How to launch a shared fleet: what it actually costs

So you want to put scooters on the street. Good news: the hard part is not the software, and it is not the app. It is the fleet, the permit and the maths. Here is what actually goes into launching, from people who spend all day moving these vehicles between operators.

First: are you allowed to?

Before you price anything, find out what the rules are where you want to run. This is not a formality - in some markets it decides whether the business exists at all.

• Some cities run a permit or tender process with a fixed number of operators. If the tender closed last year, you are waiting for the next round.
• Some countries need national vehicle approval before a scooter can legally be on the road at all. The Netherlands is the strict example - a standing e-scooter needs RDW type approval and a licence plate, and only a short list of models has it.
• Some markets do not permit private e-scooters on public roads at all. The UK is still rental-trial only.
• Speed caps are national, not European: 20 km/h in Germany and Italy, 25 in France and Spain, 20 in Denmark, Sweden and Norway.

We wrote a fuller country-by-country breakdown if you want the detail. The short version: check the paperwork before you check the price.

How many vehicles?

Fewer than you think, and more than you want.

Too few and you cannot cover enough ground for anyone to find one when they need it - riders open the app, see nothing within walking distance, and stop opening the app. Too many and you have capital sitting in a warehouse plus vehicles depreciating in the street without being ridden.

The number most small operators land on for a first city is somewhere in the low hundreds. Enough to cover a real service area with a vehicle within a few minutes' walk, small enough that one van and a couple of people can service it.

A useful sanity check: can you physically collect, charge and redeploy the whole fleet with the staff and vehicles you actually have? If not, the fleet is too big for your operation, whatever the spreadsheet says.

Also budget for more units than you deploy. Some are always in the workshop, some are missing, some are charging. A fleet with no spares is a fleet that shrinks every week.

What the vehicles cost

This is where most launch plans quietly break.

Here is what used fleets actually change hands for. These are asking prices for used fleets in our own catalogue right now, per unit:

Look at the spread rather than the middle. A twenty-fold range on scooters is not sloppy pricing. It is the difference between a fleet that goes on the street next month and a fleet that is really a box of spare parts. What moves a fleet from one end to the other is battery health, whether the vehicles can be released from the previous operator's backend, and whether the paperwork exists.

Buying new is a different number entirely

Do not read the table above and assume new costs a bit more. It costs considerably more, and the unit price the factory quotes is the smallest part of the difference.

• Minimum order quantities. Factories want volume. If their MOQ is well above the fleet you actually want to run, your real choice is to overbuy or not buy - and overbuying at new prices is how first fleets run out of money before they run out of season.
• Freight. Vehicles come by sea container from Asia in most cases. That is a real four-figure cost per container before anything is unloaded, and lithium batteries make it more complicated, not less.
• Customs and duty. Import duty and VAT land on the invoice value, so they scale with the higher price rather than softening it.
• Lead times. Production plus shipping is measured in months, not weeks. Order in spring for this summer and you are launching next summer.

We are not going to publish a factory price here, because there isn't one - it depends on the model, the quantity, the port and the week. What we will say is that by the time a new fleet is standing in your warehouse, the landed cost per unit is a long way above the sticker.

Two things follow. First, the obvious one: a used fleet in good condition costs a fraction of the same fleet new, and it is the single biggest lever on how much capital you need to start. Second, the less obvious one: used stock is available now, in the size you actually want, which for anyone trying to make a season is often worth more than the price difference.

One clarification on our own catalogue, since it causes confusion: some fleets are listed as new. That is unsold or unused stock being resold - new vehicles at secondary-market prices and secondary-market timelines, not a factory order. It is a genuinely useful middle option if you want new hardware without the MOQ and the lead time.

The costs people forget

Vehicles are the headline. These are the ones that surprise people:

• Spare batteries and parts. Packs fail, and a vehicle waiting on a pack earns nothing. Order spares with the fleet, not after the first failure.
• A warehouse. You need somewhere to charge, repair and store, with power and a roller door big enough for a van.
• A van. Rebalancing, collections, battery swaps. Whether you buy or rent, it is a line item.
• Insurance. In several European markets it is compulsory for shared scooters - and note that the EU threshold catches vehicles over 25 kg doing more than 14 km/h, which is most shared scooters, even though they are under the 25 km/h speed line.
• Software. Rider app, operator console, IoT integration. There is usually a setup fee and a per-vehicle monthly.
• Freight and customs. Batteries are dangerous goods. Getting a fleet across a border is a real cost and a real timeline, not an afterthought.
• People. Someone has to charge, fix and move the things, every day, including Sundays.

The number nobody can give you honestly

You will read a lot of confident payback figures. Three months. Twelve weeks. Profitable by month four.

We are not going to publish one, because the honest answer is that it depends on things nobody can promise you: how many rides per vehicle per day your city actually delivers, how long your season is, what your per-minute price can be without killing demand, and how much of your fleet is off the road in any given week.

What we can tell you is what moves it. Rides per vehicle per day is the number that decides everything. A smaller fleet being ridden hard beats a bigger fleet sitting still - the bigger fleet costs more to buy, more to service and more to insure, and idle vehicles depreciate at exactly the same rate as busy ones.

And seasonality is brutal in most of Europe. If you are modelling twelve months of summer demand, rebuild the model.

The bit almost nobody puts in the model

Here is our actual bias, stated openly: most launch plans treat the fleet as money that goes to zero.

It does not. A scooter that has run two seasons is not worthless - it is an asset with a resale value, and that value is a real line in your returns. Operators exit cities, downsize, or move to a different vehicle, and the fleet gets sold on. We know, because that is the business we are in.

Two things follow from that. First, buy vehicles that will still be worth something: models with parts availability, packs that can be replaced, IoT that can be re-provisioned. An orphaned model from a manufacturer who has stopped supporting it is worth very little to the next buyer. Second, keep the paperwork. A fleet with a clean documentation trail sells for materially more than the identical vehicles without one.

A sensible order of operations

• Check what is legally possible in your city, and whether there is a permit round to enter.
• Decide the service area, then the fleet size - in that order.
• Get quotes for used and new so you know what the gap actually is.
• Get the fleet inspected before you commit, or at minimum get answers on battery health and backend release.
• Line up the warehouse, van and staff before the vehicles land, not after.
• Agree freight and customs up front so you know the landed cost, not the ex-works price.

If you are at the stage of pricing a first fleet, talk to us. We will tell you what is realistic for your budget, and we will tell you if what you are looking at is a bad buy - that is cheaper for everyone than a warehouse full of scooters that will not switch on.