we can be bigger than London, we can be bigger than Paris.”

E-bikes have boomed in Paris after the first European city to invite shared e-scooters became the first European city to ban them in 2023.

Sydney’s lack of scooters has similarly driven rapid growth in rental e-bike use; 600,000 NSW residents currently use shared e-bikes once a month; that’s 100,000 more than in October, according to government data.

The City of Sydney reports shared e-bike rides in the CBD will almost double to 3.7 million by 2025. Demand has increased competition, with HelloRide operating 3,000 e-bikes and Ario bringing a fleet of 2,700 since late 2024.

Shared bikes are legal for road use; They are limited to 25 km/h speed and 250 watts of power, unlike illegal and modified e-bikes that the government has cracked down on amid a rise in injuries across the country.

E-scooters and other personal mobility devices will cause 10 deaths and 440 crashes in Queensland by 2025, preliminary police data shows. Legal e-bikes, both privately owned and rented, were involved in four deaths and 235 crashes.

The relative safety of shared e-bikes compared to escooters has encouraged customers to swap, according to Adam Rossetto, managing director of Ario, which operates scooters in northern Queensland.

“E-bikes are coming to the fore again,” Rossetto said.

“They provide a more traditional approach to mobility… which I think creates less stupidity on the part of the users.”