Yandex to unveil own scooter, development cost put at $10 mln-$15 mln - paper

MOSCOW. Dec 13 (Interfax) - Yandex will soon unveil its own electric scooter, the development of which could have cost $10 million-$15 million, business daily Vedomosti reported on Tuesday, citing sources.

The new scooter was developed for Yandex by e-scooter manufacturer Wind, which the Russian Internet company acquired in 2021, a spokesman for Yandex said.

A source close to a Russian scooter sharing service estimated the cost of the scooter's development at $10 million-$15 million, and said the cost of production will vary depending on the partner factory, materials and the size of the orders for the scooter, the paper reported.

The e-scooter, which is now being tested in Israel, will be produced at partner plants in China.

The presentation for the new scooter will be held at Yandex's Yet Another Conference on December 15, the paper reported a source as saying.

The Yandex spokesman said the company's scooter differs from others in that it has a number of safety options and its specifics take into account city conditions in Russia. The company did not disclose the exact characteristics of the scooter or its price.

The paper, citing a source at the company, said Yandex intends to expand its scooter fleet from 20,000 to 70,000 by spring, and plans to have its own scooters make up as much as 70% of the total. Yandex also plans to expand to Kazakhstan and increase the number of Russian cities in which its e-scooter rental service is available. Possible cities in which the company plans to launch the service include Yekaterinburg and Kazan. The service is now available in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tula and Krasnodar.

Russia's largest e-scooter sharing services are Urent and Whoosh, with about 80,000 scooters each, B1 (formerly the Russian division of EY) reported. This market is growing far faster in Russia than globally, expanding more than 500% in 2019-2021, B1 said. The revenue of these services will grow by an average of 60% annually in 2025-2026 to 95.7 billion rubles, experts forecast. The growth will be driven by the increasing number of users and trips. The number of active users will almost triple from 10 million in 2021 to 28 million in 2024 and grow to 34 million in 2026, B1 forecast.

Leading scooter sharing service Whoosh, with 46% of the Russian market by revenue, is also developing its own e-scooter model, senior executives at the company said earlier. The company is planning an initial public offering on the Moscow Exchange on Wednesday and intends to use part of the proceeds to expand its fleet, adding about another 40,000 to the 81,800 it had at the end of September.