ATHENS – After losing 95 percent of its business during the breakout of the COVID-19 pandemic across the world in 2020, which led the company to pull out of Greece, Lime electric scooters are coming back to the streets.

The return comes as more people are turning to privately-owned electric scooters to get around without the hassle of dealing with traffic and parking, or public transport and still having a vehicle to get around with.

The San Francisco-based company offers dockless electric scooter sharing that is pitched as ideal for densely-populated cities for an alternative mode of transportation, especially during a crush of tourists and traffic.

“The biggest challenge for this industry is showing profits,” Lime’s Chief Executive officer, Wayne Ting, who took over at the company’s helm in 2020 when the Coronavirus struck told Kathimerini about the prospects.

He said that Lime is looking at a long-term investment plan for Greece to familiarize people with the product although e-scooters have become more visible on the streets of the capital and no longer a novelty.

“Greece is a very large market for us,” said Ting, noting that it’s the 31s country the company is involved in and with the highest economic growth rate in the 20 countries in the Eurozone that use the euro.

“We will gradually place around 800 electric scooters in Thessaloniki and 1,000 each in the Athenian Riviera and in Athens,” he said, referring to the capital’s coast where the 8-billion euro ($8.63 billion) development of the abandoned Hellenikon International Airport is underway and will be a major resident and tourist site.

Lime began with putting its scooters near the iconic White Tower in Thessaloniki, a major port and Greece’s second-largest city that is growing in popularity among tourists and gaining a reputation for being a buzz city.

The scooters are now coming to the southern suburbs of Athens and the company said it expects to have 500 of them in the two cities although it’s trying to deal with regulations, theft and vandalism problems that saw RideMovi, an electric bicycle rental company, giving up on Athens because of damage to the products.

Greece adopted e-scooter regulations in 2021, requiring use of a helmet and a speed limit of 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) per hour for the devices that can weave in and out of traffic and can be hard for drivers to spot.