Civilized Cycles in Detroit Develops Semi-Trike to Support Electric Scooter Market

Lime, a provider of shared electric vehicles, has joined forces with Detroit-based Civilized Cycles to begin using a newly created, specially designed Semi-Trike to deploy and rebalance its shared electric scooters around the Motor City and conduct battery swaps.

The innovation has grown in importance and scale as ridership has skyrocketed 200 percent this year, with Lime riders taking nearly three times the total number of trips they did in 2023 these last few months.

The pilot between Civilized Cycles and Lime is supported by the Michigan Economic Development Corp. Office of Future Mobility and Electrification as well as Michigan Central and Newlab.

Civilized Cycles is a light electric vehicle technology company based in Newlab at Michigan Central. The Civilized Cycles Semi-Trike is a bicycle-class light electric vehicle that has the cargo capacity of a van, but operates for less than a quarter of the cost.

The company’s mission is to replace as many vans and trucks for cargo transportation by offering an alternative that Civilized Cycles maintains is safer, more sustainable, and more affordable. All Semi-Trikes are made in Detroit.

“Lime is proud to be the shared electric scooter provider of choice in Detroit, and we are always looking for new and exciting ways to make our program here even better,” says Tre Hunt, operations coordinator for Detroit at Lime.

Lime has signed on to The Climate Group’s EV100, a commitment to transition all operations vehicles to electric by 2030 and report on its progress annually. The company plans a much more aggressive target to fully transition its vehicles by 2025. To date, Lime has transitioned 68 percent electric vehicles, adding over 150 electric vehicles in the last 3 years.

“We’re thrilled to join forces with Lime, a pioneer in sustainable transportation, for the Detroit pilot of our Semi-Trike. This partnership is an incredible opportunity to showcase the Semi-Trike’s potential for transforming cargo transportation and making a positive impact on safety, emissions, and innovation in the city where we proudly build it,” says Marc Liu, co-founder of Civilized Cycles.

The Semi-Trike designed and built by Civilized Cycles is a custom rack capable of securely transporting 7 Lime scooters and 32 batteries, or over 100 batteries. The Semi-Trike will replace a Ford Transit van that Lime is currently using, aligning with Lime’s commitment. The pilot will run from October until the close of Lime’s 2024 season in Detroit.

One key advantage of the Semi-Trike is that it can operate anywhere a bicycle can, enabling parking closer to where customers leave scooters, saving Lime’s operations team time.

Since Lime’s launch in Detroit in August 2018 nearly 450,000 riders have taken over 1.5 million trips on Lime shared electric vehicles. Detroit riders have traveled 1.9 million miles.

One highlight this year was the Detroit crowds who broke attendance records at the NFL Draft (April 25-27) and shattered ridership records for Lime shared e-scooters, with gross bookings from the Thursday through Sunday of the draft combined increasing by more than four time compared to the same days of the prior week.

This spring, Lime, based in San Francisco, announced that 2023 was its best year ever with more than 150 million rides and $600 million in gross bookings, according to the company.

For more information, visit  li.me or civilizedcargo.com.