Electric scooters in Lisbon: test & review by Hive (+ promo code)

To benefit from 30 free minutes, enter the code DVbUMQ4Q when you register.

Upon arriving in Lisbon, we discovered with curiosity the self-service electric scooter services.

Having left Paris for almost 3 years, we haven’t had the opportunity to see them bloom in the French capital, so it’s a novelty for us and it makes us feel good.

There are several services, I have the impression that they charge more or less the same rates. I chose the Hive service without much research. I had the impression that I saw some regularly and the application was well noted on the blinds.

Hive is a service offered by the car manufacturer duo BMW and Daimler. It is therefore an advantage because they are two economically solid players and there is little risk of them closing down overnight as can happen with new services whose business model isn’t necessarily easy to find.

After downloading the application, registration is literally done in 2 minutes. You have to fill in your e-mail, password and enter your credit card number (1€ will be debited for the registration, it’s good to know it because it’s not necessarily specified, I hadn’t seen it anyway).

It’s rather nice to see an application that doesn’t ask for tons of personal information when it has no concrete use, except for marketing questions (name, first name, address, ID, …).

No waiting time, your account is instantly activated.

For this, you need to find an available Electric Trotinette. Contrary to the Velib we know in Paris, there are no stations, scooters are potentially everywhere. There are really a lot of them and it is rare to walk more than two minutes without finding one but if you do, you can locate the nearest scooters from the application and even see their battery charge level. I read that in Paris it was anarchy with scooters but in Lisbon I didn’t see any particular problems.

Once you have found one, just scan the QR code and validate the start of the race on the application.

The rate is very simple to understand: 1 € per rental + 15 cents per minute.

The scooter is really easy to handle, there is a small lever on the right to accelerate and one on the left to brake. You have a small dial to indicate the speed. It is possible to go up to 25 km/hour but at 15, the feeling of speed is already quite good.

It’s really nice and fun to drive, I recommend it!

Once finished, simply leave your scooter where you want it and indicate the end of the race on the application. There are some areas in Lisbon where it isn’t possible to return scooters, I guess it is a matter of authorization. These areas are indicated on the application.

In the end, the free electric scooter service is really nice to use, but it’s not really economical. A 20-minute ride will cost you 4 euros per person. As soon as there are two of you, it will be cheaper to use the metro, the bus or even the cab. So use it more for recreational purposes than for your regular trips.

Get a coupon code

To promote the adoption of its service, Hive has set up a sponsorship program. When you sign up for the first time, you can get a 30-minute free usage credit by using the promo code YHxXbink.

This code is simply entered on your application and the credit will be instantly added.

This coupon code is valid for all cities where the Hive service is present : Vienna in Austria, Paris in France, Athens in Greece, Warsaw and Wroclaw in Poland and Lisbon in Portugal. And probably new cities in the future!