Recently, Ford announced the acquisition of the scooter sharing company, Spin, based in San Francisco, and the deal is valued at $40 million.

There’s no denying the fact that riding a scooter in California, where CARB makes driving short distances a negative activity, and the air and weather are much better than other places, is more popular than in most other areas of the country. While scooter sharing is popular in some places, it does present problems that will need to be solved to become a positive part of the Ford Smart Mobility division.

Trouble for the Scooters

San Francisco has been one of the most popular places for scooters and as such, the city has received nearly 1,900 scooter-related complaints in just over a month. Right now, Skip and Scoot are the only scooter-sharing companies that are allowed to operate in the city with a limit of 625 scooters for each company. Right now Spin, Lime, and Bird have had to put San Francisco operations on hold because their permits have been frozen. Throughout Southern California, there has been a ton of public backlash against the scooters that are often left around cities, vandalized, tossed in the ocean, or even set on fire.

Spin Operating Under Ford

The Spin company will continue to operate under the Ford name and work to expand its business to reach more areas of the country. Right now, Spin operates in thirteen cities in the US and on five college campuses. The goal is to expand to more than 100 cities in the next eighteen months. With this new funding and support, Spin will be able to hire more people and allow these operations and expansion plans to take place.

What’s the Goal for Ford?

Spin is small compared to Ford and even though motorized scooters can offer a solution for the many trips that are less than three miles that we take, the question is whether or not this new acquisition makes sense? Is Ford trying to get a foothold onto college campuses? This could be a smart solution for the brand to be able to offer the scooters to the students around the country for a flat annual fee that the campus could pay. Will we see more motorized scooters in our Ford vehicles? Possibly, this way we could get from car to destination more easily.

A Business Expansion that’s yet to be Proved

Regardless of the motivation behind the purchase of Spin by Ford, the small sample size that we currently see of scooter sharing has caused more challenges than solutions. Possibly, having the backing of this large automaker will allow there to be more regulation and control over the scooters that are shared in cities and on college campuses. These scooters do solve a problem for those who live in the city and want to use them to get around town a few miles at a time, but Ford is going to need to help Spin make changes that make a positive impact right away.