By: Marty Raminoff

We might start to miss seeing the eye-catching light-blue scooters around the Big Apple.  Revel announced that it will stop its moped sharing service this month in New York City and San Francisco, CA.

As reported by the NY Post, the Brooklyn-based rideshare company announced that it will cease its flagship moped rental program, rather shifting its focus to its Electronic Vehicle operations.  The tech company, which had its start in 2018 as an app-based moped sharing program in Bushwick, said that due to a slowdown in demand for scooters, it will be yanking its full fleet of 3,000 electric two-wheelers off NYC streets by Nov. 18, per a Revel spokesperson.

Per the Post, on Friday, Revel CEO and co-founder Frank Reig had announced the cessation of the pilot program in an email to all employees.  Reig wrote that the decision was because “service has been strained and ridership isn’t what it used to be,” per a copy of the email obtained by TechCrunch.  The company will now pivot to prioritize its electric vehicle taxis and charging station businesses, the CEO added.

Just last week, Revel unveiled its third “Superhub” EV fast charging station– with 14 charging plugs available in Queens. The company also operates two “Superhub” stations in Brooklyn. It also is developing stations in the Bay Area, Robert Familiar told the Post.  The rideshare app also has a fleet of roughly 500 EVs, including Teslas and Kia Niors, that offer rides across NYC’s five boroughs and in parts of northern New Jersey.  The company had started offering Tesla taxis in NYC in the summer of 2021.

In 2022, Revel had already pulled its moped off the roads in Washington, DC and Miami. New York City and San Francisco were the only markets left in its moped sharing business, and the cessation marks the end of the program altogether.  The scooter-share service had boomed in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The number of average daily rides in NYC had more than doubled from 4,181 in early March pre-pandemic, up to 8,881 by the end of May of that year.

TechCrunch reported that Revel’s moped ridership fell roughly 30 percent in both NYC and San Francisco year-over-year from peak summer rides in 2023, however, leading the company leadership to decide that it is no longer a sustainable business.  Revel said it plans to send the decommissioned scooters to recycling facilities in both cities over the next two weeks, the online paper reported.  The program’s cessation also means that 67 employees in the moped operations division will lose their jobs, although they will be eligible for severance packages, per TechCrunch.

Per the Post, the moped business also took a significant hit in 2020 with the death of three people in just 10 days.  CBS New York reporter Nina Kapur,27, was one of those killed in a moped crash in July 2020.  Revel had then stopped moped operations in NYC for about a month, and only had been permitted to return to NYC streets after enhancing safety guidance, ensuring that helmets be worn and adding mandatory in-app “how-to” video instructions when renting out their scooters.