Beam Mobility Uses ‘Phantom’ E-scooters to Dodge Fees

Beam Mobility covertly deployed ‘phantom’ e-scooters in Australia and New Zealand, allegedly to evade fees and increase profits, raising concerns about corporate practices in the micro-mobility sector

According to a two-part report from The Australian, Beam Mobility, a shared e-scooter startup, has installed hundreds of additional “phantom” scooters on city streets in Australia and New Zealand to circumvent the requirement to pay vehicle registration fees to local governments.

To prevent the oversaturation of sidewalks and streets with scooters that could imperil pedestrians, the number of vehicles that operators may deploy must be limited.

The Australian scoop includes leaked Slack communications and other documents that describe how Beam provided false data to the independent monitoring app Ride Report to understate the number of scooters in cities such as Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Auckland, and Wellington.

One document, which includes the name of Beam co-founder Deb Gangopadhyay, outlines Beam’s intention to deploy an additional 1,000 scooters in the “best areas” of those cities to secure an extra $150,000 in profit.

Affirma Capital and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India and SEA) were among the high-profile investors from which Beam most recently raised $135 million.