Why Revel has discontinued its moped service in New York

When Revel brought 68 electric mopeds to a store in Brooklyn in 2018, he wanted to show New Yorkers that getting around the city can be fun.

Riders could hop on an electric-blue moped instead of cramming into the subway or getting stuck in car traffic. At its peak, Revel’s ridership was nearly 600,000 rides in one month. It seemed like a glimpse of the city’s future.

“I’ve traveled on buses and subways all my life, but when this happened I thought, this is great, this is cool, this is accessible,” said Donald Reid, 43, a podcaster in Brooklyn, who became a regular rider.

But now, five years later, mopeds will soon disappear altogether. What happened?

On Saturday, Revel – faced with the proliferation of other options for getting around the city and safety concerns keeping some people away – will take its mopeds out of New York and send them to a salvage center. It will also end moped service in San Francisco, after previously ending it in other cities.

“It’s the right time,” Revel CEO Frank Reig said in an interview last week, citing the decline in passenger numbers combined with the company’s shift in recent years to building an all-electric fleet of more than 500 shared cars and four rechargeable cars. hubs.

Revel’s mopeds have lost ground to e-bikes and other cheaper and more convenient options in an increasingly competitive environment, said Bruce Schaller, a consultant and former city transportation official who has studied various forms of micromobility for more than a decade.

“You have a busy market – lots of choice, lots of choice – and it’s hard for me to imagine why you would prefer a Revel to an e-bike today,” he said.

But when Revel launched, there were fewer competitors. The moped-sharing service quickly expanded in New York and spread to five other cities, including San Francisco and Washington. It attracted a loyal following and helped fill the gaps in public transportation, especially in Brooklyn and Queens, where it was a quick way to get around and between the two boroughs. Revel’s monthly ridership rose to a high of 582,159 trips in July 2020.

Since then, Revel has struggled to attract — and retain — cyclists as Citi Bike, the city’s popular bike-share program, steadily expanded its e-bike fleet and many New Yorkers bought their own e-bikes and e-scooters, and in in some cases illegal mopeds.

Revel moped ridership in New York dropped to 136,802 trips in July, a 30 percent drop from 194,278 trips in July 2022.

Revel was also confronted multiple lawsuits filed by riders who said the mopeds were defective and others who said they were injured by Revel riders.

According to city data, there have been five deaths involving Revel mopeds between 2019 and 2021 — four were Revel riders and one was a pedestrian struck by a Revel rider.

Mr Reig said the company’s focus on electric car sharing and charging hubs grew out of the moped service: the challenge of charging thousands of moped batteries “opened our eyes to some other very big problems when it comes to urban environments and charging infrastructure.”

Some transportation experts said the end of moped service was a setback for efforts to encourage alternatives to car use. But, they add, this isn’t all that surprising given that the policies governing everything from roads to tax breaks largely favor electric cars over other mobility options.

“All the incentives are encouraging operators to do what they’ve been doing: switch to cars, focus on cars,” said Rachel Weinberger, director of research strategy at the Regional Plan Association, a planning group focused on metropolitan New York. area, adding that Revel’s move to electric cars should be “a wake-up call” for the government to do more to encourage other options.

The idea for the moped service was inspired by Mr Reig’s 2017 holiday in Buenos Aires, which he discovered was a ‘moped city’.

Mr. Reig, a former consultant who worked with investors in the energy and real estate sectors, returned home and recruited a colleague, Paul Suhey, to start Revel. They raised $1 million from investors and rolled out in Bushwick, Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

In 2020, Revel operated a fleet of more than 3,500 mopeds in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx. The average moped ride lasted 26 minutes and covered 5.4 kilometers.

“I enjoy riding it,” said Tejas Vemparala, 31, a data analyst at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, before heading off to lunch on a moped last week. “You can enjoy the nice weather.”

But problems arose. Revel briefly suspended its moped service in July 2020 after two fatal accidents, including one that killed Nina Kapur, a television journalist. E-bikes and e-scooters have also raised their own safety concerns. And the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and appliances have become a leading cause of fire deaths.

Mr. Reig said Revel has implemented “enhanced safety protocols,” including requiring riders to take an online safety test and take a photo of themselves wearing a helmet, which is stored under the moped seat.

City officials also tightened regulation of the moped service, noting that there were no more fatalities after the fall of 2021.

Still, some New Yorkers stayed away from mopeds. “I don’t think they’re safe,” said Nicole Halsey, 45, who rides Citi Bikes. “You’re driving in New York City traffic. What do you do when you lose control?”

City officials and Lyft, which operates Citi Bike, have done so plans revealed to more than double the current e-bike fleet of 8,500 by the end of 2024. Citi Bike set a record in August with more than 4 million monthly rides.

Mr. Schaller compared the costs to riders of taking Citi Bike and Revel and found that Citi Bike was the better deal. A 20-minute ride would cost $4.67 for an average rider with a Citi Bike membership on an electric Citi Bike, or about a third of the $13.50 for the same ride on a Revel moped.

“It’s been hard for Revel to find a niche when you have much cheaper competition for a very similar service,” he said.

Mr Reig said Revel’s prices reflected the higher costs of operating mopeds versus e-bikes, including securing liability insurance for riders.

Revel riders were also required to have a valid driver’s license, which excluded many city residents. And they couldn’t ride on bike paths or on major bridges, including the East River crossings that connect Manhattan to Brooklyn and Queens, and had to park on the streets.

Mr. Reid, the Revel rider in Brooklyn, said that while he enjoyed riding a moped, he used Citi Bike much more often because it was cheaper, more convenient and allowed him to ride the e-bikes over the bridges into Manhattan .

Still, Mr. Reid said he liked having both options — and would miss the mopeds.

“It’s sad to see it go,” he said. “You can just jump on it and roll out.”