Revel ends moped sharing, focuses on EV charging and ride-hail
Electric mobility startup Revel is officially shutting down its shared moped business in New York City and San Francisco, according to a company-wide email that CEO and co-founder Frank Reig sent Friday. TechCrunch has viewed the email.
San Francisco and New York were Revel’s last two moped sharing markets. The company will now focus solely on its electric ride-hail and EV charging businesses. Earlier this week, Revel launched its third so-called “Superhub” in Queens after unveiling a second one in Brooklyn in April. A Revel spokesperson told TechCrunch the company also expects to break ground on a Bay Area charging station soon.
Shuttering mopeds represents the end of an era for Revel — the Brooklyn-based company got its start as a small Bushwick storefront with 68 electric mopeds in 2018. By 2021, Revel had more than 3,000 e-mopeds in New York City and another 3,000 across Washington, D.C., Miami and San Francisco.
That same year, Revel launched its first Superhub in Brooklyn, started an all-Tesla, all-employee ride-hailing service, and opened (and quietly shut down) an e-bike subscription service. Now the ride-hail service is 500 EVs strong — made up of Tesla Model Ys and 3s and Kia Niros — and is available across New York City and parts of northern New Jersey, including to and from La Guardia, JFK and Newark airports.
As Revel’s other business units grew, demand for its shared micromobility offering began to dip. In his memo to staff, Reig described how “the service has been strained and ridership isn’t what it used to be.”
Robert Familiar, a spokesperson for the company, told TechCrunch that ridership dipped about 30% in both San Francisco and New York year-over-year from peak summer rides, making the service unsustainable.
Revel already pulled out of Washington, D.C. and Miami in November 2022. Today, the company only has 3,000 mopeds active across both SF and NYC markets.
The last day of service will be November 18. Revel will send the decommissioned mopeds to recycling facilities in New York and the Bay Area over the next two weeks.
About 67 staffers in moped operations will be laid off as a result of the shutdown, and they’ll all be eligible for severance benefits, according to Familiar. Revel will host an all-hands meeting on Tuesday to answer any questions from employees.
