211–220 of 243 posts
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Thanks for this very interesting point of view, a company as a product. If you look this way, then a lot of stuff makes sense in the VC/Start-Up world.
It only makes sense if we’re in a bubble.
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i guess so. but what causes these persistently bubbly conditions? the top 1-2% have very large cash hoards they absolutely must invest. and they can't just go around opening laundromats, liquor stores and flipping houses. that's chicken feed. it requires too much attention. too much work. there are challenges investing in the really big global growth stories (e.g. China): state ownership has the upper hand. they can…
I don't understand the "it requires too much attention". Isn't that what managers are for ? Assuming your opportunities are profitable enough , just hire enough managers and be done with it?
I want to hear more about Bird's business model. How can it be worthwhile for them to give hundreds of dollars out to have the scooters charged? What do people pay for using the scooters? As per the article, it also seems incentives are not quite thought out yet, so people can grab the $20 "hard-to-find" fee reasonably easily. It sounds like you can have a friend stash them until the fee goes up, then go and collect…
They only pay $5 per Bird per night. If each Bird "works" only 3 hours a day on 15 minute trips, that's about $30 a day earned per Bird. They probably get the scooters for ~$300 so each one pays itself off in 10 days. Call it 12 to account for damaged Birds. Extrapolate that out to say, 1000 Birds in a City, and that's at least $1MM in revenue monthly per city.
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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 technical…
It seems to me that taxing something based on its use is a pretty much just a way to set up exactly these kinds of loopholes that continually need plugging. Instead of taxing gasoline to help fill in the road budget, why not tax vehicles based on actual road usage, and their size and weight? Then you don't have all of the "electric cars and bikes don't pay gas taxes" stupid debates. An electric car uses just as much…
In the UK we don't. We tax gasoline because it has negative externalities (same as us taxing cigarettes and alcohol). It goes into the central budget that's run by Phillip Hammond in the UK. Out of that, and income tax, national insurance, VAT, alcohol tax, etc, he funds the national road network, trident renewal, the state pension, the nhs, etc. Some of that money goes to councils to spend on what they want.
Electric cars don't have those externalities of burning gasoline in the middle of our cities.
While we don't tax fossil fuels used to generate electricity, we do subsidise non-fossil-fuels used to generate electricity. It probably should be the other way round, however in any case burning gas (not oil) in a power plant out of town and charging an electric car is better than burning oil in an ICE in the middle of a city and thus should attract far less tax. Currently 42% of UK electricity is being generated by Gas - no other fossil fuels.
The councils then take the money from central government, and the local council tax (about £1500 a household), into a local pot, and fund things like bin collections, maintaining parks, operating libraries, and maintaining the local roads.
> why not tax vehicles based on actual road usage, and their size and weight?
Until relatively recently that's not really been possible (ANPR makes it possible), hence taxing fuel as a proxy.
> Then you don't have all of the "electric cars and bikes don't pay gas taxes" stupid debates.
Given that the cost of a road is wear and tear (which a pedestrian or bike causes pretty much zero)
Charging more than £5 a year for even the most extreme cyclist wouldn't make any sense. Because damage increases at 2^4, 1 mile car does about 1/100,000th of the damage of a lorry. A bike and car is a similar ratio - therefore if you charged a bike 1p per mile, you should charge a car £1000 a mile and a lorry £100 million a mile.
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…
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It seems to me that taxing something based on its use is a pretty much just a way to set up exactly these kinds of loopholes that continually need plugging. Instead of taxing gasoline to help fill in the road budget, why not tax vehicles based on actual road usage, and their size and weight? Then you don't have all of the "electric cars and bikes don't pay gas taxes" stupid debates. An electric car uses just as much…
At least in most of the US (can't speak for all 50 states) vehicles are taxed based on weight- a 1 ton pickup will cost more each year to register than a compact car or motorcycle. And what is a better method to tax based on usage than taxing fuel? Do you really want to have to log every mile driven, and submit it to the IRS? Parent poster had a good point, in that this will need to be examined in regards to EV usage…
An F-350 is 3.7 tons.
Two problems with this 1) It's unlikely to be proportional to road damage - if a 1 ton vehicle that costs $100 to register, a 2 ton vehicle should cost $1600, and a 4 ton vehicle should cost $25k. 2) It doesn't take into account mileage. Own a heavy truck that you use on your own land, and do about 1,000 miles a year on the road, and you pay the same as someone that has the same truck but does 50,000 miles a year commuting.
The odometer idea elsewhere in the thread probably works well for the U.S, just have a website to post your mileage when you drive into mexico/canada, and again on the way back, with spotchecks at the border. People who do significant mileage on their own land will be annoyed, but they currently pay gas tax on that mileage
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Why? Does electricity used by cars have more externalities than electricity used by a washing machine?
Washing machines don't use roads.
Tax the fuel to cover the externalities of that (pollution) Tax the road use to cover the externalities of that (cost of using the road)
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Bixi bike rental system exists for many years now. The only city as far as I know that is not profitable is Montreal, ironically the city of bixi headquarters and where it started from. The same system, under other names, exists in other major cities around the world. They have even more expenses and infra to support. They need to install and dismantle docking stations every season, which requires cranes and trucks i…
Bixi made a 3 or 4 year go of it in Toronto before exiting the market. So it could be that all their locations (except Montreal) are profitable because they exit markets where they are losing money (except Montreal). If that's true it raises the interesting question about why it works in some cities and not in others, since presumably the operations by Bixi are equally competent in the various places they open.
how can they possibly allow strangers with no background check to plug in scooters.
I love these scooters! It's such a fun way to get around. There's a charger in my building, so they always leave scooters right outside for me, ready to go when I need them. It's really an amazing experience. For a new user, it takes less than a minute to get started. The first time, as an engineer, I just was shocked that it was actually working so well! I feel like it unlocks a whole new way to see the city for a l…
It's better than City Bike which forces you to 30-minute sessions and to pre-established locking stations.
You sure that Ford Bike (or whatever it's called) I'd wny different?