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Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

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Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#41
post #14

I 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.

In the Netherlands, the country with maybe the best biking infrastructure in the world, escooters are banned from public roads (including bike lanes), because the authorities consider them too dangerous.

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#42
What market was it supposed to disrupt?

The Uber play was babble about magic self driving cars as a distraction and put the taxi business out of business, then jack up the rate and turn into the taxi business.

What’s bird doing? Other than being the canary in the coal mine that VC dollars ran out of investments, what did it accomplish?

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#43
post #38
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something I don't understand. Why are people throwing these things into the river, so to speak? The more you break these the more units will have to be bought and the more expensive the ride becomes and the more resources "energy" is necessary to keep the system going --which seems ironic since riders are the ones who opt to ride in order to use fewer energy resources to begin with...

Kids do it. Kids destroy stuff just for the fun of destroying stuff. They don't care about the rides becoming expensive or whatever. It's just funny to them to throw it in the river.

So, where are they putting their Gretta money? Looks like they would be ignoring her imperatives.

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#44
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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, a…

Agree, low ROI on theft, at least until we run into a supervillain who is short on cash and needs thousands of powerful hub motors and batteries.

Trade ya for a massive social media company?

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#45
post #24

Earlier 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…

There is something I don't understand. Why are people throwing these things into the river, so to speak? The more you break these the more units will have to be bought and the more expensive the ride becomes and the more resources "energy" is necessary to keep the system going --which seems ironic since riders are the ones who opt to ride in order to use fewer energy resources to begin with...

Why do you assume the riders are the ones throwing them in the river?

And what does "so to speak" mean here? They're literally getting thrown into rivers.

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/spark-421-1.4973383/why-are-p...

https://slate.com/technology/2018/12/electric-scooter-bird-l...

https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/electric-scooters-hi...

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#46
post #43
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids do it. Kids destroy stuff just for the fun of destroying stuff. They don't care about the rides becoming expensive or whatever. It's just funny to them to throw it in the river.

So, where are they putting their Gretta money? Looks like they would be ignoring her imperatives.

What is Gretta money?

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#47
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to be on bicycle infrastructure. That said, if they remove cars from the road they are worth it.

In the Netherlands, the country with maybe the best biking infrastructure in the world, escooters are banned from public roads (including bike lanes), because the authorities consider them too dangerous.

Why are they considered too dangerous? Won't an ebike at full speed be heavier and as such even more dangerous?

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#48
post #4

It 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 have a similar experience where I live. Taking a scooter only saved me a dollar or two on my trips over a ride share. It even took me longer to scoot over rather than what the ride share would typically take too, so it’s just really not worth it.

Also so many horrendous riders when I’m cycling in the road.

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#49
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They need to be on bicycle infrastructure. That said, if they remove cars from the road they are worth it.

In the Netherlands, the country with maybe the best biking infrastructure in the world, escooters are banned from public roads (including bike lanes), because the authorities consider them too dangerous.

I know that this is the case in Netherlands. I think they are over reacting to those and under-reacting to cars. As long as the speed is sufficiently limited, they not more dangerous then bikes.

Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?

#50
There definitely is a lot of stupid money floating around in this space. Lots of companies that are competing with each other for the same group of consumers. So, it's a race to the bottom in terms of pricing and operational cost. All the under-performers struggle to keep users on their platform and quickly fail if they don't sort out their operational issues. Some of the more successful companies have in common that they are a bit more premium in pricing and reasonably well organized when it comes to operations and relations with local governments (key for even being allowed to operate).

I don't use scooters but I do use a lease bike (Swapfiets), which is very popular here in Berlin. Good old pedal power and I don't mind getting some exercise. They also have ebikes but those are a bit too pricey for me. The scooters look fun but also too unstable for my taste. I like having teeth and I can see a gazillion ways loosing those with these contraptions. Ebikes are nice. I've used a few of those over the years: Uber, Tier, etc. All good fun and pretty effective.

Key challenges in this space are the continuous haggling with local governments about rules and legislation and the continuous drain on cost in the form of maintenance, vandalism, theft, etc. It's just a very operations intensive business and companies that don't do that well don't last very long.

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