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Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

theatlantic.com

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Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#71

Post by carlmr »

Illniyar wrote: post #12
guessmyname wrote: post #8

I wonder if the company is asking these teens, during the registration as contractors, if they have permission from their parents to charge all those scooters at home. I can imagine several parents getting angry for excessive increments in the electricity bills every month without having a clue about their children's "business". Of course, many of them will probably find the scooters in the garage in a regular mornin…

The article says that electricity cost for charging scooters is practically nothing. If we believe it or assume that electricity cost is trivial compared to the payment, then I don't see any parent that'll say no to their nearly-adult children making money on the side by such an activity. At worst they'll ask for compensation.

[flagged]

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#72

Post by robhu »

RainaRelanah wrote: post #60
bischofs wrote: post #37

I hope this scooter thing takes off in all cities, what a great idea to move people more effectively and also bring down the cost of battery cells so I can buy a tesla. We might have finally found something that fat americans can tolerate that's not a hummer h1.

The weight limit of the model being used is around 220 lbs, and it struggles to handle that. Most Americans that you'd call obese wouldn't be able to use these. The model (Xiaomi M365) was originally designed for Chinese consumers (who tend to be shorter/weigh less).

Yes that is the official weight limit, but speaking as someone who has one and weighs 20% more, it works totally fine.

Not sure why you think it struggles - even with the official firmware it easily and quickly gets up to 16mph. Sure you get a bit less range than a lighter person, but the difference isn't huge.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#73

Post by trixie_ »

themagician wrote: post #6

It will disappear just as fast as it arrived. Maybe one will survive. Just like Sprig, Spoonrocket, Maple, Eatclub, etc and the legion of instant food delivery services came and went, this too will pass.

Really? What will replace it? In the LA beach cities it is super useful.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#74

Post by simias »

ralusek wrote: post #47
geezerjay wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back of the napkin calculations suggest that, in order to break even just from the charging costs alone, each scooter needs to be ridden for at least 2 and a half hours. Based on some quick googling (but without taking into account the terrain and the rider's weight and riding style), a scooter with a full load can be ridden for about 6 hours.

So best case scenario, let's assume that each ride is 15 minutes, that means 24 rides in the 6 hours. If we also assume full 6 hour usage, we end up with (24 rides * $1) + (360 min * $0.15). So best case seems like $78 revenue per charge.

That's really a best case and that's not counting the maintenance costs (replacing the broken/stolen scooters in particular). They seem to pay the "chargers" extremely well currently, I'm sure they're still in the bootstrapping stage and not actually trying to make money. One person quoted in the article even says he expects the reward to be lowered eventually.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#76

Post by pbhjpbhj »

guessmyname wrote: post #8

I wonder if the company is asking these teens, during the registration as contractors, if they have permission from their parents to charge all those scooters at home. I can imagine several parents getting angry for excessive increments in the electricity bills every month without having a clue about their children's "business". Of course, many of them will probably find the scooters in the garage in a regular mornin…

Setting homes on fire seems like the highest risk -- there's no way standard domestic insurance is paying out if they know the fire is caused by business activities.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#77

Post by gambiting »

isostatic wrote: post #62
gambiting wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going forward we'll have to figure out how to tax electricity used for charging electric cars(probably special chargers that have a car-taxed tariff).

Why? Does electricity used by cars have more externalities than electricity used by a washing machine?

No, but at the moment(at least over here in UK) the tax on petrol and diesel covers road building/maintenance for the entire country. With this tax slowly disappearing, we will have to find another way to tax people who use the roads, and the best way to do that is to tax the fuel they use as it's directly proportional to their use.

Same reason why heating/farming oil doesn't have this tax, even though it's technically just diesel and your diesel car would happily run on it. Yes, the electricity used in your car is the same as the one used in your washing machine, but it should be taxed more because of its use, exactly the same as we do with oil already.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#78

Post by gambiting »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #70
gambiting wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the regulation-stricken UK, it's fully legal to work from your private home (so called "clerical" work). And fyi, something being against the contract is not automatically illegal.

Leaseholds often excludes business activities as does home insurance.

Yes, you can't register a company at your home address, but no one will ever deny you coverage if you do clerical work at home. At least every single insurance and rental I had in UK had a special provision for this - if you need to stay at home and work remotely, that's 100% covered. It just can't be your principal place of work.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#80

Post by dalbasal »

Dunno about the way charging works, at least long term. Scooter sharing through, that's kind of promising.

Beijing (and other cities) have proven that bike sharing can become a major transport type if the city will allow bike sharing companies to just dump bikes all over the sidewalk. It's crude, but it at least let's us see how far bike sharing can go if/when stations are a non-problem.

Besides the mess (I could not imagine buttoned down European city like Vienna or even a messy one like Amsterdam allowing it), there's a problem of space. Scooters are space saving.

In my ideal world, there are "public" scooter stations that can be used by any bike sharing enterprise. These provide efficient, space saving storage and power. With the same footprint we currently use for city bikes, we could probably store 2X-4X as many scooters. One parking space could be converted into a unit. Scooters everywhere!

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