A total of twelve different electric scooter players have been licensed to rent 667 small electric vehicles each on public land in the municipality of Oslo.
The Urban Environment Agency decided on Saturday that the permit is valid from 10 September 2021 to 31 March 2022.
Iowa, Bird, Dot, Layer, Ride, Sherbike, Wind, Lime, Bolt, Woy, Byte and Gates can rent small electric vehicles.
Toxicop AS only rejected. Oslo Municipality says we have withdrawn its application for Mobility AS.
Strong reduction
According to the plan, the number of electric scooters in Oslo was to be drastically reduced from the beginning of the month, but it was postponed until September 10 as many players took the tightness to court.
Oslo is the largest city in Europe with the highest number of scooters per head. In addition, several accidents related to electric scooters have been reported at night. In July, electric scooters treated an average of 13 injured each day after an accident.
The municipality has decided to set a ceiling of 8,000 electric scooters in total. The actors who went to court criticized both the ceiling and did not introduce any restriction on the number of actors.
Tender required
Christina Mo Gjerde, Norwegian manager at the scooter company Voil, believes the municipal council is increasingly controlling the electric scooter market.
He will not comment on the current legal process, but insists that the company adhere to applicable regulations at all times.
-City Council’s greater regulation brings with it the much-coveted transportation privilege in Oslo. Users will soon have to deal with a jungle of applications, he says in an email to NTP.
As of today, there are nine players in the rental market. Now it increases to twelve, while at the same time there are very few bicycles per player. All three big players who sued the Oslo Municipality have 5,000 electric scooters.
– Finding an electric scooter can be very difficult. The experience of other cities shows that this type of regulation leads to dissatisfaction and poorly organized privilege. We want a tender competition recently because the city council also recently revealed that the city council in Oslo decided last year, says Mo Gijarde.
– There is a tender competition as the transport economy sector believes is the best solution. We hope and expect the Oslo municipality to continue working with this model until next season, he says.
Bolt: All right
Bolt, on the other hand, one of the younger players, believes it is more straightforward to follow the new rule.
The company has had a very small fleet in Oslo since its inception and has focused on taxi services in the same application.
Bolt has had one of the smallest fleets in Oslo since we started in 2020, but we are ready for it to be even smaller after regulation. So, we have no problem with the operator now having less than 1,000 scooters, ”says Norwegian manager Jose Ray Bolt.
He believes a regulation has been needed for a long time, and says it is not surprising that Oslo should be regulated.
– Fewer electric scooters are a “cleaner” Oslo, based on less clutter, but with opportunities for sustainable transportation. We think it would be great for us to have more players who want to contribute to making Oslo a more stable city, Ray says.
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