Despite being knocked back on its application to offer electric scooters in San Francisco, Uber Technologies Inc. has committed itself to engineer its own scooter to compete in the burgeoning e-scooter market.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency issued two permits for e-scooter companies Thursday, bringing back scooters to the streets of a city which is inundated with human feces, after banning them in June.

Two lesser-known companies scored a permit: Scoot Networks Inc., a San Francisco-based e-scooter startup that also provides on-demand e-scooter hiring in Barcelona, Spain and Skip (Waybots Inc.), another San Francisco-based startup.

Uber, which entered the market in via its acquisition of Jump Bikes Inc. in April is not alone in being rejected. Rival Lyft Inc. also got a no from the city council.

“While no application was flawless, the SFMTA selected only the applicants with the strongest proposals for the one-year pilot program. Scoot and Skip put forth the strongest applications the SFMTA received,” the city said in a statement. “Taken as a whole, Scoot and Skip’s applications demonstrated not only a commitment to meet the terms of the permit but a high level of capability to operate a safe, equitable and accountable scooter share service.”

Uber remained undeterred by the ruling. Bloomberg reported that the ride-hailing giant is building its own e-scooters. The report claimed that Uber has committed itself to engineer its own scooter via the team at Jump Bikes.

The obvious question is how do you redesign an electric scooter, but apparently issues with existing scooters include the ability to cut brake cables. The Uber/Jump project is looking at finding ways to hide them. Wear and tear is also cited as an issue, with the e-scooters only having a useful life of about six months before they need to be replaced.

It wasn’t all bad news for Uber and Lyft. Both companies obtained permits in Santa Monica for an upcoming e-scooter pilot program.

Photo: Grendelkhan/Wikimedia Commons