According to TechCrunch, Lime plans to restore Jump’s bike sharing service in Barcelona, Paris and Rome, too. That’s less than half the European cities Jump bikes were previously available in. London could also see Lime e-scooters. Earlier this week, the UK approved an e-scooter pilot program, and if the scooters are approved, Lime will likely vie for a spot.

With lockdown restrictions easing in some parts of the world, Lime says its e-bike rental service has seen record use. Users are reportedly taking longer and more frequent trips, and in London alone Lime’s e-bike network has completed over 1.5 million journeys. Demand may continue to grow as people look to avoid public transportation due to the pandemic.

An Uber spokesperson told CNBC: “We explored donating the remaining, older-model bikes, but given many significant issues — including maintenance, liability, safety concerns, and a lack of consumer-grade charging equipment — we decided the best approach was to responsibly recycle them.”

Bike Share Museum shared a photo of Seattle’s Jump fleet: dozens upon dozens of e-bikes, with their Li-Ion batteries removed, ready to be sold for scrap. An e-bike without a battery is simply a regular analog bicycle; these bikes could be ridden as normal, even with the electronics still in place. 

EXCLUSIVE: New, close-up pictures of the Seattle JUMP 5.5 fleet show that every single bike has *already had their 36V Li-Ion battery removed,* so the manpower existed to do that prior to sending them to scrap. The extent of the waste is unfathomable. pic.twitter.com/zT3nRhYNAs

— Bike Share Museum (@bikesharemuseum) May 26, 2020

Lime partners with a number of organizations that have a vested interest in promoting bike-friendly streets and micromobility access, like the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, Denver Streets Partnership and Seattle Neighborhood Greenways. Bike Durham, a North Carolina biking advocacy group, said on Twitter that they would be happy to take on these Jump bikes: “Our local bike co-op @DurhamBikeCoOp has been able to re-purpose many old @ridespin bikes that were donated. Contact us @Uber!  Let’s make better use of these bikes.” It’s hard to imagine any of these organizations couldn’t find a better use for thousands of e-bikes, even if they weren’t in perfect shape. 

LA’s Department of Transportation already uses real-time data from several rivals of Uber’s scooter service, such as Lyft, Lime and Spin. The city mandated compliance with its “Mobility Data Specification” plan, which is similar to programs in other cities like Seattle and Austin. The organization says that it needs such data for city planning purposes and to ensure that the company isn’t allowing riders to leave their scooters all over the city. Uber offered to share one-day-old data with the LADOT, but the department rejected the compromise and ordered the company to remove its scooters from the city by March 15th.

Uber shares data regarding its scooters and riders with other cities, but none of this data is real-time. Location data — which can reveal personal details about a user — can be a touchy subject, and real-time location tracking can be even more unsettling. In fact, California’s government passed the Electronic Communications Privacy Act last year — which is meant to curb the abuse of user data — making the Department of Transportation’s request seem contradictory. That said, scooters being left abandoned all over sidewalks has quickly become an issue in several cities. A compromise would be ideal, but it seems like the LADOT has a firm stance on how it wants these scooter rental companies to operate and how they share their data.

San Francisco was the birthplace of the electric scooter, with Bird, Spin and Lime starting operations there last March. However, there were many objections to the scourge of scooters, including that discarded scooters blocked access for pedestrians and that people frequently rode them on pavements.

In response to these complaints, the city vowed to bring in rules for scooter companies and to limit the number of companies granted licenses to operate e-scooter programs to five. The scooters then had to be removed from the streets while companies obtained permits, with 12 companies submitting applications for scooter programs including Uber and Lyft.

In the end, only two smaller companies, Skip and Scoot, were granted permits to operate last year, although Lime did try to block the two services with a court case that was eventually denied.

In the latest round of 11 permit applications, Skip has been kicked to the curb and Jump, Lime and Spin have been accepted. Each company can deploy up to 1,000 scooters to begin with, with up to 2,5000 scooters each possible in the future. The 12-month permits will go into effect on October 15th this year.

The test seems to be an expansion of the Ride Pass. Subscribers get discounted rates on rides for a monthly fee. It costs $14.99 in some cities, and $24.99 in those where e-bikes and scooters are available — currently, you can ride on those for up to 30 minutes for free with the pass. The latest test brings Uber Eats into the fold.

It remains to be seen whether the all-in-one option will roll out more broadly. “From meals to wheels and everything in between, we’re always looking for ways to make Uber the go-to option for your everyday needs,” Uber told TechCrunch in a statement.

If Uber adds the plan as a permanent option, it’d strike at a couple of competitors. Postmates, for one, provides free unlimited deliveries through its own subscription. Meanwhile, Lyft offers riders a set number of rides each month up to a certain cost under its All-Access plan.

Until Lime arrived, most of London’s bikeshare competitors were smaller companies. Now that Uber is getting in the game, there’s another large-scale player, and it can rival Lime in terms of pricing and scale. The new Jump fleet will cost £1 to unlock and £0.12 per minute, with your first five minutes free. Lime’s bikes initially cost £1 to unlock and an additional £0.15 per minute of riding time. As of December, Lime had 1,000 e-bikes on the streets of the capital — significantly more than Jump has at the moment. It’s unclear how long Uber plans to run the pilot or when we might see more red e-bikes zipping around the city.

This also comes less than a month after Uber added London’s public transportation info to its app. With the addition of Jump, users can see ridesharing, transit and bike sharing options in one place. That raises the question of whether Uber wants to become London’s one-stop-shop for all modes of transportation. In Denver, the company recently introduced the ability to purchase public transit tickets in the app, and as we’ve speculated before, it may try to do the same in London.

Google Jump is shutting down. Just got an email. pic.twitter.com/kj4W2u0WKq

— Robert Hernandez (@webjournalist) May 17, 2019

In an email sent to users and a notice posted at the top of the Jump FAQ page, the tech giant said the platform will stop accepting uploads for processing at 11:59PM Pacific on June 26th. Those who want a copy of the data they uploaded to the cloud will have until June 27th to download them all. On June 28th, Google will start erasing Jump’s cloud data and deactivating accounts.

Based on what the company told users, the declining userbase compelled it to shut the service down. “…[We] have seen the emergence of a number of good alternative solutions for creators, including VR180. As these new cameras, formats, and editing tools became available, we saw usage of Jump Assembler decline.” Thankfully, camera rigs that support Jump, such as GoPro Odyssey and the Yi Halo, will still work with third-party video editing software — they cost tens of thousands of dollars, after all.

At the moment, it looks like a stalemate. LA city officials claim the data would provide insight into scooters as a growing means of transit, let the city see if scooters end up in the LA River and help ensure scooters are available to lower-income residents. Reportedly, the data would not be shared with police without a warrant, would not contain personal identifiers and would not subject to public records requests.

But privacy experts warn that scooter location data could be enough to reveal a person’s movements and private transactions, especially because scooters don’t stop at docking stations. Instead, they take passengers right up to their homes or businesses.

Perhaps the biggest issue here is what this foreshadows. As scooter ridership grows across the country and electric vehicles generate massive amounts of data, it will be interesting to see if that intel remains in the hands of private companies or if they’ll be required to share it. Of course, this is not the first time California and Uber have gone head-to-head or that scooters have been the center of controversy.