An e-bike sharing company co-founded by Usain Bolt appears to have shut down

An e-bike and scooter-sharing startup co-founded by Olympian Usain Bolt appears to have shut down, highlighting recent problems in the micro-mobility sector. TechCrunch has reported. Bolt Mobility has a presence in about five cities, including Portland, Burlington, Vermont and Richmond in California, along with others through acquisition, and some of them are facing abandoned equipment and missed calls.

“We learned a few weeks ago (from them) that Bolt was going out of business,” a transportation planner in Chittenden County, Vermont, told TechCrunch. “They’ve disappeared, leaving equipment and emails and calls unanswered. We can’t get in touch with anyone, but it looks like they’ve closed stores in other markets as well.”

Bolt Mobility actually expanded no less than 18 months ago, buying the assets of Last Mile Holdings, which ran Gotcha and OjO Electric. This opened up 48 new markets for the company in mostly smaller cities such as Raleigh, North Carolina and Mobile, Alabama. (Bolt mobility is not to be confused with Bolt app for carpooling and scootering in Europe.)

However, Bolt Mobility lost its permit to operate in Portland in July due to insurance issues and unpaid fees. A Burlington spokesman said about 100 bikes were left idle and with dead batteries, and the city told the company to claim them before the state took ownership. “All of our contacts at Bolt, including their CEO, have gone radio silent and have not responded to our emails,” a Burlington representative said.

Like CrunchBase previously reported, scooter startups like Bird have collapsed after starting out as billion-dollar unicorns. Bird’s problem, essentially, is that it charges a decent amount of money, about $6 for a 20-minute rental—far more than a subway or bus ride. Bird lost a huge amount of money in 2020 after earning just $79 million in revenue — a 40 percent drop from 2019. After the SPAC merger, its stock price subsequently fell from $10 to just over 50 cents today.