Less than a year after the launch of its Smart Bikeshare programme, Bird has launched its first micro-electric vehicles in the Netherlands.

The shared Bird Bikes will be available to riders in the city of Amersfoort, 20km north east of Dutch start-up hub Utrecht. The successful RFP bid will see up to 150 of Bird’s electric sky-blue e-assist bikes serving the residents of Amersfoort for a period of 18 months.

“It’s great that Bird is the first in the Netherlands to choose Amersfoort,” said Alderman Roald van der Linde, who oversees mobility in the city of 160,000 residents. “We are a city where many concepts are being born and tested. We see the overall shared vehicle offering becoming more and more attractive; you don’t have to own all kinds of vehicles to get to your destination in the best way.”

Bird Bikes in Amersfoort can easily be identified and unlocked via the Bird app. Each vehicle comes equipped with a host of safety and sustainability features including dual hand brakes, onboard diagnostics, aerospace-grade aluminium alloy framing and a maximum range of more than 80km on a single battery charge.

The RFP win in Amersfoort is the latest in a growing series of shared Bird Bike launches around the world. Recent deployments in Rome, Bordeaux, San Diego, Newark and other US and European cities, as well as integrations between Bird and local bikeshare and e-moped service providers in cities from Los Angeles and Detroit to Oslo and Florence, are said to demonstrate strong continued demand for multimodal micromobility in 2022.