Lyft is rolling out new electric-based bicycles for its bikeshare programs in Bay Area and offering them a new moniker. Rather than Ford GoBike, the project is now dubbed as Bay Wheels. The decision follows not more than a week after Lyft took legal action against San Francisco to maintain what it claims is an exclusive deal to run bike-share projects in the city.
Lyft claims that its new scooter has some novel functions: “pedal help for the hills, and apart from the conventional dock option, a novel lock that will allow users park it outside a station.” The new lock can make the bikes scooter much convenient to utilize, as users will not have to go on every ride from dock to dock. Alternatively, San Francisco is a city infamous for bike theft, so that new feature can also come with some new issues for the firm.
The new scooters will start showing up this week in San Jose, and will be in Oakland and San Francisco by this month end, the firm claims. But it does not seem like it will be an overnight change in any case. Lyft is also paying artists to make designs for the bikes as what it is dubbing “mobile art.” The bikes will certainly be available through the Lyft app, apart from mobile kiosks situated next to the docks.
On a related note, between crowding cities with electric scooters and providing on-demand rides, Lyft has been making efforts to lower the requirement to actually control a car. Now, the firm is discovering yet one more method to further those dreams (and drive its bottom series after an unstable IPO in the procedure). Media earlier learned that Lyft started to test longer-term car rentals, providing them to a small bunch of users in San Francisco.
