Lime fights from the Corona-crisis: Like many other of the E-scooter provider had discontinued the service for a few weeks. Now the scooter will come again - at the same time, the company has to do with the Integration of thousands of vehicles of Ex-competitors.

Berlin (dpa) - The E-scooter of the company Lime are now in 13 of the 15 German cities available. "We have re-opened and are now being used in almost all locations active again," said Lime head of Germany Jashar Seyfi, the German press Agency.

the user Still has to be paid is far removed from the pre-crisis level. "But we are very much stronger from the crisis than we thought."

in addition to the tourists, which in normal summer months, about a quarter of the sales, were missing, especially the commuters. "Many people now work from home," said Seyfi. "As some of the rides fall away especially in the morning and in the evening to celebration in the evening."

Considerably faster than E-scooters, the demand for bikes has increased, which was also about the Lime-App for rent. "The Bicycle is the great winner of the Corona-crisis," said Seyfi.

Like many other scooter vendors had set Lime of his service during the Corona-crisis. In mid-April, the company started initially with smaller fleets in the larger cities. In the meantime, the majority were of the nationwide, approximately 25,000 of the available vehicles in use, it said.

thousands more to be added soon: in mid-June, Lime had taken over in the framework of a financing round, the scooters, and electric bikes of the brand Jump, which until then belonged to the ride service provider Uber. "We are in the process of all vehicles to collect and bring in our warehouses," said Seyfi. When and where a conspicuous red-painted E-vehicles back on the road, but it is still open. As soon as possible the return of the vehicles was planned, but also for Berlin, it said.

For a year now, E-scooter, registered in Germany, and since then there are numerous providers on the fiercely competitive market. As technology and equipment of the scooter differ only slightly from each other, the competition is mainly on the fleet size and the price. Already no longer expect the market therefore, experts that many providers are pulling back. Also, Uber seems to be gone. "Unfortunately, Jump has made every journey a significant loss and was not able to maintain operation," said Lime.

In the past few days, Videos were also included in the social media round to see where it was, like hundreds of red bicycles industrially exterminated. Fans and users expressed with reference to the sustainability indignant. Lime myself have had to do with the operations, nothing, said Seyfi: "for Us, it was not known at the time that Uber had caused the scrapping of the bikes and were dismayed when we saw the Videos."

© dpa-infocom, dpa:200627-99-583447/2