Rental ebikes are booming in popularity as e-scooter hire operations decline across Australia amid what some have labelled a “moral panic” about safety.
The ebike boom has been led by Sydney, where the number of vehicles on streets nearly doubled in 2025 as the US operator Lime deployed thousands more.
E-scooter hire had been faster to take off around Australia than ebikes, with all capital cities bar Sydney permitting the devices in early 2025. Operations froze over the course of the year due to safety concerns, shrinking access and unpopularity.
The major operator Neuron and its subsidiary Beam reduced their combined fleets by nearly a 10th over the year, to about 12,500 e-scooters across 24 locations.
Perth pulled about 1,000 rental e-scooters from its streets after a man died in an e-scooter crash. A subsequent Western Australian inquiry found e-mobility could be brought back in under tight regulation.
In Bendigo, Beam’s 250 scooters were pulled from streets after users took less than 55,000 trips, missing expectations, while the City of Adelaide said ridership of its 2,000-strong fleet fell from 543,000 trips in 2024 to 514,000 in 2025.
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Neuron and Lime pulled scooters from Melbourne’s Yarra area after the council hiked fees, having already being forced out of the central business district in 2024.
Stephen Coulter, an industry consultant with Zipidi, blamed the e-scooter slowdown on a “moral panic” about safety and injuries.
“You’ve had moral panic, which has caused some [local governments] to overreact, like the City of Melbourne, who just withdrew them overnight back in September 2024,” he said.
Coulter said state governments could help e-scooters return in 2026, with the Victorian and New South Wales governments approving share scheme operators, while WA and Queensland to respond to state inquiries.
In the meantime, residents in Melbourne had swapped to Lime’s ebikes, Coulter said.
“Bikes are picking up in the absence of scooters and the operators are becoming better at aligning them with customer need,” he said.
Cities that previously only adopted e-scooters have moved towards bikes. Hobart adopted Beam bikes in May, Canberra invited applications for ebike and e-scooter operations and Adelaide will issue a similar invitation this year.
Lime’s Asia-Pacific head, Will Peters, said the company had been disheartened when Melbourne forced out its e-scooters but was hopeful of growing its ebike offering.
It is capped at operating 1,200 ebikes across inner Melbourne but has debuted bikes and scooters in the Darebin municipality and is watching for a chance to expand into nearby Merri-bek.
Peters said Lime had experienced the greatest uptake in Sydney, where e-scooter use is illegal, including for shared schemes.
Two Neuron e-scooters. Photograph: Sally Robertson/Alamy
It more than doubled its Sydney fleet to at least 7,000 ebikes in 2025, according to Guardian Australia analysis of public data, though industry sources have suggested the true figure could be higher than 10,000. The company declined to share fleet data.
Lime is bidding to boost its ridership further in Sydney, offering redesigned bikes and subscriber discounts as it negotiates to expand as far west as Parramatta.
“How do we make Sydney the best market?” Peters said. “I think we can be bigger than London, we can be bigger than Paris.”
Ebikes boomed in Paris after the first European city to invite shared e-scooters also became the first to ban them in 2023.
Sydney’s lack of scooters has supported rapid growth in rental ebike use, with 600,000 NSW residents now using a shared ebike monthly – 100,000 more than in October, government data suggests.
The City of Sydney reported shared ebike trips in the central business district nearly doubled in 2025, to 3.7m. Demand has attracted competition, with HelloRide operating 3,000 ebikes and Ario bringing a fleet of 2,700 since it entered in late 2024.
Shared bikes are legal for road use, restricted to speeds of 25km/h and power of 250 watts, unlike illegal and modified ebikes which have attracted government crackdowns amid a nationwide surge in injuries.
E-scooters and other personal mobility devices were involved in 10 deaths and 440 crashes in Queensland in 2025, preliminary police data shows. Legal ebikes, both privately owned and rented, were involved in four deaths and 235 crashes.
Rapid adoption of e-scooters had brought some “novelty-driven behaviour” and challenges that cities weren’t expecting, while ebikes build on existing cycling culture, according to Adam Rossetto, general manager of Ario, which also operates scooters in far north Queensland.
“[Shared] ebikes are coming back into the fore,” Rossetto said. “They provide a more traditional approach to mobility … that delivers less stupidity, I think, from a section of users.”
