Why buy used at all

Most launch plans start with a factory. Somebody picks a model, asks for a quote on a thousand units, and waits. It is the obvious thing to do and it is usually the expensive thing to do, in two currencies at once: money and season.

Here is the case for the other route, with the numbers from our own catalogue rather than from a deck.

The same vehicle, half the price

The clearest way to see it is to compare a model against itself. Both of these are live on Fleetser today:

• Segway A200. A 2025 fleet is priced at 800 euro per unit. A 2021 fleet of the same model, ex-Dott, is 400 euro.
• Segway Max Plus. Brand new, 400 euro. A 2022 fleet in Europe, 200 euro.

Half, in both cases, for a vehicle that does the same job on the same street. Across the catalogue the pattern holds: the median asking price on a used e-scooter fleet is around 320 euro a unit, while the new e-scooter listings sit at 830 and 900 dollars.

On a thousand units that difference is not a line item. It is most of a Series A, or it is the difference between launching one city and launching three.

The season is the other cost

A new order is a production slot, a container, a port and a customs broker. Even when nothing goes wrong, you are counting in months.

A used fleet that already exists is a truck. We move most fleets in about a week - the exception being something genuinely awkward, like shipping from the United States to Europe, which is a boat and behaves like one.

That gap matters more than it looks, because this industry is seasonal. A scooter that lands in October has missed the year. It sits in a warehouse discharging slowly until March, and you have paid for it, financed it and insured it the whole time without it earning a single ride. Order in spring for summer and you are already too late; buy used in spring and you are operating in spring.

You can inspect a fleet that exists

A fleet that has not been built yet cannot be examined. You are buying a specification and a promise, and the first time you learn what you actually bought is when the container doors open.

A used fleet is the opposite problem, and it is a better problem: everything wrong with it is already true and already findable. Battery health, backend release, parts availability, paperwork - these are answerable questions about a physical object, and a fleet that has been through an inspection is priced on what a buyer can see rather than what they fear.

That is also the honest risk of used, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The difference is that it is a risk you can retire with a week of work, rather than one you discover in month five.

Somebody else already paid the depreciation

Vehicles lose most of their value early. Whoever bought that fleet new absorbed the steepest part of the curve, and you are stepping in below it.

The practical consequence is on the way out, not the way in. A fleet bought new at 900 dollars and sold three years later is a large write-off. The same fleet bought used at 320 euro and sold three years later is a small one - and second-hand values flatten out, so the further down the curve you buy, the less of it is left to fall. Your exit is a smaller number in both directions, which is exactly what you want from an asset you intend to trade out of.

The emissions are already spent

A shared e-scooter carries a fixed environmental burden from being manufactured, shipped and eventually scrapped. One 2025 life-cycle study across 100 European cities puts it at 115.6 kg CO2eq per scooter, before a single ride.

That figure is incurred once, when the vehicle is built. Buying a fleet that already exists does not incur it again; ordering a new one does. Redeploying 1,000 existing scooters instead of commissioning 1,000 new ones avoids something on the order of 115 tonnes of CO2eq.

If your city permit asks what you are doing about lifecycle emissions, this is a better answer than a renewable-energy tariff, and it is one almost nobody gives.

When new is genuinely the right call

We sell new fleets too, and there are cases where they are the correct purchase:

• A homologation requirement. If your market needs a type approval that only a current model holds, that decides it.
• Warranty and parts continuity. A fleet you intend to run for five years on a model still in production is a different proposition from an orphaned one.
• Nobody is selling what you need. If you want 3,000 identical units of one model in one place, the used market may simply not have it this month.
• A spec that does not exist second-hand. Swappable packs, a particular IoT backend, a seated form factor for a market that requires one.

The mistake is not buying new. The mistake is buying new by default, because the used option was never priced.

What to ask before you commit either way

• What does this model cost used, today, in the quantity I need?
• What is the real lead time on the new order, including certification?
• What month do the vehicles start earning, and what does the gap cost me?
• If I buy used, what is the battery health across the fleet, and does the backend release cleanly?
• What is this fleet worth in three years, on both routes?

We have moved 30,000+ vehicles across 40+ countries and 50+ models, and the operators who do well are not the ones who always buy used. They are the ones who ask those five questions before they sign anything.