There are a dozen electric scooter companies operating in Paris right now. There are so many that the Mayor just announced that she will reduce that number to three with new rules for electric scooters in Paris.
But before we get into the new rules, I want to stare at that first sentence for a bit.
In less than a year, twelve companies have started operating electric scooter services in Paris.
Paris is the largest electric scooter market in the western world right now.
To enter this business, you need capital to purchase the scooters from China, you need a mobile app on iOS and Android to allow users to locate, unlock, and pay for the use of one, and you need a small team to handle the local logistics.
Apparently those are not significant barriers because a dozen different companies have been able to do it in less than a year.
There are many things that are attractive about the electric scooter business. It has taken off as a transportation option for consumers and is the fastest growing new transportation technology in terms of revenues in history.
Electric scooters also are a much cleaner way to travel than cars or other gas powered technologies.
So there is a lot to like about this business.
But if anyone can open up shop and compete with you with little to no differentiation and your only defensibility is the time it takes to download a new mobile app and put in your credit card, well then one has to ask if this is or will be a good business.
And that is where the Mayor of Paris comes into the picture. She wants to limit the number of scooter providers to three, by requiring licenses and issuing only three of them.
That will sufficiently lower the competition in Paris, lead to a triopoly which may stabilize pricing and margins, and possibly reduce the number of scooters littered all over Paris.
Winning a license will be a political process and there are many issues with that. And the three companies that win a license will become acquisition targets for the big players which are increasingly the ride share companies (who themselves have very low barriers to entry but now have public currencies to buy with).
There are many who have wondered whether ride share will ever be a good business. The public market caps of Uber and Lyft suggest that it will be or that there are plenty of people who currently think it will be.
Scooters are ride share on steroids. Even easier to get into the game with possibly a larger market opportunity.
It will be quite interesting to see how this plays out and how much regulation will be needed to tame this market.
