The shared scooter company is testing a new electric motorbike named, wait for it, the Citra.
It’s the latest lightweight electric vehicle to join Lime’s fleet, which has been expanding beyond the electric kick scooters that have defined the firm for the last five years. Lime’s existing manufacturing partners created and constructed the Citra motorcycle, which has a wide comfortable seat and a top speed of 20mph. With petrol prices on the rise, the business is betting that customers would flock to a new vehicle that can assist replace some of their car journeys.
Lime’s shared moped program in New York City and Washington, DC was discreetly discontinued. The mopeds, which debuted in January 2021, had a top speed of 30mph and were intended for street use. Lime stated that it intends to concentrate on lower-speed vehicles that can travel in the bike lane.
Lime intends to debut the new motorcycle “at scale” in Long Beach. According to spokesperson Russell Murphy, the business expects to start with “a few hundred” vehicles and might eventually reach 500 if ridership is robust. At this moment, the corporation has no plans to deploy the vehicle in any other market.
“As we ramp up, our fleet size will be variable, and we will scale with demand,” Murphy explained. “We hope to have several hundred Citras available this summer, with a cap of 500 if we observe the great riding we anticipate.”
The motorcycles are meant to bolster Lime’s claims of being more than simply another scooter startup. The company envisions itself as a “platform” for various sorts of low-speed, electric-powered mobility, such as Wheels’ pedal-free e-bikes and a new generation of shared electric bikes.
The rear-hub motor has a nominal power rating of 750W and a peak rating of 1200W. It can fly up to 30 miles on a single charge and has a maximum payload weight of 330 pounds. The batteries, which now have a capacity of 1kWh rather than 0.46kWh, are swappable and interchangeable with the company’s fleet of electric scooters and e-bikes. This will improve the customer experience by reducing the likelihood of encountering automobiles with exhausted batteries. It will also help Lime save money on maintenance and replacement parts.
