Micro-mobility has gained a great deal of traction in recent times. There are a variety of reasons for this overcrowded roads, cost-efficiency, convenience, and environmental factors, to name a few. At the center of the talk on micro-mobility are E-Scooters.

The future offers immense prospects for these unique vehicles. This is evident by the fact that in the last few years, firms involved in the production of E-scooters have scaled up immensely. The companies such as Lime, Bird, Skip, Spin, Grin, and Yellow all belong to this league. Here are a few trends and statistics that convince us about the upward trajectory in which the E-Scooter segment is headed.

Billion-dollar Companies
E-Scooter companies have just taken the world by surprise over the last few years. Their surge in value is something unprecedented. The segment has already contributed its share of unicorns. The E-Scooter start-up, Bird, amassed a value of $1 billion in 2018, under a year since its inception. Later, it became the fastest company to achieve a billion-dollar valuation. In 2019, it was worth $2.5 billion. Another major player, Lime had also made it into the $1 billion clubs around a year post its inception.

Turning the big heads
The E-Scooter segment has lately received a great deal of investment from global majors, including tech giants. Alphabet and Uber invested a whopping $335 million into Lime in 2018. The same year, Ford acquired the E-Scooter company Spin for around $100 million.

$41.98 billion by 2030
Studies published by Grand View Research Inc., position the e-scooter industry to be worth an impressive $41.98 by 2030, with a CAGR of 8.5%. The Asia-Pacific is predicted to be the major driver of this growth and account for $26.25 billion.

In the coming years, E-Scooters would also be banking on making a dent into largely untapped markets such as India. Which already has a huge middle-class consumer base, and is home to the largest number of youths in the world.

4.6 million E-Scooters by 2024
Research conducted by Berg Insight tells us that the number of E-Scooters available for bike-sharing services will jump from 774,000 to 4.6 million by 2024 at a CAGR of 43%. Note that, E-scooter sharing services are available in at least 100 cities across the globe today.

Drivers of the growth
Rapid urbanisation and emerging climate challenges that are predicted to play a pivotal role in the near future are poised to be two of the main drivers for the growth of the e-scooter segment. Thus, on-demand commutation is going to gain added significance as infrastructure development struggles to keep up with the rapid pace of urbanisation across the globe. Commuters will be induced to opt for bike-sharing via e-scooters. Which will help them traverse across the city traffic with ease. To add to the convenience, they would also be able to save a great deal of time that was usually spent on finding parking spots for cars.

E-scooters are also more eco-friendly. As they do not require conventional fuels that pollute, or lead to challenges such as global warming.

The COVID-19 pandemic might have given a minor jolt to the e-scooter industry. However, in the post-COVID world, as we look towards crafting better cities with sustainable, user-friendly, and reliable modes of micro-mobility, e-scooters are going to become unavoidable. We are surely going to see many more of these vehicles beside our roads and sidewalks in the years to come.