$5B and the best they could do was dump piles of scooters on the street and make people pay to use them via an app.
And pay other people to go charge them.
Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
11–20 of 65 posts
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#12It is just really expensive to ride. I use it sometimes where there are no good public transport options and it is like half a cab fare. I can’t see them maintain a market if they increase prices. Maybe if we had longer lasting batteries they could drop the prices since they would not need to be charged so often. But as it stands it is either a curiosity or replacing something already expensive like a taxi for a smal…
I don't think it's just the batteries, the whole economic model makes no sense. First, they're expensive - they need to be built for commercial use, so they're $500+ each. Second, demand is massively inefificent, a hundred thousand people want to travel from the train station to their office in the morning, and then back in the evening. Either you pay someone to keep riding the scooters back to the train station in the morning during commuting hours, or you accept that their utilization is going to be woeful. Thirdly, the MTBBTITR (Mean Time Between Being Thrown in The River) is 2 days, so you end up replacing your entire inventory every 2 days.
So, we need to hire a full time worker per scooter to return it to where it's needed constantly, we need to replace the scooter every 2 days, and they're $500 each. So it costs the company about $300 a day to run 1 scooter, so they need to charge about $100 per journey. Unsurprisingly, the demand is highly elastic.
The numbers are a bit facetious, but you get my point.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#13It is just really expensive to ride. I use it sometimes where there are no good public transport options and it is like half a cab fare. I can’t see them maintain a market if they increase prices. Maybe if we had longer lasting batteries they could drop the prices since they would not need to be charged so often. But as it stands it is either a curiosity or replacing something already expensive like a taxi for a smal…
I don't think it's just the batteries, the whole economic model makes no sense. First, they're expensive - they need to be built for commercial use, so they're $500+ each. Second, demand is massively inefificent, a hundred thousand people want to travel from the train station to their office in the morning, and then back in the evening. Either you pay someone to keep riding the scooters back to the train station in t…
Bike share systems with docks have the same demand problem, but they are locked to docks so don’t get thrown into the River. They survive fine. Maybe a docked scooter share would work?
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#14I know two people who were seriously injured on them. One required facial reconstructive surgery and the other had a broken arm. Both happened soon after they became ubiquitous.
I also had many close calls as a pedestrian. Some could have been very serious had I not jumped out of the way. Perhaps 5 or so of those.
From my perspective they are not worth it.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#15It is just really expensive to ride. I use it sometimes where there are no good public transport options and it is like half a cab fare. I can’t see them maintain a market if they increase prices. Maybe if we had longer lasting batteries they could drop the prices since they would not need to be charged so often. But as it stands it is either a curiosity or replacing something already expensive like a taxi for a smal…
The costs are pretty high these days. I took a lime recently and I ended up paying a dollar more than what rideshare quoted me. In hindsight I really should just skip them and go for rideshare. The rich enclave cities in my area with their octopus like city borders have geolocked scooters. So when you are going on a major road and you go over one block into the rich angry city, the scooter loses power and you nearly die from the fickle 45mph traffic on your tail that is now angry at you even more than they were previously.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#16It is just really expensive to ride. I use it sometimes where there are no good public transport options and it is like half a cab fare. I can’t see them maintain a market if they increase prices. Maybe if we had longer lasting batteries they could drop the prices since they would not need to be charged so often. But as it stands it is either a curiosity or replacing something already expensive like a taxi for a smal…
I read that batteries can last for dozens of miles.
This changes dramatically if its cold or if its the end of the night and all the scooters have been used during the day. I’ve ran them dry a number of times and had to find a new steed.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#17I know two people who were seriously injured on them. One required facial reconstructive surgery and the other had a broken arm. Both happened soon after they became ubiquitous. I also had many close calls as a pedestrian. Some could have been very serious had I not jumped out of the way. Perhaps 5 or so of those. From my perspective they are not worth it.
They need to be on bicycle infrastructure.
That said, if they remove cars from the road they are worth it.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's just the batteries, the whole economic model makes no sense. First, they're expensive - they need to be built for commercial use, so they're $500+ each. Second, demand is massively inefificent, a hundred thousand people want to travel from the train station to their office in the morning, and then back in the evening. Either you pay someone to keep riding the scooters back to the train station in t…
Bike share systems with docks have the same demand problem, but they are locked to docks so don’t get thrown into the River. They survive fine. Maybe a docked scooter share would work?
Aren't those subsidized by cities? I know that they are here in Montreal, and the Bixi corporation behind our bike share system went bankrupt at least once in the past.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#19I know two people who were seriously injured on them. One required facial reconstructive surgery and the other had a broken arm. Both happened soon after they became ubiquitous. I also had many close calls as a pedestrian. Some could have been very serious had I not jumped out of the way. Perhaps 5 or so of those. From my perspective they are not worth it.
They need to be on bicycle infrastructure. That said, if they remove cars from the road they are worth it.
I agree with that. The problem is people. > 50% of the people I saw using the devices were on the sidewalk. And many of them that I conversed with (in a calm tone) who I told to use the street said "but it's too dangerous out there!" My retort that them being on the sidewalk was too dangerous for me fell on deaf ears.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#20Looking at the roadmaps for the core component (batteries) they definitely jumped the gun. Sodium Ion batteries should produce dirt cheap scooters that will probably be 1/3 the cost of whatever they were using back when they invested. And "sharing" is kind of stupid. If you own your escooter, the battery will probably be removable (for easy recharging) and you just lock up the shell. Sharing is basically only good fo…
>And "sharing" is kind of stupid. If you own your escooter
Then it gets stolen.
The main value of the rentables comes in making it so you never have to deal with that eventuality.
The fact that they're far more difficult for the average thief to turn a profit from stealing compared to a private vehicle is a bonus for the company (getting away with stealing one requires a Faraday cage or some similar way to jam GPS, and you have to strip it for parts because even the shadier pawn shops won't accept obviously stolen-but-repainted gear), as is the side-effect that (because they're interchangeable) it's fantastic for people who come to the city by car but don't want the inherent hassle that is driving downtown.
Yes, you still have to dispatch people to charge them up (and swappable batteries is something that takes a bit of time to figure out), and sometimes they get destroyed by angry would-be thieves for shits and giggles, but that cost also scales sublinearly as you deploy more of them. And once the batteries have worn to the point of uselessness hopefully batteries are cheaper- a prediction that's likely correct.