171–180 of 243 posts
one of the advantages of living in the US. Nowhere in the world can a high school student earn 600$ a night by doing a simple, effortless side-activity. Even in countries like Germany max you can earn as a student would be less than a 1000$ per month.
You're not thinking creatively enough. Bitcoin trading, prostitution, that kinda thing. It's only a matter of time before highly VC-funded companies become more of a presence in Europe.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The electricity costs aren't the problem, the big cost here is paying people to collect the scooters up and charge them. As the article points out the cost of electricity makes up such a tiny amount of this cost that it's not even worth calculating.
And, from reading the article, the cost of the electricity comes out of the "finders fee". So those that charge them receive $5-$20 each, minus their cost of electricity to recharge them. So if most scooters only receive the $5 "finders fee" then Bird is paying a flat $5 per scooter for finding, recharging, and returning the scooters. It costs $1 to 'unlock' and $0.15/minute after that. So a $5 payment requires: 1 un…
To be picky, since these chargers/gathererers are largely teens living with their parents, the cost for recharge comes from the household utility bill (not paid by the kid).
Surely it is a trifling amount, but to it you must sum the miles with the car/minivan used for the search and pickup (which costs is as well at least partially subsidized by the parents).
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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?
Wouldn't it make more sense to make the batteries replaceable? Just have them locked in place until a "charger" person authenticates through the app, then allow them to swap in a fresh one. At that point transport would be reduced to just moving the batteries around instead of the whole scooter. They could still be charged at home. People might steal them but the article already mentions that some people steal them a…
how can they possibly allow strangers with no background check to plug in scooters.
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?
Now, some of them may have switched from walking; in which case the small amount of sidewalk space taken up by a scooter not in use is an increase in use of space over the status quo; but not a very big one.
But many of them may have changed from driving. A car takes up far more space than a scooter. For each person who switches, you free up that much more space both on the streets while they're driving, and in parking at their final destination.
Having scooters available won't generally mean people will give up their cars. But a combination of scooters, bike facilities, car shares, buses, trolleys, commuter rail, and so on can make it possible to live in a city without a car, or by reducing a family from two cars to one.
One thing that bike and scooter share systems can help do is solve the "last mile" (or more likely "last quarter mile" or so) problem of public transportation. Walking to the nearest bus stop or train stop, coupled with the wait and then time to reach your destination, is a big factor in how efficient public transit is. Having options for being able to get to and from these places more quickly and conveniently can be a big benefit.
And parking spaces are being reclaimed, especially in cities with high levels of foot, bicycle, and public transportation travel: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/business/when-the-parking...
Anything that reduces the number of people who haul around a couple of tons of metal wherever they go, while burning black gold that funds crazy religious monarchies and failed democracies to do so, seems like a good tradeoff to me.
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…
All of them are VC funded. The cash they are burning is of their investors. The business model should be getting acquired or going public.
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Why? Does electricity used by cars have more externalities than electricity used by a washing machine?
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…
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 (if not more, due to weight) of the road as a gasoline car, while a bicycle uses so much less (and pretty much equivalent to any use of public space like walking, using a scooter, etc) that it makes the most sense for that to just be accounted for out of the general fund.
You could do this based on odometer, or based on automatic toll collection devices, or whatever. Automatic toll collection devices are probably better, because you could also include congestion charges for places where roadway real estate is low and congestion is high, like big cities.
The main reason to have taxes on something like fossil fuels would be for emissions reasons, as there is an external cost being imposed on everyone else by their emissions, and that money could go towards paying for health care costs, providing tax breaks for HVAC systems with air purification, carbon offsetting, and the like. But such a tax should be imposed regardless of use, as any use is going to wind up with the same or similar emissions.
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…
Setting homes on fire seems like the highest risk -- there's no way standard domestic insurance is paying out if they know the fire is caused by business activities.