This article was originally published on VICE US.
In recent weeks, thousands of JUMP motorcycles and electric scooters in the best conditions have been deposited in a recycling plant and will be destroyed, motherboard has known. The unwelcome finish of these micromobility devices comes at a particularly absurd time, as the country faces a widespread shortage of bicycles due to the growing demand for safe and affordable urban delivery of the pandemic.
JUMP, a motorcycle and scooter sharing startup sold to Uber in 2018, operates in 37 cities around the world, adding 18 in the United States, according to the company’s website. Under pressure to seek profitability, Uber launched JUMP to Lime, another micromobility corporation that operates in 114 cities around the world, as a component of a confusing agreement earlier this month that led Uber to take a greater stake in Lime. The fate of JUMP and its unique red motorcycles and scooters is unclear until the crusher videos began to appear.
Photos and videos of lots of jump motorcycles posted on social media have disappointed former JUMP employees, motorcycle and scooter advocates and others who don’t like to see waste. The micromobility industry now practices the precise type of waste that shared sustainable transport aims to counter.
“Even if there is no municipal government with chops to turn unwanted jumps into a new/used electric motorcycle sharing system, why not at least remove the decals and sell the motorcycles to personal people?” Jon Orcutt of the nonprofit Bike New York. He added that JUMP motorcycles have a reputation for being “really well made and specially designed for urban transport,” unlike reasonable platformless motorcycles from corporations like MoBike and Ofo that have ended up in massive cemeteries. Similarly, Skip Scooters co-founder and CEO Sanjay Dastoor said the videos were hard to watch and called jump motorcycles “the never designed shared electric motorcycles.”
David Zipper, a visiting scholar at the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard Kennedy School, who studies the micromobility industry, said the videos are “very disturbing.”
A former JUMP employee, who asked not to have a name because he had signed a confidentiality agreement, said that watching the videos had personally stung them.
“Part of my non-public pride in running for JUMP is seeing first-hand the effects of these motorcycles on communities,” they said. “And with COVID-19, the destroyed fleet of motorcycles may have been even smarter for cities. Array We are in the midst of a cycling boom where more people than ever ride motorcycles. We are in the midst of a shortage of war-induced electric motorcycles from Chinese industry and tens of thousands of electric motorcycles are sold as scrap metal».
Are you a former JUMP employee? How about the destruction of bikes and scooters? Email [email protected] or [email protected]__.
A man who answered the phone at the Durham, North Carolina location of Foss Recycling confirmed they’ve received “about 18 trailers” filled with scooters and bikes over the last week—another source at the same location put the number of trailers closer to 30—and that after their batteries and electronics are removed they’re “going to be recycled.” He declined to give his name to Motherboard and, when asked why, replied “I don’t know where it’s going.”
Photo JUMP motorcycles in a delivery trailer.
Why precisely these functional motorcycles and scooters are destroyed even when their demand is at their peak to immerse themselves in the confusing world of four-letter micromobility companies? JUMP was acquired through Uber in 2018 as a component of a diversification effort before the public agreed to sign with investors that it was well located for any transportation trends that may arise over time. But it was a clumsy fit, and a waste of cash to begin with. The recent sale to Lime has called into question the fate of JUMP.
As for which company is guilty of promoting motorcycles and scooters for scrap metal, Lime says it wasn’t them. “As a component of the JUMP acquisition, we have taken possession of tens of thousands of electric motorcycles, adding spare parts and equipment to repair them, and we have already begun deploying them,” a Lime spokesman told Motherboard. “We have not recycled any of the JUMP electric motorcycles in our fleet and are committed to uploading and operating them at this critical time.” The spokesman added that when the deal is officially completed, Lime plans to paint with Uber to “find sustainable tactics to give and reuse the remaining electric motorcycles in its inventory.”
An Uber spokesman said the company had retained older models. “We thought about donating older bikes, but due to many vital problems (adding maintenance, liability, protection issues and lack of quality cargo appliances for the consumer) we considered the most productive technique to be to recycle them responsibly.
Foss’ recycling type told Motherboard that his contract was not with Uber or Lime, but with a company called Blue Sky Trading, which removes and preserves electronic parts and battery. After that, the guy said the motorcycles and scooters will “be crushed in the automatic shredder and that the steel will be distributed from there.”
The great destruction of bicycles and scooters, especially when the call for cycling is at such a high level, is further evidence that the well-intentioned goals of the micromobility staff who believe they were running to announce sustainable shipments do not ultimately meet the goals of the corporations for which they worked. Last month, Bird fired more than 400 employees, some of whom brailedly questioned whether the company could achieve the grand vision it had sold to investors.
For his part, the former JUMP worker sees this as another missed opportunity. “A COVID electric motorcycle program may have been very clever and instead we have terrible photographs of motorcycles gobbled up by the landfill claw. It’s a shameful nightmare.”