Lime has revealed what will happen to its Auckland scooters once they are deactivated tonight.
The rest of New Zealand could pick up the redistributed e-scooters, despite Auckland Council announcing it had dumped the brand over safety concerns.
Lime has come under heavy criticism for its accident rate since it was granted a licence to operate in November last year.
Announcing the decision to dump Lime's e-scooters on Friday, Auckland Council's director of regulatory services, Craig Hobbs, said the other providers were stronger than Lime in terms of safety.
New providers Neuron and Beam, and existing operators Flamingo and Jump, will be given six-month licences in its place.
Lime currently has 950 scooters in Auckland, and these will be required to be deactivated by midnight on Monday, December 2, 2019. All devices must be off the streets by Friday.
"In the short term, we will store them in Auckland. We expect that some will be distributed among other NZ locations," Lime NZ public affairs manager Lauren Mentjox told Newshub.
"We are also working to launch in more locations this summer."
In an open letter to Auckland, Lime president Joe Kraus said the company is "deeply disappointed" but over the next six months will work tirelessly for the scooters to return to the city.
"While we are deeply disappointed that we will be unable to support our Auckland riders and juicers over the next six months, we will work tirelessly during that time to earn back the Council's trust and return to serving the people of Auckland."
Another e-scooter provider, Kiwi-owned Wave, says it is disappointed its application was declined in favour of offshore companies that haven't operated on Auckland's streets before.
"[We're] pretty gutted aye, we've been operating pretty hard out since March this year," says Wave owner and operations manager Jamie Philipp.
"Now they've gone and brought in three fresh operators who are from overseas countries who have no connection to Auckland."
Wave says its application wasn't declined because of non-compliance or accidents on its scooters, but rather its safety initiatives. Philipp says these could have easily been solved and it's going to be appealing the decision.
In the meantime, Wave has already deactivated its scooters and says most of them have been collected and taken back to its warehouse.
Auckland Council says the successful applicants were better aligned with the Council's goals and Wave is welcome to come to them with any further questions.
