I went to Lime’s ‘biggest e-bike factory in Europe’ and was amazed at what I saw

It’s a Thursday morning on an industrial estate in Tottenham and I’m waiting in Lime bike limbo. Hundreds of the bright green electric bicycles are scattered across a spacious warehouse – a bit like a B&Q – ready to meet their fate. Clusters of mechanics in high-vis-jackets drill, rewire, saw and hammer away at workstations. Others take the bikes for a spin on an indoor test lane, vigorously ringing the bell as if they’re revving a renovated Lambo.

I can just about hear Kaan Taş, general manager, over the din. ‘Welcome to Lime’s biggest factory in Europe,’ he says. The vast majority of the bikes around us will be resurrected — sometimes miraculously — ready to be rented again by Londoners looking to whizz from A to B. Some vehicles, though, won’t make it. They will ascend to Lime bike heaven: in other words, be chucked on top of a heap of skeleton bicycle frames outside, lying under a sign titled ‘Beyond Repair (EOL)’. Then, their spare parts will be salvaged, donated to save the life of another bike. ‘It has to be really heavy damage [to recycle a whole bike],’ Taş says. ‘There are always parts we can use again.’

Since 2018, millions of Londoners have made Lime a part of their lives. Last year, things really took off; according to The Lime Times (Lime’s own blog) there was an 85 percent increase in trips made in 2024 compared to 2023. The bikes are everywhere; the exact number is confidential, but some estimates suggest there are 20,000 of them across the city, ready to be unlocked via the app. The longest serving Lime bike, I’m told by the company’s communications lead Ellie Bird, has been going for two years and eight months (fun facts abound: it’s completed 4,061 trips; one rider has unknowingly used this same Lime 16 times; and it’s travelled 15,636km, further than a flight from the UK to Australia).

For some enthusiasts, these numbers might not even sound like that much: Limeheads across London have clocked up insane figures in their Ride Replay, which is like Spotify Wrapped, but with trips instead of tunes. According to The Guardian, 97 percent of us are no more than a two minute saunter away from a Lime bike in London at any given time. ‘Liming’ from place to place has become so widespread it has become a verb: I ‘lime’, you ‘lime’, we all ‘lime’. The company has also entered the world of fashion, through collabs (see streetwear designer Lydia Bolton’s Lime link-up) and a chic Instagram trend: photos of your most coveted accessories in the ‘Brat’ green bike baskets. Then, in January, beau de jour Timothée Chalamet rode one of the vehicles onto the red carpet for the premiere of A Complete Unknown.

The green e-bike has proven a total travel revolution – and much of the marketing apparently isn’t even Lime’s doing (including the Chalamet moment, Bird swears). But how much do we actually know about our two-wheeled friends? After all, most of us hop on and off a Lime without thinking about the inner workings. Which is why I find myself here, in this Haringey hangar, learning about the lives of the bikes behind padlocked doors.

How do Lime bikes move around London?

Lime’s latest model – known as the Gen4 e-bike – is its most sustainable yet. Introduced in 2022, it features a souped-up motor, a swappable battery system and, of course, the now iconic green colour-way. It might sound like a fever dream, but the bikes were actually red before this, with a green basket, after the company acquired Uber’s Jump e-bicycles and relaunched them in 2020. Lime has been around for much longer than that, however: they launched in the UK in Milton Keynes back in 2018, but these days operates mainly in London (alongside MK plus Salford, Nottingham and Derby).

Limes don’t just grow on trees: most are moved about naturally by users, who pick them up from one bay or pavement and park them elsewhere. But Lime also uses algorithms to predict demand to get bikes to where they need to be before people arrive to ride them – sometimes that’s just based on commuting hours but other times it’s caused by local events, like day festivals or the Hackney Half marathon. ‘Juicers’ swap-out batteries to give Limes a new lease of life each day without the need to plug them in. And a motorcade of ‘transporters’ drive across the city, picking and dropping off bikes to more in-demand locations, parking hubs and the warehouses. When the process properly gets going, it feels totally seamless.

But it’s not always a smooth ride; many Lime bikes are abandoned, ending up strewn across pavements, a risk for disabled people and an eyesore for residents. It’s testament to Lime’s wild demand, but nearly stacking it over a dozen bright green titanium dominoes coming out of the tube is enough to turn views of Lime sour.

‘The thing we’re really focused on is working with councils to build the parking that’s required,’ Hal Stevenson, Director of Policy, tells me over Zoom. Earlier this month, Lime pledged £20 million to create at least 2,500 dedicated parking bays across the capital. The company is also introducing a real-time AI review (rather than the current retrospective one) to approve your end-of-journey photo. It means that eventually, you won’t be able to complete your trip without demonstrating your perfect parking (madly, a team of 20 actual humans at Lime HQ used to verify every single image, all day, everyday).

But there are also some red flags emerging for transport’s new green giant. Recently, Jim Waterson’s newsletter London Centric spoke to three Londoners who suffered from severe leg breaks after falling off Lime bikes. They raised concerns about the company’s German tyres being replaced by cheaper wheels from a Chinese manufacturer. And just this week, the publication commissioned James Holloway, an experienced bicycle mechanic, to inspect 50 random Limes. Holloway concluded that 12 percent of the bikes they tested should be instantly recalled due to safety issues (such as missing handlebars and flat tyres) and expressed concerns that while in-app reports about dodgy brakes always lead to an automatic MOT, other complaints don’t force bikes out of circulation.

It’s not just London Centric making Lime feel the squeeze. According to a recent report from The Times, a photographer witnessed laissez-faire Lime bikers skip red lights 84 times in a single hour. But should we, in at least some of these cases, be blaming the rider, not the bike? After all, many of us have slalomed home from Skehans after too many Guinnesses.

How are Lime bikes repaired?

But one logistical issue will never go away. No matter the technological advances, the bikes will always need repairing at some point or another. Sometimes, these are flagged by slightly disgruntled users on the app; in other cases, it’s Lime’s own data that pinpoints issues automatically. ‘When certain thresholds are triggered, we take vehicles back to the warehouse like an MOT,’ Stevenson explains. These could include the amount of mileage a Lime has done since getting a check-up or the time it's spent idle on the street. Other times, it's a preventative measure for a routine inspection.

It’s here that the mechanics get involved. Sometimes, a Lime needs just a little bit of TLC; increasingly, this is happening kerbside, with foot patrollers carrying out ‘micro repairs’ on the fly with a miniature toolkit. But if more work is needed, they make a trip to the Tottenham warehouse. Opened in April 2024 and twinned with its Bermondsey garage south of the river, it’s become an exemplary set-up that Lime wants to replicate across the world.

How does it work? First, any kaput bikes get inspected in the yard. Then they head in for fixing and are triaged according to three categories: easy repairs (‘small adjustments like tyre pressure’); medium repairs (‘changing spare parts’) and hard repairs (‘doing something electronically’).

Mechanics, trained to grapple with any gripe, will identify any issues, tweaking bikes according to 16 tick-boxes ranging from misaligned phone holders (a common complaint) to correct tyre pressure. Any broken parts go to the back of the warehouse, where a specialist team tries to resuscitate them with an arsenal of power tools. The fixed bikes are given a scrub clean (Taş excitedly tells me there’s a pressure washer) and pass through quality control outside, hopefully getting the green light to go back on the road.

Taş is proud of his crack team of mechanics; especially as many go through the three-week training course without any prior engineering skills under their belt. ‘We rolled it out this summer and 80 percent of the people we employed didn't have any mechanical experience,’ he says. ‘One guy, who was a Costa barista, became one of our best mechanics and later left to start his own bike repair shop.’

What is the Lime bike London warehouse like?

Watching them at work, I can genuinely understand why the role would be a buzz; it’s tough graft, but looks properly satisfying. ‘When we asked the mechanics what they wanted to do for a Christmas activity, they suggested a competition to repair bikes,’ Taş says, illustrating my point. There’s a healthy sense of rivalry at play, with workers flexing how quickly they can do repairs for a coveted Mechanic of the Month spot.

Lime’s repair team also saved the day last summer, when videos were spreading across TikTok showing how to hack a Lime by overriding its lock system. So much so, Time Out called the click-clack of a hijacked bike the sound of the summer in 2023. Every single bike was recalled and modified; Taş, with traumatised eyes, communicates the logistical nightmare this was.

But it’s not just about the mechanics; Lime’s success is also down to its unique approach. The bikes are modular, meaning that parts can be swapped; it’s why Lime has pipped its competitors to the post. ‘Our big advantage is we manufacture all our own spare parts, so we’re incentivised to reduce the breakage rate,’ Taş says. And while Santander’s TfL bikes are significantly cheaper and rivals like Forest try to get a foot in the market, a lot of the time, they lack the same convenience and, ultimately, sex appeal. Who would be seen dead on a Boris Bike these days?

For now, some of the Lime warehouse is empty; it’s a seasonal business, with far more bikes being used when the sun’s out. It’s why the team are gearing up for the ‘second summer of Lime’ this year, when even more riders will likely get on board. As I head outside, bikes leaving the warehouse are being emblazoned with a new QR Code sticker asking for feedback. Along with expected grumblings, I wouldn’t be surprised if they receive the odd love letter.

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