Skip develops electric scooters and is rolling out hardware changes — rear-facing cameras, swappable batteries and a retractable lock — to improve safety, parking compliance and unit economics. The company has been testing 200 rear-facing camera–equipped scooters in Washington, D.C., and is rolling some of those scooters out in San Francisco, where it has also been testing locks. Cameras take snapshot photos only during trips, will not capture identifying images according to Skip, and riders will eventually be able to opt out; Skip is also experimenting with front-facing cameras and remote slowing for sidewalk riding. Skip says it plans to move from partially off‑the‑shelf scooters toward fully custom designs informed by these experiments and by work on hardware, sensors and software. Management frames the product changes as responses to core unit‑economics issues in the scooter business — charging costs, battery lifetime, repair costs, depreciation, and theft and vandalism — rather than “technology for technology’s sake.” Skip hired Shalin Mantri (formerly an Uber AV product lead) and is using autonomy and systems‑intelligence experience to inform its scooter operating platform. Skip is a micromobility operator that launched a scooter-rental service using a free-parking model, letting users leave vehicles around the city. The service was started by the creators of the electric board company Boosted. According to the article, the team has raised $6 million in financing. User commentary in the article raised operational questions about how scooters will be charged and whether Skip will use an app-driven workforce to collect and rebalance scattered vehicles. Commenters also discussed potential pricing (examples cited: ~10 rubles per minute and ~15 cents) and mentioned a reported 48 km range for the scooters, plus local infrastructure needs such as more bike lanes.

Total raised

$106M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Debt Financing

Latest activity

Dec 2018