Ridesharing App Taxify Is Keen To Bring Dockless Electric Scooters To Oz

Estonian ridesharing service Taxify just launched a brand new fleet of dockless electric scooters in Paris for quick and easy journeys and undoubtedly amusing Insta-stories. Now, it appears the Taxify crew are real keen on bringing the fleet to Australia “in the coming months”.

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Interesting, very interesting.

If you’re not too familiar with Taxify. The ridesharing service entered the Australian market in December 2017 with services in both Melbourne and Sydney. You might have seen them around and about – it’s pretty much the same thing as its uber competitor, just a different app. Since its creation in 2013, Taxify is now in 23 countries around the world so they’re doing pretty well.

The electric scooter service is named Bolt and I guess you can see it as Taxify’s answer to Uber‘s JUMP service – an electric bike-sharing feature which is currently only available in the United States. 

So how does Bolt work? Per the official statement via ItWireyou’ll be able to unlock a scooter by scanning the QR-code on it with the mobile app. All you’ll need to do first is switch from the ride-sharing option to the scooter rental. Scooters will also have a built-in GPS tracker for data on pickup and drop off locations.

But why the childhood fave? Well, according to Taxify co-founder Markus Villig: 

“One in five Taxify rides are less than three kilometres, which is the perfect distance to cover with an electric scooter.

“It’s likely that some of our ride-hailing customers will now opt for scooters for shorter distances, but we’ll also attract a whole new group of customers with different needs. This means we’ll be able to help more people with their daily transportation problems.”

This all sounds great on paper but we all saw what happened when the dockless oBike arrived on our shores.

Carnage, pure carnage.

However to counter this, the presser explained the scooters will be rounded up every night to be charged and maintained.

It’s still early days so the fine details haven’t been released yet – no official Australian launch date in sight – but let’s just hope the scooters don’t get the savage oBike treatment.

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