Bird: electric scooter market in crisis

08, Jan - NEWS

Bird, the US self-service electric scooter rental company, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, in another sign of the market's slowdown.

The Miami-based company said that the filing will not affect its Canadian and European subsidiaries, which continue to operate as usual.

In particular, Bird Global's parent company said in a press release that it intends to sell its own and other US branches to creditors but continue to operate.

Bird did not immediately respond to AFP's question about the nature of the assets the group plans to sell.

The company has already reached an agreement with creditors and has received a promise of £2 500 million in new money from MidCap Financial, a subsidiary of private equity giant Apollo Global Management.

The bird belongs to a generation of self-service electric scooter network operators that entered the market in the late 2010s.

For some time, this proposal was considered an important factor in the development of new ways to get around the city.

But a number of local authorities, outraged by the growing number of cases of street parking and traffic accidents, put the brakes on this.

Paris, Montreal, Las Vegas, and New Orleans have banned them after being temporarily allowed to join Barcelona, Toronto, and New York, but that didn't give them the green light.

Many other cities have imposed restrictions, reducing the number of electric scooters in circulation, the maximum speed, or banning the use of sidewalks.

Due to some of these restrictions and fierce competition among many new companies, Bird has decided to voluntarily withdraw from several markets, including Germany, Sweden, and Norway, in the 2022/10 season.

On May 2, Bird also decided to leave San Francisco.

The company says it still has a presence in about 350 cities around the world.

The company, once worth £2,3 billion, was listed on the stock market in 2021-2011.

But its share price quickly plummeted to less than 15 million in September and led to delisting in May.

Ultimately, the future of the electric scooter market will depend on whether operators can find ways to overcome the current challenges and ensure a profitable business.