Lime pitching to rent out small electric cars
The bike sharing business Lime wants to expands their electric fleets to four wheels. A confidential deck for investors obtained by Axiom outlines a fleet of small rental EVs and other services to be added this year. Plus, their e-scooter sharing appears profitable.
Lime just expanded by launching a fleet of electric kick-scooters in Paris but it appears their plans reach far beyond (electric) bike sharing.
A presentation for investors includes a slide on renting out Renault Twizy electric cars, or quads strictly speaking, and even specify pricing. Based on Daimler’s Car2Go service, Lime estimates it will charge 1 dollar to start, plus 40 cents per minute. With an average trip length of 20 minutes (or 3.8 miles), and six trips per car, per day, it expects $54 in revenue and $37 in gross margin after costs.
Those numbers set off funds of 50 million dollars Lime plans to allocate if their fundraising effort is successful. Moreover, Lime plans to roll out electric car fleets in two markets, potentially before the year’s end. Whether Paris would be one of them is speculation but given the city just terminated their contract with AutoLib it is not entirely unlikely.
Lime’s latest plan for investors also include using their rental fleet for food deliveries a la UberEats or Deliveroo and trials could begin as early as the second half of this year, according to the deck.
As of April, Lime says it is on track to have 25 million dollars in annual run rate, and projecting to hit $100 million between May and July, and $500 million by December.
In particular their electric scooter sharing business prove a success and Lime says they broke even in San Francisco after only three months. Meanwhile the daily revenue per scooter rose to $27.70, and daily cost per scooter was at $14.30 making the electric vehicle sharing business indeed a profitable one.
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