4 ms·

I don't claim to be very good at predicting the future, but I'd say the chances are low for Bird, and any scooters being used at all a year later. Maybe in a fe

I don't claim to be very good at predicting the future, but I'd say the chances are low for Bird, and any scooters being used at all a year later. Maybe in a few very limited places, but no where near the levels they are now.

ghaff 7y ago
They seem to be quite popular some places. But other places they seem like a fad. There were quite a few when they first came out and almost nowhere to be seen 6 months later.
CydeWeys 7y ago
I'm not understanding why you're thinking scooters would disappear entirely. Here's what I'm seeing. I'm in NYC. We don't have any scooter share companies, so the only scooters you see on the streets are privately owned. And I've seen an explosion of them over the past year. A lot more people are getting around using them, and I don't see why that would be affected one whit by the scooter share companies (which don't even operate here) shutting down. When those companies shut down, I'd just expect a lot of people who were formerly using them to switch to privately owned ones as well. That's the nice thing about these scooters; they're small and light enough that you can own your own even if you live in a tiny apartment.
- moooo99 7y ago
  I'd assume he meant sharing scooters. I totally agree that these scooters can be a really nice way to get from A to B and if you actually own them, they're probably way cleaner than the alternatives (maybe except for cycling). But the sharing system has so many flaws, I'd assume its very unlikely that they'll survive this crisis. - The scooters are subject to vandalism everywhere, this reduces their lifetime and makes them incredible expensive to maintain - They are cluttering the sidewalks, rules are basically impossible to enforce - They are driven recklessly by a lot of users. While there are technical solutions to this like geofencing and speed limits, they are not applied Lots of people (at least here in Germany) don't like them at all. In major cities I've been to, basically all sharing scooters are used by tourists. While thats certainly a market, its nowhere near the mobility revolution they claim. Basically all of these companies are surviving on VC money, very few cities are actually profitable. Since tourism is completely gone and most people are on WFH, I doubt there are any users for these scooters right now. I think its unlikely that they'll be able to sustain their buisness if lockdown lasts more than a month.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    one additional problem (which I guess is a corollary of your first point): they are too expensive for the end user. in my area at least, renting a scooter to go a short distance is 50-75% as much money as an uber/lyft, and you might have already walked a quarter of the way there before finding one with a decent charge. over longer distances, the scooter is a lot cheaper, but also much slower. they only make sense for a narrow range of medium-length trips that are too long to walk, but still short enough to get there in a reasonable amount of time at 15mph. I do enjoy using them sometimes when I'm feeling lazy but still want to get some fresh air, but it's not really an economical means of transportation.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      The economics of scooters really suffers from being dockless. I can see the appeal from a VC-funded startup perspective, because you can get a lot of them out there quickly without having to build any infrastructure, but the ongoing daily costs of charging them all (and replacing losses) makes them expensive to operate, hence the high cost. A dockless model would allow them to be much more affordable; in NYC, for example, you can do unlimited rides on docked rideshare for an annualized cost of under 50 cents per day. There's no reason in principle that a docked scooter system, with scooters charging from docks and prevented from theft while not in use, couldn't have costs come down to a roughly similar amount.
- blakesterz 7y ago
  There's a comment as an answer to yours from moooo99 that explains exactly what I am thinking. Not scooters, but the companies, and not entirely, just from most of the places you find them operating now. For some people they're great!
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    Makes sense. I could possibly see the scooters survive in some kind of docked model, where the docks charge the scooters thus eliminating most of the overnight labor, but nobody's gone that route yet and at this rate it may well be that no company survives long enough to get there. Anecdotally, a lot of the people using them are people who would otherwise have started biking. The scooters are less effort (helps prevent sweating in summer) and smaller. E-bikes are also growing in popularity.
griffinkelly 7y ago
There's no doubt there's going to be a number of speculative startup companies left in the wake of this recession

ghaff 7y ago

They seem to be quite popular some places. But other places they seem like a fad. There were quite a few when they first came out and almost nowhere to be seen 6 months later.

CydeWeys 7y ago

I'm not understanding why you're thinking scooters would disappear entirely. Here's what I'm seeing. I'm in NYC. We don't have any scooter share companies, so the only scooters you see on the streets are privately owned. And I've seen an explosion of them over the past year. A lot more people are getting around using them, and I don't see why that would be affected one whit by the scooter share companies (which don't even operate here) shutting down. When those companies shut down, I'd just expect a lot of people who were formerly using them to switch to privately owned ones as well. That's the nice thing about these scooters; they're small and light enough that you can own your own even if you live in a tiny apartment.

moooo99 7y ago
I'd assume he meant sharing scooters. I totally agree that these scooters can be a really nice way to get from A to B and if you actually own them, they're probably way cleaner than the alternatives (maybe except for cycling). But the sharing system has so many flaws, I'd assume its very unlikely that they'll survive this crisis. - The scooters are subject to vandalism everywhere, this reduces their lifetime and makes them incredible expensive to maintain - They are cluttering the sidewalks, rules are basically impossible to enforce - They are driven recklessly by a lot of users. While there are technical solutions to this like geofencing and speed limits, they are not applied Lots of people (at least here in Germany) don't like them at all. In major cities I've been to, basically all sharing scooters are used by tourists. While thats certainly a market, its nowhere near the mobility revolution they claim. Basically all of these companies are surviving on VC money, very few cities are actually profitable. Since tourism is completely gone and most people are on WFH, I doubt there are any users for these scooters right now. I think its unlikely that they'll be able to sustain their buisness if lockdown lasts more than a month.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  one additional problem (which I guess is a corollary of your first point): they are too expensive for the end user. in my area at least, renting a scooter to go a short distance is 50-75% as much money as an uber/lyft, and you might have already walked a quarter of the way there before finding one with a decent charge. over longer distances, the scooter is a lot cheaper, but also much slower. they only make sense for a narrow range of medium-length trips that are too long to walk, but still short enough to get there in a reasonable amount of time at 15mph. I do enjoy using them sometimes when I'm feeling lazy but still want to get some fresh air, but it's not really an economical means of transportation.
  - CydeWeys 7y ago
    The economics of scooters really suffers from being dockless. I can see the appeal from a VC-funded startup perspective, because you can get a lot of them out there quickly without having to build any infrastructure, but the ongoing daily costs of charging them all (and replacing losses) makes them expensive to operate, hence the high cost. A dockless model would allow them to be much more affordable; in NYC, for example, you can do unlimited rides on docked rideshare for an annualized cost of under 50 cents per day. There's no reason in principle that a docked scooter system, with scooters charging from docks and prevented from theft while not in use, couldn't have costs come down to a roughly similar amount.
blakesterz 7y ago
There's a comment as an answer to yours from moooo99 that explains exactly what I am thinking. Not scooters, but the companies, and not entirely, just from most of the places you find them operating now. For some people they're great!
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Makes sense. I could possibly see the scooters survive in some kind of docked model, where the docks charge the scooters thus eliminating most of the overnight labor, but nobody's gone that route yet and at this rate it may well be that no company survives long enough to get there. Anecdotally, a lot of the people using them are people who would otherwise have started biking. The scooters are less effort (helps prevent sweating in summer) and smaller. E-bikes are also growing in popularity.

griffinkelly 7y ago

There's no doubt there's going to be a number of speculative startup companies left in the wake of this recession