6 ms·
This is a weird offering for an individual purchase. Look at the unique features: 1. Non folding stem: Adds durability for a rental, but the super quick fold
by cameldrv 8y ago
This is a weird offering for an individual purchase. Look at the unique features:
1. Non folding stem: Adds durability for a rental, but the super quick fold is a huge part of the appeal of a scooter, because it means you can easily take it with you on the train, put it in the trunk of a car, or store it under your desk. If you didn't care about compactness, you'd probably buy an e-bike.
2. Huge battery: Adds to the cost and weight, which makes it more annoying to carry. Great for a rental where Bird is paying per charge, but very few people need to ride 30 miles between charges, and for those that do, they'd probably rather have an e-bike that is faster and more stable.
- tedmiston 8y ago3. If you leave it parked outside a place, people will assume it's part of the shared fleet or "force ride" it without unlocking while it beeps the whole way.
- astrodust 8y agoThese are just asking to get "stolen".
- charlesju 8y agoOr if you leave it parked outside, people can rent it and you make money... :) Ala Tesla auto driving fleet
- malcolmgreaves 8y agoAnd then never get it back...?
- addicted 8y agoSo Bird is unable to recoup the costs of buying a scooter from rentals but somehow an individual, paying more for each scooter, and getting a smaller rental share than Bird does, will?
- homero 8y agoNo just subsidize it
- universenz 8y agoExactly. I came to the thread to also point these things out.. Where is it's point of difference from a Segway Ninebot ES-2 or even ES-4 which is significantly cheaper? Weird.
- condiment 8y agoI own a Xiaomi Mi m365 scooter that I use daily for commutes around downtown Denver and while it's lighter than this bird, it is by no means lightweight. It won't fit under a desk. It attracts funny looks if I bring it into a business or restaurant, and locking it up on the street is annoying and time-consuming. Even when it's folded and locked up, people try to steal it. The Bird One marketing document doesn't really go into detail, but the huge battery and GPS functionality suggests to me that the expected approach for using these scooters is to park them on the street and leave them there. If they borrow the anti-theft functionality that you see in VanMoof bicycles, this scooter makes a lot of sense. You ride it around town. You charge it in your garage. You leave it on the street when you're done with it. If it's stolen you look up its GPS location and the police help you get it back. There's low urgency to charge it. If it breaks, they'll fix it for you. And if you don't have it with you, Bird comps your rental scooter. That's a lot more compelling of an offering than just a "heavier, faster, longer-range" scooter.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago>If it's stolen you look up its GPS location and the police help you get it back. Do your police do that?
- riantogo 8y agoI want to know the answer to to this. Must be a nice place to live.
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoHaha I live in a stereotypically "wealthy white/Jewish" metropolitan area and I strip Birds/Limes on the street. It's also common for young men with black skin to drive around and load up cars with scooters-- presumably it's for charging, but the cops never hassle them either.
- themmes 8y agoIn the Netherlands the police definitely will not. Vanmoof has their own team to track down bikes and retrieve, but so far this seems more like a marketing stunt than actual service (they have a youtube channel “Van Moof Bike Hunters”).