Shared e-scooter startup Beam Mobility has positioned lots of of additional “phantom” scooters on metropolis streets in Australia and New Zealand to keep away from paying car registration charges to native governments, in response to a two-part report from The Australian.
Cities place caps on the variety of autos operators can deploy to keep away from saturating streets and sidewalks with scooters that would endanger pedestrians.
The Australian’s scoop consists of leaked Slack messages and different paperwork detailing how Beam supplied false knowledge to impartial monitoring app Experience Report back to understate the variety of scooters in cities similar to Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Auckland and Wellington.
One doc, which incorporates Beam co-founder Deb Gangopadhyay’s identify, describes Beam’s plan to deploy a further 1,000 scooters into the “greatest areas” of these cities, with the aim of producing a further $150,000 revenue.
Beam final raised $135 million from high-profile traders, together with Affirma Capital and Peak XV Companions (previously Sequoia India and SEA).
