3 ms·

To sum up what I'm asking about: why won't competition and many even larger outside factors conspire to reduce the market price of a scooter ride to what it pro

To sum up what I'm asking about: why won't competition and many even larger outside factors conspire to reduce the market price of a scooter ride to what it probably should be....like $0.50+$0.10/mi or something? If that is what ends up happening, we'll just have thousands of little local scooter shops. Like all bike rental shops.

spikels 8y ago
The beauty of Bird/Lime is that you just grab one when need one then leave it at your destination. For this to work you need lots of scooters/users. The more users/scooters the better the services becomes. This situation where the more sales/users the better the quality becomes and the lower the cost/price becomes is known as the "network effect". This is what drives the incredible value of things like Facebook and to a lesser extent Uber/Lyft. You can't really replicate this by buying a personal scooter because they are heavy and bulky. And you can't replicate this with "thousands of little local scooter shops" would be extremely expensive (real estate and labor) and add little value. And you can't replicate it with even driverless cars because they will be much more expensive and subject to congestion and other constraints. Lastly if scooter prices did come down the service would just become cheaper to provide but all the advantages would remain. So despite your numerous agruments against the business it seems plausible that a Bird/Lime scooter network would makes sense versus alternatives and likely that a single business could capture most or all of a market. They would then enjoy a sustainable quality/cost advantage over potential competitors. Make sense? More info on the underlying phenomena here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

3 ms·

To sum up what I'm asking about: why won't competition and many even larger outside factors conspire to reduce the market price of a scooter ride to what it pro

by microdrum 8y ago

spikels 8y ago
The beauty of Bird/Lime is that you just grab one when need one then leave it at your destination. For this to work you need lots of scooters/users. The more users/scooters the better the services becomes. This situation where the more sales/users the better the quality becomes and the lower the cost/price becomes is known as the "network effect". This is what drives the incredible value of things like Facebook and to a lesser extent Uber/Lyft. You can't really replicate this by buying a personal scooter because they are heavy and bulky. And you can't replicate this with "thousands of little local scooter shops" would be extremely expensive (real estate and labor) and add little value. And you can't replicate it with even driverless cars because they will be much more expensive and subject to congestion and other constraints. Lastly if scooter prices did come down the service would just become cheaper to provide but all the advantages would remain. So despite your numerous agruments against the business it seems plausible that a Bird/Lime scooter network would makes sense versus alternatives and likely that a single business could capture most or all of a market. They would then enjoy a sustainable quality/cost advantage over potential competitors. Make sense? More info on the underlying phenomena here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect