New e-scooter company poised to roll into Canberra, promises fix to e-scooters' 'five challenges'

A young new e-scooter company is making a pitch to operate in Canberra, and promises to come with none of the problems of current models.

Ario was established about 12 months ago, offering fleets of three-wheeled scooters in cities across Australia and New Zealand, and while it isn’t quite in serious talks with the ACT Government just yet, they’re mounting a strong case.

“We know that e-scooters are good for Canberra, and they do serve a purpose, and we’re going to submit a tender response when the government decides it’s going to run a tender,” Ario Australia executive Trent Williams told Region, after a media preview event at Regatta Point.

The ACT Government has been looking for a replacement for e-scooter operator Beam Mobility since late last year, after booting hundreds of the company’s purple scooters from the city when it was revealed the company had exceeded the number of scooters it was allowed to deploy.

“Beam was authorised to operate 950 e-scooters across Canberra, including specific numbers (caps) for different regions within our city,” Transport Canberra and City Services deputy director-general Ben McHugh said at the time.

“We believe Beam has failed to meet the expectations of the Canberra community under their permit to operate and therefore we will not be renewing their permit to operate.”

Beam was banned from Brisbane, Townsville, Auckland and Wellington for the same reason.

This left only the orange Neuron scooters here, and these – like any traditional e-scooter we’ve seen up to this point – face “five challenges”, according to Mr Williams.

“People don’t wear their helmets, they don’t park them properly – they leave them as an obstruction or hazard on footpaths, tandem riding – which is illegal – is prevalent, and they ride them on footpaths that are supposed to be at a set speed, and they’re not,” he said.

The stand-out feature on Ario’s scooters are the three wheels – two at the front and one at the back – which is said to give a “much more stable and safe platform for people to ride on” and “make it more accessible for all types of riders”.

The wheels are also equipped with suspension, front and back, for a “much smoother ride”.

But the “real gamechanger” is the heavy use of AI.

“We’ll start with the four cameras – it’s got a camera on the front, two on the side and one at the rear – and what they do is enable us to have a 360-perspective around the e-scooter,” Mr Williams explained.

At the end of each journey, the AI – with the help of human “rangers” based at Ario’s Canberra HQ – will access the cameras to work out if it’s been parked correctly, and safely out of harm’s way.

“If it’s not, we can then actually take remote control of the e-scooter, and if it passes all our safety protocols – such as, there aren’t too many people around or it doesn’t need to cross traffic lights – we can move it.”

To prevent passers-by from thinking they’ve perhaps wandered onto a set from The Conjuring, these moves will be accompanied by an audible announcement from the scooter about how it’s being remotely controlled.

The cameras also scan the way ahead to determine if it’s a footpath, bike path, or road, and adjust the speed accordingly, which Mr Williams says is “extraordinarily” more accurate than the inbuilt-GPS system used by many e-scooters.

Pedestrians won’t have to worry about two wheels hitting them in the back of the ankles, instead of just one, either. Ario has thought of this too.

“If somebody were to walk in front of the e-scooter, the camera would detect that person, and the AI would determine whether that person is a potential hazard. If it is, the scooter would automatically slow down.”

To run the fleet, there would be two groups of rangers – one based in the Ario warehouse to monitor all the cameras and AI tech, and the other, out around Canberra, replacing the battery packs and taking the empty ones back to the warehouse for charging.

As for how many Ario scooters might be deployed across Canberra, and where, Mr Williams said that’s a decision for the government.

“For the first day, if Canberra says you put 750 scooters down, we’ll probably put about a third of that out to begin with, just to make sure that everything is aligned and that we’re not causing undue disruption to the community and so on,” he said.

“I think in Canberra there seems to be a real positive vibe about e-scooters, and … we can certainly provide a solution to Canberra that mitigates the key challenges most people complain about.”