Michael Kanellos

Are rented scooters and electrobikes the solution to gridlock? May 23, 2008 at 8:54 AM

Too far to walk. Too close to drive.

That, in a nutshell, is Intrago’s business model. (Unlike Jethro Tull’s, which was “Too old to rock and roll. Too young to die—tickets now at the War Memorial.”) The company wants to build rental station on college campuses, crowded downtowns and industrial parks stocked with scooters, Segways and other small electric vehicles. Users approach the station, flash their RFID-enabled membership key, and then take a scooter for a mile or so jaunt.

The users can return the vehicle to its point of origin, but they don’t have to. They can just leave them at a rental station near their destination. Intrago, or one of its licensees, then charges a rental fee that gets automatically tallied through the membership key.

“We’re filling a gap between Zipcar and bike shares,” said CEO Larry Blankenship.

In the third quarter, the company will kick off a trial at the University of Washington. Someday, this sort of transportation could dominate large city downtown areas. Many are moving toward banning regular cars or charging a lot for parking to discourage drivers. People could park on the outskirts, grab an electrobike and then engage in scooter rage.

Intrago will build some of its own rental stations, but it will also license the system to third parties. The company’s secret sauce is the back-end system that tracks the rentals as well as the local charging stations. (The bikes and scooters get recharged after being returned to the station.)

It may also be possible to run the business partly on an ad-supported basis. In Paris, JCDecaux put together a rental bike system called Velib (a mashup of the French words for bike and free). The company changes a rental fee but expects to get most of its revenue from ads emblazoned on the bikes. So far, the company has 20,000 bikes on the street and 1,400 rental stations. It cost $126 million and the world awaits the results. JCDecaux pulled off a similar trick with public toilets.

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