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.
Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
41–50 of 65 posts
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#42The 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?
#43Earlier 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.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#44Earlier 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.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#45Earlier 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...
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?
#46Earlier 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.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#47Earlier 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.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#48It 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…
Also so many horrendous riders when I’m cycling in the road.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#49Earlier 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.
Re: Was the $5B that VCs plugged into escooters worth it?
#50I 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.