Clean e-bikes, dirty tricks: e-bike company accuses competitors of sabotage

A war appears to be brewing in London’s shared e-bike market, and it’s getting messy with new accusations of sabotage.

It’s a turf war, to be precise, and one company is now claiming that it is being set up by rival e-bike sharing company operators, resulting in its bikes being removed from the street and landing hefty fines.

According to reporting by The Times, ride-hailing and micromobility operator Bolt has accused rival e-bike companies of deliberately moving its properly parked bikes into illegal positions to trigger council impoundments and fines.

Bolt says the alleged sabotage is happening in the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, where operators including Lime, Forest, and Voi compete for limited parking space in designated shared e-bike stalls painted along public streets.

The company shared a dossier of evidence with The Times, including “before and after” photos that allegedly show Bolt bikes parked correctly inside designated bays at the end of a rental trip, only to later appear outside those bays when photographed by council enforcement officers. Once deemed improperly parked, bikes can be impounded at a cost of £84.45 per incident (roughly US $115), plus daily storage fees, taking them out of circulation and adding up quickly.

While the evidence is often circumstantial, many cases show that not only have Bolt’s e-bikes been moved into illegal parking positions, but it occurs simultaneously with several competitors’ e-bikes showing up correctly parked in the positions previously occupied by the Bolt bikes.

Bolt executive John Buckley told The Times that the company has recorded “repeated instances” of bikes being displaced shortly after trips ended, often surrounded by large numbers of competitor bikes. He suggested that “overdeployment” by other operators – flooding shared bays beyond capacity – may be forcing bikes out of compliance.

Last year alone, Kensington & Chelsea impounded more than 1,000 rental e-bikes from the four operators, generating over £81,000 in charges. The borough has 246 designated parking bays, typically holding around 10 bikes each, yet fleet sizes reportedly run into the thousands. The Times previously reported that Lime had 1,440 bikes available in the borough, more than double its permitted 600.

Rival operators deny wrongdoing. Forest and Voi both said staff are explicitly instructed not to move competitors’ bikes. Lime similarly denied instructing teams to overdeploy or interfere with other operators.

For its part, Kensington & Chelsea council says it will continue impounding any bike parked dangerously or obstructing pavements, regardless of how it got there. But the allegations highlight a deeper issue: in a tightly capped parking system with high demand, competition can quickly spill over into chaos.

Clean transport may be the goal as shared e-bikes and e-scooters continue to facilitate convenient urban transit – but on London’s streets, the battle for curb space is anything but tidy. Now it appears that the fight might be getting downright dirty.