Dott’s chief executive has said the firm received "so much negative feedback" about its e-bikes when they operated in London, due to geofences which “make absolutely no sense for the user.”

Speaking to City A.M., Henri Moissinac said a lot of Dott's e-bike users would be riding, “and then suddenly they bump into some artificial barrier between two boroughs and they are absolutely furious about it.”

The firm took its 2,500 e-bikes out of London last month, moving them to Paris and Rome, describing the UK capital’s bike rental market as “totally out of control”. Dott is also an operator in London’s e-scooter trial, which began its second phase in September.

“The scooter scheme is properly organised, it works well, everybody has proven it safe,” Moissinac said. “It’s not the case for e-bikes. E-bikes are not under the control of TfL, it’s very disorganised borough by borough.”

When looking at the capital’s rental e-bikes earlier this year, ebiketips’ Richard Peace noted how Dott’s motor cut out when riding.

“I head down Cycle Superhighway 6 through Farringdon but the motor cuts out abruptly," he wrote. "An on-screen message tells me to get out of a 'no-ride' area and I discover I have strayed into a huge area of north-east London where Dott e-bikes don't appear to be allowed.”

> How do Santander e-bikes compare to Lime, Tier and Forest?

Moissinac said he would “absolutely love” Dott's e-bikes to return to London, but only if a single geofence was put in place.

“There is no reason why you cannot make [London] financially sustainable to operate, but if you have the type of problems we described with consumers and every one out of three rides leads to a problem… you’ve got to do a refund and try to apologise, and then trying to explain becomes impossible.”

He said Dott’s recommendation is that e-bike hire should be organised by TfL, like the e-scooters, “so then you have a consistent geofence [that] makes sense for the end user.”

The firm also previously operated e-scooters in Paris, before residents voted to ban the vehicles in a referendum in April. In response, a Dott spokesperson said: "We will continue to offer e-bikes in Paris and plan to expand our fleet to meet anticipated demand from the 400,000 users of shared e-scooters that will need to find alternative transport."