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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 prob

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.

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.