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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

#161

Post by rfrey »

moltar wrote: post #154
lordnacho wrote: post #17

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…

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.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#162

Post by Tepix »

geezerjay wrote: post #35
danso wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Riders can locate and unlock scooters using the company’s smartphone app, and after paying the $1 unlocking fee are charged 15 cents per minute during use.

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.

Six hours?

The Xiaomi M365 that is used as a base for many of these e-scooters has a real-life range of around 20km and a top speed of 25km/h (a 280Wh battery and a 250W motor with 500W peak performance).

So the battery can be drained in one hour if you're moving quickly.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#163

Post by Tepix »

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.

6 hours is inaccurate. It's more like 1-1.5hours of actual use.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#164

Post by Tepix »

masklinn wrote: post #85
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your calculation is completely off. 150 min * 0.15 $/min = $22.50. In the US you can get a kWh for about 12 cents. That means you can get 187.5 kWh. The largest Tesla Model S has a 100 kWh. I don't know what kind of battery these scooters have, but I am sure it's not nearly as big as a Tesla battery.

> I don't know what kind of battery these scooters have, but I am sure it's not nearly as big as a Tesla battery. 280Wh. They have nowhere near 6h range either, the machine is advertised for a range of 18.6 miles and a top speed of 15.5, though it has regenerative braking which can improve the range a bit. It's a pretty standard Xiaomi M365: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076KKX4BC/

Their actual range is around 20km (12.5 miles).

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#165

Post by Tepix »

Shivetya wrote: post #119
lordnacho wrote: post #17

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…

There are all sorts of costs here and risks. How much is Bird paying per scooter? Each charger? I have not gone through the sign up process? Are you on the hook for the chargers or does Bird just send them out and hope for the best? Besides the obvious strife between fellow "chargers" it won't be long before cities get into the act and pass ordinances or enforce them to take them off the streets until they get their…

The Xiaomi M365 costs around 330€ ($390) in Europe when on sale.

I don't think there's a large profit margin in that price given the price of a 280Wh battery and the other components.

These companies also have to add some parts to the scooters such as GPS.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#166

Post by moltar »

joosters wrote: post #59
CalRobert wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the _only_ thing Bird does is enable people not to use parking spaces, and thereby permit the land for such to be allocated to other things (housing, retail, parks, etc.) that is a huge boon. It should also mean reduced vmt (for cars at least) meaning more lives saved, especially those of people walking or cycling since these scooters are in city centres, where cars are especially dangerous. Similarly one van…

I challenge you to find just one example of land that has been repurposed from parking spaces into something else, because of Bird or some other scooter company. ...and will this land, if it even exists, be larger than the amount of sidewalk space that Bird has repurposed into scooter parking spaces?

In Montreal, restaurants rent curb side parking slots and convert them to a terrace. Very popular.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#167

Post by chrisseaton »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #151
chrisseaton wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seems now it's a wild west when it comes to who gets at them first. Why’s that a problem for the companies though?

They end up paying more to recovery people than they're earning from people renting the things and after a few recoveries, more than the scooters are worth.

Why does it cost you more if people are competing? I think you only pay the successful one.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#168

Post by IncRnd »

lordnacho wrote: post #17

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…

I doubt it truly is profitable for Bird, which most likely is paying out from VC cash not from their own revenue cash.

This model is an inversion of tool or car rental, where the renter returns the device or pays a late fee. Here, Bird chases after you to get their devices back. When scooters are difficult to recover, Bird pays more to the finder for recovering them.

Bird almost certainly plans to sell themselves at some point through some sort of offering in the future. Renting scooters today is just an incidental.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#169

Post by chriswarbo »

gambiting wrote: post #125
chriswarbo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of a perverse incentive though: - Discourage "bad" thing (driving, drinking, smoking, sugar, ...) by applying heavy taxes - Occurrence of that thing goes down - Complain about falling of tax revenue I'm generally in favour of applying taxes like this, but they need to be based on the actual harm/externalities, and be targetted effectively. Taxing electricity-used-for-vehicles seems easy to game, and only…

>>and discourage excessive use (reducing fatalities, etc.). We have car tax for the latter; If you mean VED I don't think that achieves anything, perhaps only discouraging people from buying cars with particularly high CO2 emissions, but if you can afford a sports car with 200g/km+ emissions, you can probably afford the annual VED on it. Besides, with VED refresh recently it almost doesn't matter, you only discourage…

Hmm, I hadn't thought about foreign travel. Food for thought, thanks!

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#170

Post by hmd_imputer »

131012 wrote: post #155
hmd_imputer wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeap, the ones who didn't ban are the ones who didn't apply all these useless strict regulations. In Germany, it is still not possible to take an Uber ride, for example. Besides, if it started in Europe as a small start-up it would be killed right away with tons of regulations anyways. So the only reason that you have Uber in Europe is that it has become a giant company in the US, due fertile environment, and thus co…

And they make a lot of direct lobbying toward local government to make sure they don't enforce existing taxi laws.

which they should, don't you think? sometimes being disruptive is the only way to go.
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