Flow: Another electric scooter rental service coming to Romanian cities

We’ll soon be seeing some fierce competition on the electric scooter rental market in Bucharest and other large Romanian cities, such as Cluj-Napoca or Timisoara. The latest brand to announce a new service is Flow, which says it will introduce a fleet of 500 scooters in Bucharest and Cluj next month, and then expand to Timisoara and other cities starting with the summer, profit.ro reported on Monday.

Flow aims to reach a fleet of 2-3,000 electric scooters by the end of the year, with an investment of about EUR 1 million.

Recently, US startup Lime and European startup Wolf-e both announced that they would soon start providing similar electric scooter rental services in Bucharest. Bolt (formerly Taxify) also said that it might bring its scooter rental service to the Romanian capital, but no exact date has been specified for this move.

The startup is coordinated by several entrepreneurs, including Iulian Padurariu, the co-founder and former CEO of Pony Car Sharing, and Bogdan Enoiu, the head of BV McCann Erikson, one of the largest advertising agencies in the country.

Flow will use XIAOMI M365 scooters, which have a 30-km range and a double braking system. These are currently sold for around RON 1,800 (EUR 380) in Romania.

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Users will be able to rent them through a smartphone app that scans a QR code to unlock the vehicles, which will be parked in docking stations in various parts of the city.

Electric scooter rental services have become very popular recently, especially in the US, although some cities like Barcelona or Paris have already banned them or capped the number of scooters available for rent due to safety-related concerns, while San Diego has seen protests against these types of services following injuries suffered by users.