4 ms·

Good luck making the unit economics work. I can't imagine that people would respond well to a price hike in general, but in a market this saturated, any competi

Good luck making the unit economics work. I can't imagine that people would respond well to a price hike in general, but in a market this saturated, any competitor will be happy to undercut them. The key here is that they're running out of cash, so any player who can last longer will have a better shot to make the business model work.

mamon 7y ago
There really isn’t a good solution here: poor quality scooters will break fast, good quality scooters will get stolen more often. And there probably never be a safety lock good enough to prevent that.
- robocat 7y ago
  > good quality scooters will get stolen more often. And there probably never be a safety lock good enough to prevent that. I wonder if they could just make the electronics too costly to replace? Use a five phase brushless motor. Have ten different paired versions of drive electronics and motor, and no way to tell which is which without the right app to query the electronics. Cell packs with built in DRM. Basically come up with ways that make it difficult to easily/reliably replace the main drive electronics.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- Tepix 7y ago
  Locks work for bike rentals, they can also work for scooters.
  - mamon 7y ago
    But isn't one of the Bird's selling points that you can park the scooter anywhere, after the ride? If you want locks you'd probably end up with docking stations, like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Melbourne_City_Bikes.JPG/413px-Melbourne_City_Bikes.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Me...