Lime bike profits double as rider numbers surge in England

Love them or hate them, Lime ebikes are an increasingly common sight on England’s roads with new figures showing annual profits more than doubling thanks to a surge in riders.Lime’s average number of monthly users jumped 31% to approaching 700,000 as it added more than 4,500 ebikes and scooters to its fleet, taking the total to almost 38,000, the company’s UK arm, Lime-technologies" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="210263" data-entity-type="organization">Lime Technologies, said in accounts filed at Companies House.Sales rose by a third to £148m in 2025 and profits more than doubled to £4.7m from £1.7m, as first reported by the Sunday Times. The progress followed expansion into new cities, including Oxford in 2024 and Nottingham in 2023, adding to its presence in London, Milton Keynes and Salford.Despite the surge in trade, Lime’s UK accounts show it employed just 54 people in 2025, up from 39 a year before, largely because it relies on self-employed contractors to shift and service its ebikes and scooters.The company, whose parent, Neutron Holdings, listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange last year valued at $1.7bn (£1.3bn), is part-owned by US ride-hailing app Uber. Lime was founded in 2017 in San Francisco, California, and now operates in about 230 cities across 29 countries, mostly in Europe.At the time of the listing, Wayne Ting, the chief executive of Lime, said the company was having “conversations with lots of other [UK] municipalities”.Lime bikes have become almost ubiquitous in London. Photograph: Melanie Major/AlamyThe English devolution bill, passed in April, gives local authorities in England fresh powers to license rental ebike operators and set requirements around parking, safety and accessibility standards.London’s transport body estimated in 2024 that one in 10 of the 1.5m daily cycle journeys in the capital are made on dockless ebikes such as Lime, Forest and Voi.The schemes have fuelled a surge in cycling in London, helped by the patronage of celebrities such as Timothée Chalamet and most recently Kim Kardashian.However, there have been mounting concerns about safety for riders and pedestrians. Rented bikes were reportedly responsible for almost a third of cyclist collisions with pedestrians that required police intervention.Meanwhile, riders have been injured by defective bikes while cycling or suffered fractures caused by the weight of the bicycle falling on them, a phenomenon known as “Lime bike leg”.Lime recently began introducing on the UK a new, smaller version of its electric bikes, with batteries repositioned towards the back wheel,after safety criticism. More than 1,500 of the new models are now in operation in England.The company has said that more than 99.99% of Lime trips in London last year ended without a reported incident.Charities representing blind residents and people with limited mobility have also raised concerns about the difficulty in navigating parts of London amid chaotic parking of rental bikes on pavements.London boroughs have seized at least 3,000 ebikes this year, 2,000 of which were Lime bikes, a Guardian investigation found, as hire companies face growing calls to stop bicycles littering streets and blocking pavements.