Bolt Mobility electrical scooters aren’t bolting round anymore. The dockless rental company co-founded by famed sprinter Usain Bolt has reportedly abruptly shuttered in cities throughout the US, even outright ghosting some metropolis officers (by way of TechCrunch).
According to the report, Bolt halted operations in US cities together with Portland, Oregon, Burlington, Vermont, South Burlington, Vermont, Winooski, Vermont, Richmond, California, and Richmond, Virginia, with affirmation from metropolis officers. The Verge reached out to Bolt by the company’s on-line contact kind, however we now have not acquired any response.
The sudden disappearance of Bolt’s service left a bunch of e-scooters and e-bikes inoperable and scattered all through cities in its wake. Bolt was rising prior to now few years and had acquired e-scooter company Ojo final yr, which had merged with one other private mobility rental company Gotcha in 2019.
The Bolt mobility app is nonetheless on-line (to not be confused with the European Bolt ridesharing app), although my account from 2019 doesn’t work anymore (Bolt was not awarded a license once more in Baltimore). The app at present lets you zoom into cities the place it was final operating, however cities like Richmond have pop-ups within the app that say it’s no longer out there. If you zoom into Miami, it provides one other message: “Due to the City of Miami decision, all rentals have been disabled. We are sorry for any inconvenience this causes.” The in-app customer support chat solely reveals a clean display now.
It additionally seems that Bolt’s e-scooters have disappeared from the app’s map. In my very own expertise, Bolt had probably the most unreliable connectivity in comparison with different choices like Lime and Spin. I used to be solely in a position to experience one among Bolt’s yellow “chariot” scooters that have you ever standing together with your toes aspect by aspect however uncomfortably separated by a divider. It had a cool little display, however the scooters had been troublesome to unlock. Bolt is the newest instance of the problem in constructing a scooter rental business that’s constructed to final.