For companies, there's big demand to be had from both consumers and investors, especially as public transportation woes snare urban consumers. LimeBike and Bird have both pulled in over $100 million in funding, while earlier this month, Uber acquired Jump, an electric bike-share company.
With just the touch of an app, these start-ups offer e-scooter rentals that are easy to use, and available in major metropolitan regions like Los Angeles, San Francisco and beyond. The bikes themselves are dockless, and the app finds a scooter nearby and unlocks it remotely.
When the rider is done, the scooter can be locked anywhere a regular bike or scooter could. And depending on the length of time a user needs them, the scooters are also affordable: LimeBike, Bird and Spin are rentable for anywhere between 15 cents and 1 per minute.
In the last few months, these scooters have popped up everywhere — but not everyone is on board with their growing popularity. Last week, a headline in The Wall Street Journal blared that San Francisco was being "terrorized" by the trend.
Indeed, a casual stroll a CNBC reporter took down San Francisco's Market Street recently offered glimpses of unattended e-scooters on virtually every block. While commuters have embraced the ease and convenience the e-scooters provide, their ubiquity has been met with grumbles and, in some cases, government intervention.
Last week, the San Francisco City Attorney's office slapped cease and desist letters on all three major e-scooter companies. The city is also considering legislation introduced by City Supervisor Aaron Peskin that would allow the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to impose permit requirements on companies like these, as a means to regulate the influx of traffic.
In response, Bird Rides CEO Travis VanderZanden, who is also an alum of Uber, issued a letter supporting more oversight.
Bird "applaud[s] city officials efforts to work with us in ensuring that we can bring environmentally-friendly transportation alternatives to San Francisco, and we support Supervisor Peskin's legislation to regulate e-scooters and are eager to continue the conversations around these regulations," VanderZanden wrote.
Even a few would-be adopters have voiced complaints. One San Francisco commuter named Heidi told CNBC that it took three tries for her to successfully rent an e-scooter, and on the third time "the battery was too dead."
She added: "I wish they had ... worked with businesses or the city [and] if they had parking hubs rather than being thrown about. They're cool, but it's annoying that they're randomly thrown about."
Caen Contee, LimeBike's co-founder and head of partnerships, told CNBC that authorities and residents are still grappling with the issues associated with the e-scooter's explosive growth.
"This is something that all cities are trying to figure out, there is no blueprint for how to do permits. We're very much looking for how to...show other cities throughout the country what's possible and how transformative a medium this can be," Contee said, and predicted there would likely be mergers in the space in order to save costs.
At least for now, LimeBike is taking full advantage of the e-scooter's popularity. The company employs people it calls "juicers," who help charge LimeBike's fleet of scooters, and has brand ambassadors to coordinate charging and bike deployment. LimeBike also has partnerships with coffee shops and stores to drive traffic to their shops, and is mulling other ways to incentivize e-scooter adoption.
"As that industry begins to shrink and figure out its longer-term players, it will be a lot about integration, working with other partners in adjacent spaces...and how we work with local transportation," said Contee.
Electric bikes have the potential to give residents "one of these smart cities we keep talking about," he added.
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