Beam Mobility secretly deployed ‘phantom’ e-scooters in Australia and NZ to dodge fees and boost profits

Shared e-scooter startup Beam Mobility has placed hundreds of extra “phantom” scooters on city streets in Australia and New Zealand to avoid paying vehicle registration fees to local governments, according to a two-part report from The Australian.

Cities place caps on the number of vehicles operators can deploy to avoid saturating streets and sidewalks with scooters that could endanger pedestrians. 

The Australian’s scoop includes leaked Slack messages and other documents detailing how Beam provided false data to independent monitoring app Ride Report to understate the number of scooters in cities such as Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Auckland and Wellington. 

One document, which includes Beam co-founder Deb Gangopadhyay’s name, describes Beam’s plan to deploy an additional 1,000 scooters into the “best areas” of those cities, with the goal of generating an additional $150,000 profit. 

Beam last raised $135 million from high-profile investors, including Affirma Capital and Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia India and SEA).