Residents keen to hop on the e-scooter craze, and who had already installed the app, awoke to find dozens of Lime Scooters clustered around the Forsyth Barr Stadium area on the Lime app's map, along with a few dotted around the University area.
While several confused looking people were seen in the area staring at their phones and searching for the scooters, they were nowhere to be seen today.
By mid-morning on Wednesday all but two fully charged scooters had disappeared from the app's map.
However, two people, believed to be staff members, were seen riding the scooters around the car park of a nearby warehouse before disappearing back inside.
RNZ reported late on Wednesday morning that the scooters are expected to launch in Dunedin tomorrow.
Renting a scooter costs a flat fee of $1 plus 30 cents for each minute.
Powered by batteries and driven by electric motors, they have a top speed of about 25kmh.
Teams of ''juicers'' are paid to collect the scooters, charge them up and drop them off back in the city, while operations staff employed by the company collect damaged scooters and shift the scooters around to insure they are in areas of demand.
Lime city launcher Matt McNeill said earlier the company planned to launch in Dunedin but he could not confirm when.
When it first approached the Dunedin City Council, the company said it hoped to be in the city by Christmas, but Mr McNeill said it could be anywhere from a few weeks to few months away from launching.
Dunedin’s compactness, large student population and investment in large projects such as the Steamer Basin redevelopment made the city an attractive place to set up, he said.
A DCC spokesperson said council staff had met company representatives and developed an agreement on safety messaging and reporting incidents.
The spokesperson said Lime would monitor the use of its scooters, although the council will liaise with the company if any problems arise.
In the six weeks the service has been available in Auckland and Christchurch the scooters have been taken on more than 500,000 trips by 150,000 different riders, according to figures released by the company.
There have also been nearly 300 ACC claims for injuries caused by electric scooters since the service arrived in New Zealand.
Safety remained the company’s top priority and it would continue to educate riders on best riding practices, Mr McNeill said.
"It’s not good to see people getting hurt but when you look at 500,000 trips we’ve just clicked over in a month we’ve got a 0.05% ratio of trips to accidents."
Rider education and greater information about how the scooters could be used safely was part of the company’s expansion plan, he said.
The e-scooters have also been criticised by some members of the public who have reported incidents ranging from pedestrians being hit, scooters being left in dangerous places and multiple people trying to ride one scooter.
"Obviously we would like to bring it into cities like Dunedin as soon as we can and we’ve ironed out what we need to and it’s just a matter of making ourselves as ready as possible."
- additional reporting RNZ
