181–190 of 243 posts
I hope this scooter thing takes off in all cities, what a great idea to move people more effectively and also bring down the cost of battery cells so I can buy a tesla. We might have finally found something that fat americans can tolerate that's not a hummer h1.
25.4 mpg [1] is the average fuel economy of cars sold last year while the h1 is at 8 mpg.
[1] https://news.umich.edu/gas-mileage-hits-best-mark-in-three-y...
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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.
Looks like you're assuming every charge costs them $20. From my (admittedly skimmed) reading of the article - that's a special case for scooters that've "gone missing", and is effectively a "reward for finding and returning it".
Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/8l12oj/electric...
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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…
I love these scooters! It's such a fun way to get around. There's a charger in my building, so they always leave scooters right outside for me, ready to go when I need them. It's really an amazing experience. For a new user, it takes less than a minute to get started. The first time, as an engineer, I just was shocked that it was actually working so well! I feel like it unlocks a whole new way to see the city for a l…
Why don't you just buy the damn thing ?
This was probably inevitably going to happen as the hub motor is constantly in direct contact with the ground, which means that a bad impact can dislodge a magnet.
I wanted to fix it myself, and the cost of the part would have had been almost the same price as just scrapping the scooter and buying a new one. Additionally, I had trouble going beyond about 5 miles, with the lights off and with conservative battery use, before running out of power.
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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?
Every person who is riding one of these scooters is someone who could have been using some other form of transportation. 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 scoote…
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…
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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.
Many of these companies make a lot more sense to me if I think of the founders(+select early employees) as the company, the company as the product, the VCs as the customer, and product+customers as the sales pitch.
The video of the guy piling six birds on one and riding away is pricelesssssss!
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…
If you think about it, the scooter must stop scootering before 100% battery depletion to allow for the location electronics adequate life.