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How does the popularity of bikes compare to electric scooters? Anecdotally, I see a lot more Bird and Lime S scooters flying around than I do bicycles these day
by aventrix 8y ago
How does the popularity of bikes compare to electric scooters? Anecdotally, I see a lot more Bird and Lime S scooters flying around than I do bicycles these days - and we do have docked bicycle and Lime bikes and Ofo options available in my city.
Having tried many of these services, I find the electric scooters to be the most enjoyable, although the electric bikes are quite fun too and can be a better experience if you're carrying something which can be put in the basket.
- NorthOf33rd 8y agoBird just opened in SLC and they are suddenly everywhere. Park City, just a few miles away, launched the country's first ebike share system and it's wildly popular. They are also everywhere. I have no hard data to prove this, though I'm sure it's out there- I don't think it's bike vs scooter, it's electric vs human powered that's driving bird's popularity over bike shares.
- boxcardavin 8y agoI think you're exactly right. I'm a pretty hardcore cyclist and I commute 20 miles total every day but the number of people willing to exert massive effort for their commute is super small. My company is working on self-delivering shared ebikes and we recently made the decision to include a throttle because most folks won't ever be capital-B Bikers. The scooters have been a good lesson for us as they've highlighted the importance of fun and friendliness in a shared vehicle. I don't think any of the shared ebikes are coming close to the right combination of factors that make people want to ride them. Scooters have nailed it, but their big problem is how easy it is to copy the model.
- NorthOf33rd 8y agoThats interesting. Are you in the US? How are you thinking about the legislative landscape that seems to be eager to classify anything non-pedal assist as an e-motorcycle?
- boxcardavin 8y agoYeah, Seattle. Legislators and city govs have been super friendly and eager to help us, and we're still keeping really good pedal assist. The worst case scenario is in some areas we can disable throttles and make our pedal assist boost factor absurdly high. Making the case to govs for throttles on our bikes is easier than with a company who wants to sell ebikes to the public because we're not trying to get bicyclists to purchase our bikes. We're trying to get people to skip car trips and make connecting to public transit actually doable for them. So far this resonates with city planners.
- stefan_ 8y agoHere is what you mean when you say a scooter: https://www.limebike.com/hubfs/Assets/bike-s-2.jpg?t=1530481285543 https://www.limebike.com/hubfs/Assets/bike-s-2.jpg?t=1530481... Here is what much of the world thinks is a scooter: https://emmy-sharing.de/wp-content/uploads/Schwalbe_45-links.jpg https://emmy-sharing.de/wp-content/uploads/Schwalbe_45-links... Just to clear that up. If it was between those two I'd take the latter given that hitting a pothole on that Lime thing is liable to stop all forward momentum suddenly and precariously. But really I'd want the electric bike. Though I think the unstated single most important selling point for the Lime scooter over the electric bike is that you don't need to deal with the homicidal, low awareness, little education American driver and the abhorrent infrastructure (and policies) that enable them.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> hitting a pothole on that Lime thing is liable to stop all forward momentum suddenly and precariously Didn't think of this. Makes sense why they're doing well on the West Coast but not yet rolling out on New York's ice-torn streets.
- ebikelaw 8y agoOakland, California has some of the worst streets in America, and getting worse. There are Limes and Birds on every corner of downtown.
- electricslpnsld 8y agoI live near Downtown Oakland and have yet to see one of these Scooters on the road -- so far the primary use case in Oakland seems to be teenagers blasting around Lake Merritt on the weekends.
- ebikelaw 8y agoThere were 6 on each corner of Broadway & Grand at 7am today.
- ebikelaw 8y agoMotivate provides detailed data on usage. You can download it at [1]. Do Lime, Bird, etc provide it? https://s3.amazonaws.com/fordgobike-data/index.html https://s3.amazonaws.com/fordgobike-data/index.html
- madeofpalk 8y agoWorth noting that those Bird and Lime scooters are illegal in some countries, like the UK. Bird cannot expand to the UK without laws changing (which I'm sure there's plenty of lobbying going on to ensure).
- aventrix 8y agoCan you elaborate on the legality? In what way are they illegal?
- vinay427 8y agoThis is fairly easy to investigate online, but here's an article I found for example: https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/buying-advice/gadget/is-it-legal-ride-electric-scooter-in-uk-3668712/ https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/buying-advice/gadget/is-it-leg...
- madeofpalk 8y agoThey're illegal in the same way that if you sticking four wheels on a fridge and driving it down the street is also illegal. They're not road worthy, and you can't use them on footpaths in the same way you can't cycle on footpaths.
- zethraeus 8y agoFWIW I was just in london and saw a bunch of people riding their own Mi scooters in the street. (That's the same scooter Bird uses.)
- madeofpalk 8y agoSure, and people smoke week or break the speed limit despite the legality.
- drb91 8y agoErr, why is it illegal? They're more than fast enough to keep up with bike traffic in the city, especially if there are dedicated lanes.
- pj_mukh 8y agoFor me, it breaks down to: 0-2miles - Scooters (or walk), 2-5miles - Electric Bikes (or Uber), 5-15miles - Uber/Lyft It is a nice little transportation stack Uber and Lyft are fighting over.
- usaar333 8y agoWhy do you find that electric bikes work better for longer trips?
- r00fus 8y agoImagine if you could combine the two - take a scooter to your Uber/Lyft drive for a discount/bounty so it can get recharged?
- ebikelaw 8y agoNo room for buses, trains, or regular bicycles? The nice thing about a regular bicycle is the unlimited range. Whereas the nice thing about an electric bike is the speed. My personal hierarchy is more like this: 0-1 miles: walk 1-10 miles: e-bike or bus or lyft 10-100 miles: regular bike or train > 100 miles: car
- pj_mukh 8y agoI love taking trains. BART is my jam. Buses being at the whim of traffic while costing only 15-20% less than Uber Express for 5-10miles while offering none of the live-information means its a no-go for me. I've spent far too long waiting in various weather conditions, hoping the bus arrives on time. So even up to a 30-40% premium to just hop into a car makes sense to me.
- crazygringo 8y agoHere in NYC I haven't really seen any scooters ever, whereas Citibike is everywhere.
- CydeWeys 8y agoThey haven't launched here. We barely even have dockless bikeshares (and even then they're not allowed in the exclusive Citibike coverage area). We're a rough regulatory environment.
- vthallam 8y agoIt sucks to be in the largest city and yet could not try the scooters or electric bikes. I think it makes more sense for NYC to have them and would be a great way to avoid subway for like 2 miles.
- CydeWeys 8y agoNYC is also the most densely packed city in the US. There are places in the city where the sidewalks get so dense during commute/tourist hours that people cannot fit, pushing pedestrians out into the streets and bike lanes. 8th Ave north of Penn Station at 5:30pm is a prime example of this. There's simply no room to have lots of discarded dockless bikes/scooters in such an environment where there isn't even enough room to walk, and they would be treated poorly. Docks/exclusion zones for the most congested foot traffic areas are necessary.
- saalweachter 8y agoMy assumption is that New Yorkers are too cool for scooters to take off. Maybe in Brooklyn, ironically.
- J_Sherz 8y agoI also haven't seen any here yet. I ride Citibike daily (Brooklyn and Manhattan) and would be wary of using the scooters because the roads are so badly maintained. It's already pretty bad even on a bike.
- nedwin 8y agoThe stat I heard was that a bike is likely to be used 1-2 times per day by a user, whereas the same user will use a scooter 3-4 times per day. So in this scenario you might see someone ride the bike from their apartment downtown, but during the day use a scoot to get between meetings, to a lunch venue, to the bar after work again and then maybe ride a bicycle home at the end of the day if not catch a car.
- ashelmire 8y agoI have never seen an electric scooter in Philly. I bike or take public transit usually, and there are bikeshare docks all over.
- drb91 8y agoThe bikes are super heavy; they require docking, which somewhat removes the purposes of using them to get from point to point in the first place. I don't know many people who aren't already cyclists who use it. Off hand I'd say scooters are much more filling a vacant market, whereas the bike sharing competes more with uber or lyft in the first place.
- zhoujianfu 8y agoA few months after bird first launched in Santa Monica I decided to start scraping the app to see how many rides they were doing and estimate their revenue. I was surprised at how much, so started to do the same thing with the local bike share which had been around for a couple years and covered exactly the same area (with more bikes than bird had scooters at the time). Bird was already doing 7x the daily rides that the bike share was!