2020 supercharged the UK e-scooter market. Here’s what 2021 has in store for Swedish startup Voi.

2020 supercharged the UK e-scooter market. Here’s what 2021 has in store for Swedish startup Voi.

In January 2020, Richard Corbett was ready to take a break from e-scooters.

After two years of working at e-scooter startup Bird, Corbett decided to take a sabbatical with his wife and two-year-old son.

He had time. Unlike the rest of Europe, scooters were banned from both roads and pavements in the UK. And although Corbett had been pushing the government to change the law, legislation moves slowly and e-scooters were not high up the priorities list of a country looking down the barrel of Brexit.

Corbett didn't see any chance of any legislative change happening until 2021 at the very earliest, so he figured he'd take his chance to travel the world while his son was still pre-school age. Both Corbett and his wife quit their jobs in January, the plan being to renovate and rent out the house before setting off for adventure in April. 

"Lo and behold, that never happened," Corbett told Insider in an interview.

What did happen is the UK government fast-tracked legislation to make rental e-scooters legal for city trials in June 2020, galvinized by demand for more transport options that didn't involve packing people into enclosed carriages and buses during a pandemic.

It was just ahead of that legislation