Lime To Include Competing Rentals On New ‘One-Stop’ App

Lime is poised to bring competitors on board its app for renting electric scooters, bikes and light electric vehicles for short trips as the startup bets offering more options to consumers will pay off down the line, the company announced in a blog post.

Users of the Lime Platform app will soon find locations not just for the startup’s lime-green scooters and bikes, but also for competitor Wheels’ electric bikes in four different cities: Seattle, Austin, Miami and Berlin.

On the app — dubbed the first of its kind dedicated to micro-mobility — users will also find price information for Wheels rentals like they would for Lime’s offerings, and they can use the app to rent a Wheels eBike, the company said in the post.

“Our mission is to own all trips under five miles,” said Lime Chief Financial Officer Andrea Ellis in a September interview with PYMNTS.

And more such deals appear be on the way. In the post, Lime said it plans to unveil “new global partners” over the coming months, and the expanded offerings will include not just electric bikes, but a “wide range of vehicle types to meet the needs of any trip distance or preference.”

Lime, in turn, is betting the convenience factor will be a big plus for users, who will no longer “need to download five or six different apps based on what they find on the street,” the startup noted in the rollout of its new platform.

The launch of Lime Platform comes as Lime pushes to reach an ambitious goal to become the first micro-mobility company to turn a profit for a full year.

In the September interview, Ellis detailed the startup’s efforts to reach that goal, applying cost discipline across the board, from labor and equipment to corporate expenditures.

And she said Lime hopes to expand its network of cities across the world.