Did your rented e-scooter suddenly shut down? Blame the invisible geofence

LOS ANGELES - Like scores of tourists who zip through Santa Monica on e-scooters every day, 21-year-old Elliot Stephenson had no idea there was a fence around the pier until he hit it.

"I was cruising down the hill and lost power," the bewildered visitor from New Zealand said as he wheeled his just-rented Lime back toward Ocean Avenue on a recent Thursday afternoon. "(The motor) just stopped."

Cities across California have followed Santa Monica's lead in limiting the type and number of micro-mobility devices that move inside their borders, and how