Barcelona awards 19 micromobility licenses — but not for e-scooters

The city authorities of Barcelona have announced the winners of micromobility licenses, which came in a batch of 19: 12 for e-moped companies and seven for the operators of bicycles and e-bikes. Notably, e-scooter sharing platforms are still not welcome in the city.

Here's a list of the companies that have received the licenses, courtesy of the Shared Micromobility blog (the firms that have received two licences are italicised):

🛵 E-mopeds: Acciona, Avant Fullstep, Breath, Cooltra (eCooltra), Eco-Logia, Futurus Mobilidad (Movo), Oiz Ridesharing, Scoot Networks, Talban Krup (CityScoot), Tirkil Invest, TuCycle, and Yego.

🚲 (Electric) bicycles: Bolt, Cooltra (eCooltra), Idri BK (Movi by Mobike), Jump (now Lime), Scoot Networks, Smart Cycles (Donkey Republic), and Yego.

It's also worth mentioning that two major European micromobility operators — Tier and Wind — have not managed to get a license in Barcelona. The reasons are not entirely clear, though it seems like it would've been a good place at least for Tier to operate, taking into account its recent purchase of the e-moped fleet of COUP.

Attrition warfare

Unlike many other major European cities that have given or are about to give out only a few licenses to companies that have proven worthy, Barcelona decided to do the opposite and bring a whole bunch of operators to the city at once. This may cause profitability issues for at least some of the players, since each of the license holders can only operate up to 580 mopeds and/or 630 (e-)bikes.

“But it is not over yet, as operators have 30 days to deploy their fleets, and an additional 30 days if they prove that the vehicles are in productionhe situation could be again different in a couple of months,” explains Alexandre Gauquelin of Shared Micromobility. “Companies might choose to operate at a loss months, hoping to retrieve enough licenses from competitors who failed to launch to operate a large enough fleet…”