E-Scooter App Development: Guide to Scooter Sharing App Development

More and more people across the world are now relying on innovative IoT technologies to make their life simpler and faster. The e-vehicle sharing applications coming on top of the downloading charts is a result of this process. Electric scooters have numerous benefits that include eco-friendliness, reducing traffic congestion, and affordability. 

The statistics show that the e-scooter market is expanding over the years. So, the investment in electric scooter app development can be a great decision that will pay off soon enough. 

Now, let’s dive deep into the process of creating such an application for an electric scooter renting and making it successful! 

What is an E-Scooter App?

An e-scooter app is most often an IoT solution that allows sharing of small electronic vehicles. You may have seen different applications in the places where you live.

Despite minor differences, these scooter rental software has similar work principles. The user needs to sign in and choose a payment method. They will see a map that shows the available scooters’ location near them. 

An app will unlock an e-scooter after the user scans the QR code. Most often the application calculates the total sum when the user finishes the ride, the paycheck will depend on the ride time. 

After the payment is due, the e-scooter locks again after someone else comes to pick it up from that spot. 

This business is mostly automated, this is why a lot of startups and business owners find it attractive. You don’t need to control e-scooters movement, payments, or anything else; the e-scooter app does it all for you. 

And when it comes to the popularity of such solutions, it’s important to note that Bird startup is considered the first e-scooter unicorn and has about a $2b valuation. 

If you’re going to start your own e-scooter startup, you should think of the features your app will have before the electric scooter app development process starts. So, let’s look at the most essential functions of such applications. 

The most needed features to look for in Electric Scooter App Development

Let’s start with the basics. E-scooter needs to have at least two payment methods so it would be accessible for as many people as possible. However, there is more to uncover. 

Now, let’s take an example from the best of the best and take a look at the additional features that famous startups have implemented into their e-scooters apps during the e-scooter mobile app development. 

• Secure payment gateway integration is used in most successful e-scooters apps. It’s possible to integrate the safest payment gateways like PayPal or SecurePay during the electric scooter app development. This can upskill a customer’s trust in your startup and secure the end-customer payment. 
• Booking of an e-scooter is a feature available in GOAT, an app from Austin. It allows the customer to reserve an e-scooter from an app for up to 5 minutes in advance. This might be really useful if your customer sees a vehicle and has to walk a few minutes to get it, so don’t disregard this feature during the e-scooter mobile app development. 
• Adding social media accounts in an e-scooter app can work as a good marketing development solution. Your end-user can show everyone that they use your solution and you will get an unexpected shoutout meanwhile your user can have additional bonuses from it like small discounts. This feature is used in the Skip app from San Francisco. 
• The feedback form will help you learn what your users actually think of the e-scooter app and what ideas they have to improve it.

There are also some of the hardware features that you have to consider, like anti-theft alarm, battery and distance mater, maintenance sensor, and others. This will not only improve the quality of an app and customer experience but will make your electric scooter business truly automated. 

Now, when we’re all set with the features to use in the e-scooter mobile app development, let’s take a look at the actual development process of an e-scooter app. 

What Requirements to the Scooter Sharing Hardware Development Are Essential

The process of scooter sharing app development requires each e-scooter to support the following technologies: Cloud Monitoring or IoT. The first one is cloud-based technology that allows managing all the infrastructure in the cloud. For e-scooter rental, it is essential to get all the processes to hold in real-time, and cloud monitoring technology allows it. As for IoT, it is the use of AI-based technologies for e-scooter management and interaction with the whole vehicle park. Both functions are available for implementation by e-scooter sharing app manufacturer RexSoft.

Besides, the owner of the e-scooter rental service needs to provide safety for their park. That is each e-scooter should be equipped with a digital alarm system that will provide operators with real-time notifications about heavy crashes, falls, breakdowns, or unauthorized moves of the scooter. The last option means that the alarm system should react on the move beyond the route allowed by the rules and in the cases of unauthorized access i.e. stealing the scooter.

Both these solutions include the two options that RexSoft offers in the field of scooter sharing app development. These are the development of the unique design of an app and the customization of the app’s interface.

The overall scope of services for both customization of a ready-made scooter sharing app and turnkey custom development allow you to get the result you need that is a profitable, workable, and reliable application that serves brilliantly both operators and customers of your e-scooter sharing service.

Electric Scooter App Development Process

You should always start with the hardware. Ensure that you’re all set with this and then start the e-scooter app development. Here are some of the steps that you will have to take if you’d work with RexSoft.

Everything in our e-scooter app development process is carefully calculated to deliver the best results to our customers. This is why we also tend to choose the best technologies for our development. 

Electric Scooter App Development Technologies

Here are the technologies that we prefer to use in our e-scooter app development: 

Flutter

Allows creating cross-platform applications that look and work as well as the native ones. Flutter also speeds up the development since allows to use of the same codebase for iOS and Android apps. Is the third most loved technology. 

Node.js

Is perfect for real-time applications and makes the IoT apps more efficient. Allows you to speed the development up and don’t experience quality losses. 

E-Scooter App Development cost

First, let’s take a look at how much time the e-scooter app development consumes on the C24 example:

• Design — 80h; 
• App development — 360h; 
• Back-end development/App API — 280h; 
• Super Admin CMS — 140h; 
• Device API — 160h. 

So, our specialists worked on C24 e-scooter app development for 1020h in total. Let’s take it as an average sum of hours and assume that you ordered a development from the US ($75/h), and Ukraine ($40/h). 

The e-scooter app development from the US will cost you around $76,800 when the offshore development from Ukraine will take only $40,800.

Electric Scooter App Development Example C24

We’ve already mentioned this project above. It’s a Ukrainian e-scooter application that’s present in the biggest cities like Kyiv and Kharkiv. We’ve developed this application to support eco-friendly vehicles and new ideas that spread across the world. 

This application has all the essential features, works on both iOS and Android, and we developed an advertising website for it as well. 

One of the biggest challenges was to create an admin panel, so we advise you to pay special attention to it in your e-scooter app development. You can read more about it in our case study!

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An e-scooter app might be an extremely proficient business idea, so if you’re looking to begin your own startup take a closer look at this niche. It’s young and more than ready for your app to shift the grounds!