Lime’s New Features Should Reduce Hiring Stress

San Francisco / California / USA 

Scooter and bike sharing giant, Lime, is updating its app to make renting one of the company’s battery-powered two-wheelers a little easier.  

Customers can now take advantage of new features like app-less riding, 10-minute reservations, and vehicle configurations. 

Customers who don’t have the Lime app on their phone can still ride by taking a photo of the scooter’s QR code and paying through Apple Pay or Google Pay. Lime says it will be a useful tool for first-time riders who don’t want to commit or don’t have space on their phones. The functionality works by temporarily downloading a portion of Lime’s normal app. It uses the Instant Apps feature on Android, while on iPhones it makes use of the new App Clips feature, which arrived last year as part of iOS 14. The same feature will be available on Android devices using Instant Apps. 

The new Reservations feature will appeal to anyone who has thought to rent a nearby scooter, only to find it gone by the time they arrive at its purported location. After testing out the feature in a couple of key markets, Lime will now allow customers to reserve a scooter for 10 minutes. 

Lime will also start recommending certain vehicles to its customers. So when you open the app, the company will refer you to the nearest vehicle with the best battery range. Combined with the reservation feature, Lime thinks this will help customers secure their vehicle faster, estimating it will take ‘less than five seconds’ to reserve a scooter after opening the app. 

Lime’s app is getting a dark mode to help customers see their options better while riding at night. 

Lime, which operates in 120 cities across five continents, is in growth mode. In addition to adding new products like electric mopeds and pouring money into a huge e-bike expansion, the company is said to be in talks to go public via a reverse merger. Lime says its customers reached a total of 200 million rides on its e-scooters and e-bikes last year, with the company expecting that number to grow significantly in 2021. 

It took them 28 months to get to their first 100 million rides and 13 months to add their next 100 million. Lime say they expect to become profitable for the first time in 2021. 

Information for this article was first published in theverge.com