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Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business
- jondumbau 8y agohow can they possibly allow strangers with no background check to plug in scooters.
- F_r_k 8y agoWhat could they do wrong ? Plug it backwards ?
- caf 8y agoPoe's Law.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- IncRnd 8y agoWhat is the reason for wanting background checks of people who plug-in scooters?
- jandrese 8y agoThey might not even have their license to handle electrical appliances! The horror!
- bcoates 8y agoAs long as they're not doing something dangerous like hair braiding or interior decoration I think we'll be ok.
- microcolonel 8y agoOut of control? Seems pretty cool that there's a company offering young people a rewarding, competitive, and productive after school activity.
- flashman 8y agoThis reads like an in-universe article from a Cory Doctorow YA novel.
- themagician 8y agoIt will disappear just as fast as it arrived. Maybe one will survive. Just like Sprig, Spoonrocket, Maple, Eatclub, etc and the legion of instant food delivery services came and went, this too will pass.
- trixie_ 8y agoReally? What will replace it? In the LA beach cities it is super useful.
- ghaff 8y agoThe LA beach cities seem a good environment for them. I'm skeptical how successful they'll be more broadly especially to the degree cities get more aggressive about keeping riders off sidewalks. It's not a big problem in less crowded areas and a relatively small number of users but it's a problem with more riders and more crowded areas.
- woolvalley 8y agoI love how you can see the original less-clickbait headlines of 'Who charges those electric bird scooters?' in the title tag and 'charging-electric-scooters-is-a-cutthroat-business' in the url.
- danso 8y agoHow do you know that the <title> tag contains the "original" headline? It seems to be more tailored for SEO, i.e. to attract the people who wonder (and then Google), "Who charges the electric scooters?"
- Illniyar 8y agoNever thought about that. Do they really do different titles for different entry points? The webarchive supports that this has always been the title. https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/charging-electric-scooters-is-a-cutthroat-business/560747/?single_page=true https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
- danso 8y agoNot sure what content-management system The Atlantic uses, but WordPress (or at least its popular SEO plugins) allow you to specify different values for <title> and article <h1> headlines. A lot of news orgs are now savvy enough to use varied titles for different formats. For example, this week's New Yorker print issue has a story titled, "Behind the Wall", which works in print because your eyeball can scan the article's entire presentation and see the headline in context with a photo and subhed "As the U.S. abandons diplomacy, an Ambassador resigns in protests". In the online version, the story's title is "The Diplomat Who Quit the Trump Administration", and the subhed (which is also the <meta> description) contains proper nouns: "For John Feeley, the Ambassador to Panama, moral failings at home seemed to compound tactical failings abroad" https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/28/the-diplomat-who-quit-the-trump-administration https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/28/the-diplomat-w...
- namdas 8y ago
- guessmyname 8y agoI wonder if the company is asking these teens, during the registration as contractors, if they have permission from their parents to charge all those scooters at home. I can imagine several parents getting angry for excessive increments in the electricity bills every month without having a clue about their children's "business". Of course, many of them will probably find the scooters in the garage in a regular morning walk around the house, but then… - Do they [the parents] get a percentage of that money to pay for the bills? - Is it even legal for these independent contractors to use home electricity to charge a 3rd-party business asset? - Are damages to the house, in case of a fire, covered by their contracts? - If the scooters are out of battery, how do these companies know where they are? - Can these teenagers hold the scooters "hostage"? - Can they charge extra money for dropping the scooters to places with some people can find it more convenient? Say, if I want to find one of them right in front of my house every morning, I would pay one of these teenagers some extra money for the arrangement. - Are these houses in risk of over-charging their electricity net? I have so many questions about all this, it seems so weird to me.
- Illniyar 8y agoThe article says that electricity cost for charging scooters is practically nothing. If we believe it or assume that electricity cost is trivial compared to the payment, then I don't see any parent that'll say no to their nearly-adult children making money on the side by such an activity. At worst they'll ask for compensation.
- carlmr 8y agoCapitalist parents will charge a fee for using home electricity.
- freshhawk 8y agoWhat are you? A Commie? A capitalist parent realizes they control access to the power and will hire someone to collect scooters. They will probably hire their kids first, because they will have very strong negotiating power with their kids. And since the electrical power they control is necessary but extremely cheap the entirety of the profit margin will be determined by labor costs. In terms of negotiating salary they also control food, shelter and love which are resources valued by kids so long term profitability seems likely. Assuming a plan to recruit/give birth to new employees. A fee?!? A capitalist parent has a singular ethical duty to their shareholders.
- OrganicMSG 8y agoPeople are providing a useful service and getting paid, the madness, the madness!
- Illniyar 8y agoDoesn't seem at all out of control. Seems like an awesome idea and the process needs to be refined to dissuade bad behavior. Considering the company was founded about a year ago is probably a lot of room for improvements and innovation (and angering your contractors in the process).
- jlebar 8y agoThere headline may be a slang reference, "out of control" = "awesome" or "dope".
- TorKlingberg 8y agoThe title of the article used to be "Who Charges Those Electric Bird Scooters?"
- piokoch 8y agoIs it legal in US to use electricity at home for business purposes? In some countries that's against contract with electricity provider, as they have different tariffs for business.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Faaak 8y agoIn general business tariffs are lower, so I don't see the problem.
- dufferzone 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYf_TBLnPQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYf_TBLnPQE
- hmd_imputer 8y agonope, not in Europe. Businesses have to pay a lot more than private residences.
- danso 8y ago> “Charging scooters for Bird is like Pokémon Go, but when you get paid for finding Pokémon” A modern version of Rip Van Winkle would only have to be asleep for 2 months to be just as clueless and out-of-touch as the original Van Winkle was when he took a 20-year nap.
- dcposch 8y agoPokemon Go was two years ago
- jpao79 8y agoI'm surprise they haven't tried old school kick powered scooters with an additional electronic GPS unit: http://goped.com/know-ped/ http://goped.com/know-ped/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtn5kg3ZH3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtn5kg3ZH3M Or something like this: Micro PedalFlowhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfIzZo6ouDo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfIzZo6ouDo It would reduce the speed concerns too.
- icebraining 8y agoThe speed might be a concern, but it's a selling point too. As is the lack of effort. Plus there's a goofiness value in kick-scooting.
- lordnacho 8y agoI want to hear more about Bird's business model. How can it be worthwhile for them to give hundreds of dollars out to have the scooters charged? What do people pay for using the scooters? As per the article, it also seems incentives are not quite thought out yet, so people can grab the $20 "hard-to-find" fee reasonably easily. It sounds like you can have a friend stash them until the fee goes up, then go and collect it. If this happens to every bike, that's maybe $20 per week? $1k a year per scooter? And I would guess a scooter itself costs a few hundred, as well? Can you rent out a scooter for a sensible amount? My guess would be that the scooters are not at 100% capacity, otherwise it would be hard to find one. Kinda like the Boris Bikes in London. There's also infrastructure costs involved with maintaining the fleet, making sure they're where rides are likely to originate, marketing, and so on.
- danso 8y ago> Riders can locate and unlock scooters using the company’s smartphone app, and after paying the $1 unlocking fee are charged 15 cents per minute during use.
- geezerjay 8y agoBack of the napkin calculations suggest that, in order to break even just from the charging costs alone, each scooter needs to be ridden for at least 2 and a half hours. Based on some quick googling (but without taking into account the terrain and the rider's weight and riding style), a scooter with a full load can be ridden for about 6 hours.
- anfilt 8y agoOut of control? Does not seem like it.
- ehead 8y agoMan, the gig economy is getting pretty surreal. Wait until the food delivery guys get on electric longboards. YT from Snow Crash might be a relatable character for my kids...
- maccam94 8y agoI mean, they already rent electric Scooter mopeds...
- andrewmunsell 8y agoThat isn't as unrealistic as you think, there's some people on Reddit posting about working for Uber Eats with Boosted Boards in NYC, and I know of at least one other that does it in SFO: https://www.reddit.com/r/boostedboards/comments/8jzokl/11_an_hour_delivering_with_v2_in_brooklyn_one/ https://www.reddit.com/r/boostedboards/comments/8jzokl/11_an...
- zhoujianfu 8y agoThe video of the guy piling six birds on one and riding away is pricelesssssss!
- theNJR 8y agoI see this all the time biking around Santa Monica / Venice.
- bischofs 8y agoI hope this scooter thing takes off in all cities, what a great idea to move people more effectively and also bring down the cost of battery cells so I can buy a tesla. We might have finally found something that fat americans can tolerate that's not a hummer h1.
- RainaRelanah 8y agoThe weight limit of the model being used is around 220 lbs, and it struggles to handle that. Most Americans that you'd call obese wouldn't be able to use these. The model (Xiaomi M365) was originally designed for Chinese consumers (who tend to be shorter/weigh less).
- robhu 8y agoYes that is the official weight limit, but speaking as someone who has one and weighs 20% more, it works totally fine. Not sure why you think it struggles - even with the official firmware it easily and quickly gets up to 16mph. Sure you get a bit less range than a lighter person, but the difference isn't huge.
- uncoder0 8y agoThe hummer h1 is quite a bit of hyperbole. 25.4 mpg [1] is the average fuel economy of cars sold last year while the h1 is at 8 mpg. [1] https://news.umich.edu/gas-mileage-hits-best-mark-in-three-years/ https://news.umich.edu/gas-mileage-hits-best-mark-in-three-y...
- joosters 8y agoBird talk about making transportation more environmentally friendly, yet it turns out people are driving the scooters to and from their locations every day... it wouldn't be surprising if the scooters are traveling more miles in the back of a gas powered vehicle than they do each day in actual rides.
- eriken 8y agoThis is an awesome example of how tricky it is to innovate and regulate towards cleaner environmental behaviour.
- jorleif 8y agoThis is commercial enterprise, not regulation. Taxation could simply make driving them around too expensive.
- isostatic 8y agoTax the fuel to cover the total externalities
- gambiting 8y agoGoing forward we'll have to figure out how to tax electricity used for charging electric cars(probably special chargers that have a car-taxed tariff).
- isostatic 8y agoWhy? Does electricity used by cars have more externalities than electricity used by a washing machine?
- gambiting 8y agoNo, but at the moment(at least over here in UK) the tax on petrol and diesel covers road building/maintenance for the entire country. With this tax slowly disappearing, we will have to find another way to tax people who use the roads, and the best way to do that is to tax the fuel they use as it's directly proportional to their use. Same reason why heating/farming oil doesn't have this tax, even though it's technically just diesel and your diesel car would happily run on it. Yes, the electricity used in your car is the same as the one used in your washing machine, but it should be taxed more because of its use, exactly the same as we do with oil already.
- bryanwb 8y agocar culture is out of fucking control
- dufferzone 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYf_TBLnPQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYf_TBLnPQE just try it once
- dufferzone 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYf_TBLnPQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYf_TBLnPQE just try it once friends
- kaptain 8y agoReminds me of bike sharing in China. Now THAT is out of control. In China, the companies pay committed employees or contractors to gather bikes, as opposed to crowd-sourcing it. There's pros//cons to that (as per the article itself). At least in China, people don't respect the bikes. They trash them. They leave them everywhere. It sounds like a similar attitude exists with these Bird scooters. As societies/cities grow larger, people take less responsibility for things they use and spaces they exist in. I suspect it's partly a cultural thing (see Japan) but I'm pretty sure Japan has litter too. Bird has to incentivize the right behavior and disincentivize (i.e. even enforcement of charging policy) poor behavior.
- HillaryBriss 8y agoso, did Bird (and other scooter companies) simply copy their business model from existing business models which had already been pioneered in China?
- exDM69 8y agoI sure hope they have safe chargers. Cheap chinese scooter and balance board chargers and batteries are a major cause of house fires, at least here in Europe (import regulations may affect this).
- hmd_imputer 8y agoone of the advantages of living in the US. Nowhere in the world can a high school student earn 600$ a night by doing a simple, effortless side-activity. Even in countries like Germany max you can earn as a student would be less than a 1000$ per month.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoYou're not thinking creatively enough. Bitcoin trading, prostitution, that kinda thing. It's only a matter of time before highly VC-funded companies become more of a presence in Europe.
- hmd_imputer 8y agocare to elaborate?
- zhdc1 8y agoThe idea itself sounds ok, but the article reads like a paid placement.
- dalbasal 8y agoDunno about the way charging works, at least long term. Scooter sharing through, that's kind of promising. Beijing (and other cities) have proven that bike sharing can become a major transport type if the city will allow bike sharing companies to just dump bikes all over the sidewalk. It's crude, but it at least let's us see how far bike sharing can go if/when stations are a non-problem. Besides the mess (I could not imagine buttoned down European city like Vienna or even a messy one like Amsterdam allowing it), there's a problem of space. Scooters are space saving. In my ideal world, there are "public" scooter stations that can be used by any bike sharing enterprise. These provide efficient, space saving storage and power. With the same footprint we currently use for city bikes, we could probably store 2X-4X as many scooters. One parking space could be converted into a unit. Scooters everywhere!
- apexalpha 8y ago>I could not imagine buttoned down European city like Vienna or even a messy one like Amsterdam allowing it) I don't really see benefit over a bike. Except that bikes don't require charging.
- rkangel 8y agoThe main one would be that you are a pedestrian rather than a road user. People who take bikes along sidewalks and footpaths are a hazard but a scooter is less of an issue. Also, less skill to ride and less risk.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mschuetz 8y agoThese electric scooters travel at speeds that exceed that of an average cyclist. They are not pedestrian friendly and they have no place on sidewalks. Usually you see them only on roads, bike paths or shared spaces where cars and pedestrians are both allowed, though. At least in vienna.
- 8y ago
- bschwindHN 8y agoWouldn't it make more sense to make the batteries replaceable? Just have them locked in place until a "charger" person authenticates through the app, then allow them to swap in a fresh one. At that point transport would be reduced to just moving the batteries around instead of the whole scooter. They could still be charged at home. People might steal them but the article already mentions that some people steal them already.
- aembleton 8y agoIt would but that would require custom designed scooters. These are Xiaomi M365 with some additional electronics - https://www.gearbest.com/skateboard/pp_596618.html https://www.gearbest.com/skateboard/pp_596618.html
- bschwindHN 8y agoOhhh, that explains it! I wonder if they'll have to switch to that kind of charging system in the future, this current model doesn't seem all that economical.
- camtarn 8y agoIt's an interesting point. Perhaps the reason they ask people to move the scooters is that they also sometimes need scooters to be retrieved from weird places and left somewhere more convenient. So, sure, a scooter which was used and left on a main street can just stay there and get its battery swapped, but maybe it's not worth trying to figure out which scooters need moved and which battery-swapped, and to get the chargers to do the right thing in each case. The fact that they pay different prices per scooter might invalidate this, but just a guess.
- IncRnd 8y agoNo, it would make less sense to Bird to do that. They are shifting the costs to freelancers. Purchasing double the number of battery packs costs Bird.
- blaisio 8y agoI love these scooters! It's such a fun way to get around. There's a charger in my building, so they always leave scooters right outside for me, ready to go when I need them. It's really an amazing experience. For a new user, it takes less than a minute to get started. The first time, as an engineer, I just was shocked that it was actually working so well! I feel like it unlocks a whole new way to see the city for a lot of people. The only thing that sucks is the battery only lasts about an hour, so it's not great for tourists who want to go on tour for a long time. Presumably a better battery would be more expensive and people would be more likely to steal it.
- rashomon 8y agoIt's better than City Bike which forces you to 30-minute sessions and to pre-established locking stations.
- CydeWeys 8y agoCitibike (in NYC) allows unlimited length checkouts, but simply starts charging by the hour past a certain grace threshold. It's not a huge surcharge either, roughly comparable to the amount that the electric scooters cost starting from the first minute. You sure that Ford Bike (or whatever it's called) I'd wny different?
- rconti 8y agoPretty cool. I was tempted to take a few and race them around our office as we've got a lot of open space. Had to ask a friend about how it works; he contacted the company and unfortunately he wouldn't be ALLOWED to take it home after work, charge it at home, then return it somewhere the next AM. Yup, it's more acceptable to their T&C to leave it on the sidewalk in front of his suburban house than to actually charge and return it to a train station where it'll get used.
- jandrese 8y agoYou can't sign up as both a rider and a charger? It seems like it should be pretty easy to ride home, sign out, then immediately "find" the scooter and get $5 while you charge it up. I guess the can discourage this by making you drop it off at the nest before it can be checked out instead of letting you immediately check it out again the next day for the ride back to work or wherever. If your house is near a nest you could still make it work I think. The only caveat being that the bird will probably disappear during the day while you are at work unless you hide it in your office. I don't know, it seems kind of easy to game.
- ponderatul 8y agoWhy don't you just buy the damn thing ?
- dpc_pw 8y agoSo you don't have to store it and carry it around?
- kinos 8y agoI owned an electric scooter a few months ago. It lasted only about two months before I put too much weight on the handlebars and permanently damaged the hub motor. This was probably inevitably going to happen as the hub motor is constantly in direct contact with the ground, which means that a bad impact can dislodge a magnet. I wanted to fix it myself, and the cost of the part would have had been almost the same price as just scrapping the scooter and buying a new one. Additionally, I had trouble going beyond about 5 miles, with the lights off and with conservative battery use, before running out of power.
- mkbkn 8y agoMeanwhile, Ather Energy, an electric scooter startup based in Bangalore, India is launching charging stations across the city and it'd be free to use for the next six months (for any type of electric vehicle). https://blog.atherenergy.com/ev-adoption-made-easy-with-athergrid-ebca4c22b869 https://blog.atherenergy.com/ev-adoption-made-easy-with-athe...
- lifeisstillgood 8y agoDo the economics stack up? """Bird pays Brandon, a contract worker, up to several hundred dollars a night. On one particularly successful night, Brandon brought home $600.""" The article does not have many specifics but roughly Brandon seems to get 10 or so scooters on each trip, two trips a night(?). so that's something between 10 bucks and 30 bucks per charged scooter cost to Bird. Even if it's just 10 bucks that becomes the cost of the bike every quarter or so - that kind of opex must be killing them?
- asdkjanskd 8y agonice
- hiharryhere 8y agoThis sounds like something out of BladeRunner. Scavengers pulling scooters out of the trash on the fringes of town, fighting off other scavengers and thieves to collect their bounty.
- charleyma 8y agoI signed up to be a Bird charger in SF and it's been quite difficult to find scooters to charge. All the scooters go offline at 9pm to be charged and then have to be dropped off by 7am the next morning in order to get paid. I've encountered a ton of issues trying to find more "valuable" scooters as they tend to appear to be in unsafe areas that I don't necessarily want to be at night (most of the high value scooters tend to be in the tenderloin and I'm guessing have already been broken down, I can usually tell if it's not there due to the last known location being a few days ago) I've started to view the expensive Birds as a way for the company to have people try and find their lost scooters, in which case $25 is a pretty great deal...
- angel_j 8y agoWhy don't they use removable batteries?
- jandrese 8y agoBecause then all of the scooters would he missing their batteries?
- jpao79 8y agoSeriously this would be the way to go. As part of membership they send you a small juice pack style battery which you manage the charging of and insert as needed. http://www.mophie.com http://www.mophie.com
- seongboii 8y agoI saw these for the first time during my trip in SF and it just seemed crazy from first bat; maybe i'm missing something