Lime’s quest to become ‘the Amazon for transportation

Source Code

A year ago, it felt like the scooter business might be over. By one estimate, spending on scooter rentals fell almost 100% in the spring of 2020. With billions of people stuck at home for an indefinite amount of time, could any of the fast-growing micromobility startups hang on? Wayne Ting, who had only just been promoted to CEO at Lime, the largest player in the space, wasn’t sure.

It didn’t take very long for things to turn around, though. As people looked for ways to get outside and get around that didn’t involve being trapped with strangers in subway cars or Ubers, they started picking up scooters and e-bikes. Before long, companies like Bird and Lime began to sense an opportunity to bring about the kind of local transportation revolution they’d been fighting for all along, even faster than they’d prepared for.

What does that future like? That’s what Ting joined the Source Code podcast to discuss: Why Lime started with scooters, what other modes of transportation it might get into, and most of all, why Lime (and seemingly every other transportation company on Earth) wants to be “the Amazon of transportation.” Trillion-dollar market caps, certainly. But what does that comparison mean, and what does it look like to bring the Bezos playbook to city streets everywhere?

For more on the topics in this episode:

• Wayne Ting on Twitter
• More on New York’s scooter pilot
• Our interview with Wayne from early in the pandemic
• The high-stakes data fight over the future of transportation