8 ms·

This whole model is incredibly, impossibly, flawed. 9/10 times, my net displacement for the day is 0. If my net displacement is zero, I would prefer to own the

by Hasz 7y ago

This whole model is incredibly, impossibly, flawed. 9/10 times, my net displacement for the day is 0. If my net displacement is zero, I would prefer to own the medium I'm using to move. Bike, car, scooter etc. Only exception is stuff with really high capital costs, like planes and trains, in which case I pay a small fee to avoid owning a railway or airline. For scooters, there are no high capitals costs; the cost of a scooter is laughably low. It's sold as a quicker-than-walking, less-hassle-than-a-car last mile solution, but again, 9/10 of my trips are 0 displacement, so, why not just buy the scooter outright? Cheaper, safer, faster (I know where it is, no need to walk to it, etc). They only way Lime, Bird etc survive is by legislation. Lobby for scooter licensure, buy up all the licenses, and become the taxi industry (except for scooters, and you have to drive!) What an ironic loop. At this point, the only reason to fund these guys is FOMO.

nixpulvis 7y ago
I totally agree with you, but just to play devil's advocate... you can't have, that which you don't own, stolen. Which can be pretty valuable. However, this doesn't help much with the larger model. Cars have insurance for example, and that more or less works out, right?
raiyu 7y ago
I was in Lisbon for Web Summit and the scooter on the streets was a great way to get around. So for none locals it's definitely a benefit for short trips and for the fun that it brings doing it in a group of people. However, doing it on a day to day basis you can quickly spend more in a couple of months then just buying a scooter. The only benefit is not having to lug it with you, but not sure if that offsets the higher costs of non-ownership.
the_imp 7y ago
The whole model of needing to own your own transportation devices is flawed. 9/10 times, I'm moving from one location with many other people in it to another location with many other people. I would prefer not needing to own any medium in order to move between them, but instead be able to use a public service to do so. Bus, tram, metro, citybike, scooter. I'd really rather not own stuff with really high capital costs, like cars. At this point, the only reason to own anything more expensive than a bike is bad city planning and infrastructure.
- usaphp 7y ago
  For a single person - probably, but most people have kids. It’s much more complicated to use public transport with small kids, they require a lot of stuff to be carried around for them
  - MandieD 7y ago
    I see loads of mothers with small children on the underground and buses in Nürnberg if I’m traveling outside of rush hour. Having observed my German and American sisters-in-law, it comes down to what you think the kid really needs. The German sister-in-law can get everything into a backpack and midsized rolling suitcase to bring my niece along for the train ride to her parents at the other end of Germany. The American sister-in-law traded in her Tahoe for a Suburban when my nephew was born and manages to fill the cargo compartment for a week at her parents, where she still has her own room.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  And, you know, basic financial planning... For the vast majority of people, renting basic unsubsidized transit methods on a daily basis costs far more than owning and operating your own. Good for you if your financial situation allows you to ignore that fact, but it’s rather yuppy bubble thinking to assume that applies to everyone.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    Aren't you ignoring the hundreds of billions in public subsidies that your "basic unsubsidized transit methods" enjoy? Cars are expensive and our emphasis on subsidizing car travel at the federal, state, county and city level is an enormous regressive tax on the poorest members of our society for whom $1000 or $5000 is an impossible amount of money.
    - Rebelgecko 7y ago
      Even if you make an apples to apples comparison (cost of renting a scooter vs cost of buying one outright), renting doesn't really make sense if it's something you want to use regularly. For a 10 minute commute daily commute, the break even point for buying a scooter vs renting one comes in less than 60 days.
nikanj 7y ago
At least in SF, you would take your own scooter to the office in the morning, and walk back in the evening. Because your scooter got stolen, and the police don't really bother chasing down a $300 item.
wwweston 7y ago
This is a bit like saying hotels are obsolete because most of the time you live in the same place and apartments make more sense. The value proposition of a scooter service is ad hoc last mile transport where you don’t have to have brought the scooter with you to use it. There may still be issues with the model. It might be that isn’t a demand profile that has the right scale to support much of a business (but could be useful for municipalities to provide, like some do with bikeshares). And I find rideshares are price competitive for last mile stuff (though it’s well known that’s only because ride costs are subsidized with investor cash, so maybe all scooter shares have to do to find their market niche is hold out til that stops). Or maybe most people feel safer with other forms of transport. But the basic “summon something better than walking without having to carry it with you” idea does make some fundamental sense.
- Hasz 7y ago
  I suppose, but any isomorphism has its limits. For me, a scooter is much more affordable than say, a hotel. I am willing to pay a small premium in rent over buying the hotel for the convenience and flexibility of not having to own a hotel. I am fortunate enough that there's no way a lime makes any sort of financial sense for commuting last mile in a place I live. I can buy a scooter for $500; I will break even on Lime/Bird in less than 3 months. For tourists, great, for denizens, not so much. The simple fact is, unless you want to pay for the luxury of having to walk to a scooter you pilot yourself, owning your own things has always made more sense. The ability to semi-summon an object on command is great when you need, and can afford, the option. However, we should be optimizing infrastructure for everyone, not just those who can pay for it.
  - zodiac 7y ago
    Are you normally able to take your scooter into public transit?
  - wwweston 7y ago
    transport != commute Scooter shares may indeed not make much sense for commutes. That's the sort of predictable and regular need that it makes sense to optimize for time or money or both, as you've said. But then again, rideshares are rarely going to help with such optimization (probably true as long as funding a driver is part the whole thing). Personal vehicles, or public transport, or even workplace carpools make much more sense there. And yet rideshares do well enough because it turns out there's a whole class of ad hoc transport needs where summoning a ride on demand is awfully convenient. Acquiring a scooter on demand has the same possibilities, especially if it can be economically competitive.
Aperocky 7y ago
If nobody ever stole anything, I'd wholeheartedly support that. In fact, I'm willing to shell out 5 times the regular cost for a bike that would never ever be stolen wherever I leave it. Finding places to park and lock and worry about it not getting stolen is just way too much. Relevant: I've owned 4 $1000+ bike over the past 10 years, one of which is stolen right outside home, another is almost stolen (moved then found after a frantic search).
- zymhan 7y ago
  Thankfully no one ever steals cars.
  - caffeineclown 7y ago
    Cars are significantly harder to steal.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    cars are stolen much less frequently than bikes. if your car does get stolen, you're pretty likely to get it back, although you may have to pay for some repairs. if your bike gets stolen, you'll probably never see it again.
lazyasciiart 7y ago
Why would anyone want to own a car? You have to park it, both at your house and at your destination, you have to do maintenance on it, yada yada. What a waste of time and space.
- jtcruthers 7y ago
  To get from point A to point B without walking half a mile and waiting 10 minutes for a bus to go a quarter the speed to a stop half a mile from your destination. I'm sure a lot of people want a car so they don't have to expose their groceries or small children to the disgusting mess that is public transportation in the vast majority of (American) cities.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    The comment I was responding to was saying everyone wants to own their method of transportation. I'm not asking why you would want to drive - I'm asking why you would choose to own a car if there was an alternate world where all the other cars in the city were available to use on demand.
    - Hasz 7y ago
      I mean, if they were free, I see your point. But they can't be, which implies paying someone else to do the maintenance, and distribution, plus a fee on top of that for their time. You can scale it any which way (or dodge the second bit and call them independent contractors), but it doesn't change the unit economics nearly enough imo.
    - ip26 7y ago
      Availability. I probably want to use a car the same time as everyone else. Price. If there's enough cars to satisfy demand at all times, the capital costs of the network are high which means rates are high. Basically, a large operation could have economies of scale (in house mechanics, only two models of car to choose from, own the fuel stations...) but the utilization of the vehicles probably would not change dramatically from the utilization of the private "fleet" we have today.
microdrum 7y ago
Excellent post. This was obvious from the beginning and is causing a rerating of the vcs who invested in these economically and technically checkered deals.[1] [1] https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-other-electric-vehicle-revolution-myths-and-realities-in-the-e-scooter-business-dd5ed825f55e https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-other-electric-vehicle...
Spooky23 7y ago
I agree it’s a dumb business but the use case makes sense. Storing things that are smaller than cars is really tough, and scaling a business like this nationally is fairly capital and operationally expensive. If the scooters were street legal, this would be a great localized business.
rory096 7y ago
>9/10 times, my net displacement for the day is 0. If my net displacement is zero, I would prefer to own the medium I'm using to move. I don't. 9/10 times, despite zero net displacement my commutes are asymmetrical — on my way there I'm in a rush, but on the way back I'm not. So I'll often take a high cost, high speed option like a scooter towards a destination, then take a more leisurely, generally free option like walking or transit back home. As a bonus, I never have to deal with storing my vehicle while I'm at my destination, or with taking it with me if I add an intermediate stop nearby before returning home.
IshKebab 7y ago
Err, obviously. They're targeting the 1/10 times where you want to make a trip and don't have a vehicle with you. Taxis exist despite most people owning a car.
hcnews 7y ago
I am always fairly surprised at the gross simplification done in HN discussions. Why build another search engine people? Alta Vista etc. have already solved the problem. Not to say that ideas don't fail, but don't count the chickens before they have hatched and there are a few approaches still left to try.
davchana 7y ago
Well, the cost can be laughably low for some; but not for all of us in the cities these services exist. Last year I moved to a small city in Northern California with no Uber/Lyft, & I don't own a car because of money shortage, I had a bike from Walmart for $150 which was stolen before I moved from Bay Area. I looked at some of the scooters equivalent to Bird or Lime ones, starting from $800 upwards. I found a good one from Walmart Thanksgiving sale for $250; but it was not good enough for that money; & I returned it & returned to walking around. So, I would live Bird or Lime coming here; & no, the cost is not low enough for all of us.
dkarl 7y ago
Like car services, scooters are a great complement to commuting on public transit. Most of the time, when you commute on public transit, you don't need another vehicle. But things come up unpredictably that require you to run a quick errand or go somewhere outside walking distance to meet friends. When I ask people if they would commute to work on public transit, the biggest thing they worry about is, "What if I have to ____?" They don't like the thought of being useless when their partner asks them to run an errand, or left out when their friends plan something after work. Even if 95% of their workdays would be nothing but catching the bus or train downtown, working and patronizing businesses in a small walkable area, and then taking the bus or train home again, and even if it's significantly less burdensome than driving, a lot of people will still drive because they can't give up the feeling of being able to deal with contingencies. Rental and on-demand transportation options address that without forcing people to keep their own vehicle on hand every day even though they rarely need it. I think this is an important factor for making public transit attractive to people who are accustomed to the advantages of driving everywhere. Right now, car-based services like Uber and Lyft are sufficient for that, but as city centers back away from the massive accommodations they've made for car traffic, bikes and scooters will become more important.
rainyMammoth 7y ago
If I commute between two well-known locations on a daily basis (for example from home to work) I definitely want to own my scooter, or figure out a stable and cheap way to do this commute. The use-case for scooter rentals is different though. I use them sometimes when I need to go to a different unknown place. A bar for example, where it would be inconvenient to bring my own transportation and deal with parking
goobynight 7y ago
Net displacement doesn't matter. Convenience and features do. We have to fully admit that, all else equal, being responsible for the security and maintenance of a scooter is worse than offloading that to Lime/Lyft/Bird. The only reason I bought a scooter is because I wanted to go over 30mph with suspension (i.e. new features). I use mine for joyriding and secure it in my apartment.
xwowsersx 7y ago
What does displacement mean here?
- tzs 7y ago
  How far the destination of his final trip of the day is from the start of his first trip of the day.
  - xwowsersx 7y ago
    Sorry, I'm slow I still don't get it. Zero displacement then means he's doing straight round-trips where he's going back to where he started? If so, why does that matter? I'm missing something basic here.
    - tzs 7y ago
      I believe that what he's getting at is that most people are going to start out from home, travel to work, and end the day traveling back home. There may be stops during that for shopping, or round trips from and back to work for things like lunch. But at a high level it is "go out from home in the morning, come back home in the evening, and then do the whole thing again the next day". With this pattern, you want some form of transit that will reliably be there for you in the morning, every morning. Owning your own car, motorcycle, bike, or scooter works for that. It's yours so it will be there for you whenever you want. Public transit can also work, if there are stops or stations near enough to your home and work and it operates on a schedule that fits yours. His point is that transportation services like Lime, where you pick up scooters from whatever semi-random place the last user left it and you are supposed to stay within some specified area don't work well for the home => office => home cycle. There may not be a scooter near your home in the morning, even if you happened to have left one there the night before. For a lot of people, home will also be outside the service area, so taking one home would incur penalties. But if you have you own car, motorcycle, bike, or scooter, and you have to use that to go to work, then using that for all your other transportation while in the city is probably going to make more sense than renting a Lime scooter. I think he's being a little too pessimistic about the market for something like Lime. I've worked at places where I've driven my own car in, but would have been happy to have something like Lime while at the office for things like going out for lunch, because lunchtime traffic was pretty bad around the office but there weren't any good lunch places in easy walking distance.
yibg 7y ago
But it’s not continuous net displacement. I go to a place, stay there for some time, go to another place etc until I eventually get home. Most of those places I go to don’t have a good place to park my bike / ebike/ scooter (but most do have nice places to park my car).

by Hasz 7y ago

nixpulvis 7y ago

I totally agree with you, but just to play devil's advocate... you can't have, that which you don't own, stolen. Which can be pretty valuable. However, this doesn't help much with the larger model. Cars have insurance for example, and that more or less works out, right?

raiyu 7y ago

I was in Lisbon for Web Summit and the scooter on the streets was a great way to get around. So for none locals it's definitely a benefit for short trips and for the fun that it brings doing it in a group of people. However, doing it on a day to day basis you can quickly spend more in a couple of months then just buying a scooter. The only benefit is not having to lug it with you, but not sure if that offsets the higher costs of non-ownership.

the_imp 7y ago

The whole model of needing to own your own transportation devices is flawed. 9/10 times, I'm moving from one location with many other people in it to another location with many other people. I would prefer not needing to own any medium in order to move between them, but instead be able to use a public service to do so. Bus, tram, metro, citybike, scooter. I'd really rather not own stuff with really high capital costs, like cars. At this point, the only reason to own anything more expensive than a bike is bad city planning and infrastructure.

usaphp 7y ago
For a single person - probably, but most people have kids. It’s much more complicated to use public transport with small kids, they require a lot of stuff to be carried around for them
- MandieD 7y ago
  I see loads of mothers with small children on the underground and buses in Nürnberg if I’m traveling outside of rush hour. Having observed my German and American sisters-in-law, it comes down to what you think the kid really needs. The German sister-in-law can get everything into a backpack and midsized rolling suitcase to bring my niece along for the train ride to her parents at the other end of Germany. The American sister-in-law traded in her Tahoe for a Suburban when my nephew was born and manages to fill the cargo compartment for a week at her parents, where she still has her own room.
mdorazio 7y ago
And, you know, basic financial planning... For the vast majority of people, renting basic unsubsidized transit methods on a daily basis costs far more than owning and operating your own. Good for you if your financial situation allows you to ignore that fact, but it’s rather yuppy bubble thinking to assume that applies to everyone.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  Aren't you ignoring the hundreds of billions in public subsidies that your "basic unsubsidized transit methods" enjoy? Cars are expensive and our emphasis on subsidizing car travel at the federal, state, county and city level is an enormous regressive tax on the poorest members of our society for whom $1000 or $5000 is an impossible amount of money.
  - Rebelgecko 7y ago
    Even if you make an apples to apples comparison (cost of renting a scooter vs cost of buying one outright), renting doesn't really make sense if it's something you want to use regularly. For a 10 minute commute daily commute, the break even point for buying a scooter vs renting one comes in less than 60 days.

nikanj 7y ago

At least in SF, you would take your own scooter to the office in the morning, and walk back in the evening. Because your scooter got stolen, and the police don't really bother chasing down a $300 item.

wwweston 7y ago

This is a bit like saying hotels are obsolete because most of the time you live in the same place and apartments make more sense. The value proposition of a scooter service is ad hoc last mile transport where you don’t have to have brought the scooter with you to use it. There may still be issues with the model. It might be that isn’t a demand profile that has the right scale to support much of a business (but could be useful for municipalities to provide, like some do with bikeshares). And I find rideshares are price competitive for last mile stuff (though it’s well known that’s only because ride costs are subsidized with investor cash, so maybe all scooter shares have to do to find their market niche is hold out til that stops). Or maybe most people feel safer with other forms of transport. But the basic “summon something better than walking without having to carry it with you” idea does make some fundamental sense.

Hasz 7y ago
I suppose, but any isomorphism has its limits. For me, a scooter is much more affordable than say, a hotel. I am willing to pay a small premium in rent over buying the hotel for the convenience and flexibility of not having to own a hotel. I am fortunate enough that there's no way a lime makes any sort of financial sense for commuting last mile in a place I live. I can buy a scooter for $500; I will break even on Lime/Bird in less than 3 months. For tourists, great, for denizens, not so much. The simple fact is, unless you want to pay for the luxury of having to walk to a scooter you pilot yourself, owning your own things has always made more sense. The ability to semi-summon an object on command is great when you need, and can afford, the option. However, we should be optimizing infrastructure for everyone, not just those who can pay for it.
- zodiac 7y ago
  Are you normally able to take your scooter into public transit?
- wwweston 7y ago
  transport != commute Scooter shares may indeed not make much sense for commutes. That's the sort of predictable and regular need that it makes sense to optimize for time or money or both, as you've said. But then again, rideshares are rarely going to help with such optimization (probably true as long as funding a driver is part the whole thing). Personal vehicles, or public transport, or even workplace carpools make much more sense there. And yet rideshares do well enough because it turns out there's a whole class of ad hoc transport needs where summoning a ride on demand is awfully convenient. Acquiring a scooter on demand has the same possibilities, especially if it can be economically competitive.

Aperocky 7y ago

If nobody ever stole anything, I'd wholeheartedly support that. In fact, I'm willing to shell out 5 times the regular cost for a bike that would never ever be stolen wherever I leave it. Finding places to park and lock and worry about it not getting stolen is just way too much. Relevant: I've owned 4 $1000+ bike over the past 10 years, one of which is stolen right outside home, another is almost stolen (moved then found after a frantic search).

zymhan 7y ago
Thankfully no one ever steals cars.
- caffeineclown 7y ago
  Cars are significantly harder to steal.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  cars are stolen much less frequently than bikes. if your car does get stolen, you're pretty likely to get it back, although you may have to pay for some repairs. if your bike gets stolen, you'll probably never see it again.

lazyasciiart 7y ago

Why would anyone want to own a car? You have to park it, both at your house and at your destination, you have to do maintenance on it, yada yada. What a waste of time and space.

jtcruthers 7y ago
To get from point A to point B without walking half a mile and waiting 10 minutes for a bus to go a quarter the speed to a stop half a mile from your destination. I'm sure a lot of people want a car so they don't have to expose their groceries or small children to the disgusting mess that is public transportation in the vast majority of (American) cities.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  The comment I was responding to was saying everyone wants to own their method of transportation. I'm not asking why you would want to drive - I'm asking why you would choose to own a car if there was an alternate world where all the other cars in the city were available to use on demand.
  - Hasz 7y ago
    I mean, if they were free, I see your point. But they can't be, which implies paying someone else to do the maintenance, and distribution, plus a fee on top of that for their time. You can scale it any which way (or dodge the second bit and call them independent contractors), but it doesn't change the unit economics nearly enough imo.
  - ip26 7y ago
    Availability. I probably want to use a car the same time as everyone else. Price. If there's enough cars to satisfy demand at all times, the capital costs of the network are high which means rates are high. Basically, a large operation could have economies of scale (in house mechanics, only two models of car to choose from, own the fuel stations...) but the utilization of the vehicles probably would not change dramatically from the utilization of the private "fleet" we have today.

microdrum 7y ago

Excellent post. This was obvious from the beginning and is causing a rerating of the vcs who invested in these economically and technically checkered deals.[1] [1] https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-other-electric-vehicle-revolution-myths-and-realities-in-the-e-scooter-business-dd5ed825f55e https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-other-electric-vehicle...

Spooky23 7y ago

I agree it’s a dumb business but the use case makes sense. Storing things that are smaller than cars is really tough, and scaling a business like this nationally is fairly capital and operationally expensive. If the scooters were street legal, this would be a great localized business.

rory096 7y ago

>9/10 times, my net displacement for the day is 0. If my net displacement is zero, I would prefer to own the medium I'm using to move. I don't. 9/10 times, despite zero net displacement my commutes are asymmetrical — on my way there I'm in a rush, but on the way back I'm not. So I'll often take a high cost, high speed option like a scooter towards a destination, then take a more leisurely, generally free option like walking or transit back home. As a bonus, I never have to deal with storing my vehicle while I'm at my destination, or with taking it with me if I add an intermediate stop nearby before returning home.

IshKebab 7y ago

Err, obviously. They're targeting the 1/10 times where you want to make a trip and don't have a vehicle with you. Taxis exist despite most people owning a car.

hcnews 7y ago

I am always fairly surprised at the gross simplification done in HN discussions. Why build another search engine people? Alta Vista etc. have already solved the problem. Not to say that ideas don't fail, but don't count the chickens before they have hatched and there are a few approaches still left to try.

davchana 7y ago

Well, the cost can be laughably low for some; but not for all of us in the cities these services exist. Last year I moved to a small city in Northern California with no Uber/Lyft, & I don't own a car because of money shortage, I had a bike from Walmart for $150 which was stolen before I moved from Bay Area. I looked at some of the scooters equivalent to Bird or Lime ones, starting from $800 upwards. I found a good one from Walmart Thanksgiving sale for $250; but it was not good enough for that money; & I returned it & returned to walking around. So, I would live Bird or Lime coming here; & no, the cost is not low enough for all of us.

dkarl 7y ago

Like car services, scooters are a great complement to commuting on public transit. Most of the time, when you commute on public transit, you don't need another vehicle. But things come up unpredictably that require you to run a quick errand or go somewhere outside walking distance to meet friends. When I ask people if they would commute to work on public transit, the biggest thing they worry about is, "What if I have to ____?" They don't like the thought of being useless when their partner asks them to run an errand, or left out when their friends plan something after work. Even if 95% of their workdays would be nothing but catching the bus or train downtown, working and patronizing businesses in a small walkable area, and then taking the bus or train home again, and even if it's significantly less burdensome than driving, a lot of people will still drive because they can't give up the feeling of being able to deal with contingencies. Rental and on-demand transportation options address that without forcing people to keep their own vehicle on hand every day even though they rarely need it. I think this is an important factor for making public transit attractive to people who are accustomed to the advantages of driving everywhere. Right now, car-based services like Uber and Lyft are sufficient for that, but as city centers back away from the massive accommodations they've made for car traffic, bikes and scooters will become more important.

rainyMammoth 7y ago

If I commute between two well-known locations on a daily basis (for example from home to work) I definitely want to own my scooter, or figure out a stable and cheap way to do this commute. The use-case for scooter rentals is different though. I use them sometimes when I need to go to a different unknown place. A bar for example, where it would be inconvenient to bring my own transportation and deal with parking

goobynight 7y ago

Net displacement doesn't matter. Convenience and features do. We have to fully admit that, all else equal, being responsible for the security and maintenance of a scooter is worse than offloading that to Lime/Lyft/Bird. The only reason I bought a scooter is because I wanted to go over 30mph with suspension (i.e. new features). I use mine for joyriding and secure it in my apartment.

xwowsersx 7y ago

What does displacement mean here?

tzs 7y ago
How far the destination of his final trip of the day is from the start of his first trip of the day.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  Sorry, I'm slow I still don't get it. Zero displacement then means he's doing straight round-trips where he's going back to where he started? If so, why does that matter? I'm missing something basic here.
  - tzs 7y ago
    I believe that what he's getting at is that most people are going to start out from home, travel to work, and end the day traveling back home. There may be stops during that for shopping, or round trips from and back to work for things like lunch. But at a high level it is "go out from home in the morning, come back home in the evening, and then do the whole thing again the next day". With this pattern, you want some form of transit that will reliably be there for you in the morning, every morning. Owning your own car, motorcycle, bike, or scooter works for that. It's yours so it will be there for you whenever you want. Public transit can also work, if there are stops or stations near enough to your home and work and it operates on a schedule that fits yours. His point is that transportation services like Lime, where you pick up scooters from whatever semi-random place the last user left it and you are supposed to stay within some specified area don't work well for the home => office => home cycle. There may not be a scooter near your home in the morning, even if you happened to have left one there the night before. For a lot of people, home will also be outside the service area, so taking one home would incur penalties. But if you have you own car, motorcycle, bike, or scooter, and you have to use that to go to work, then using that for all your other transportation while in the city is probably going to make more sense than renting a Lime scooter. I think he's being a little too pessimistic about the market for something like Lime. I've worked at places where I've driven my own car in, but would have been happy to have something like Lime while at the office for things like going out for lunch, because lunchtime traffic was pretty bad around the office but there weren't any good lunch places in easy walking distance.

yibg 7y ago

But it’s not continuous net displacement. I go to a place, stay there for some time, go to another place etc until I eventually get home. Most of those places I go to don’t have a good place to park my bike / ebike/ scooter (but most do have nice places to park my car).