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Bird has officially raised a whopping $300M as the scooter wars heat up

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Re: Bird has officially raised a whopping $300M as the scooter wars heat up

#21

Post by throwaway413 »

gnicholas wrote: post #13
wwweston wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

West LA east of the 405 is... definitely LA municipality. There's absolutely lots of Bird scooters in Westwood. I think I've seen some in Hollywood.

Yep, the Daily Bruin has written about their proliferation — and the enforcement/arrests due to violations of helmet laws — on several occasions. https://dailybruin.com/2018/04/08/ucpd-to-crack-down-on-elec... I can see how they'd be useful on the hills at UCLA!

Except they don’t have nearly enough power to get up hills. You end up pushing it up the hill with you, which is worse than walking!

Re: Bird has officially raised a whopping $300M as the scooter wars heat up

#22

Post by uncoder0 »

sushid wrote: post #14
alonmower wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No chance. The batteries are 280 Watt hours, solar cells generate about 20 Watt hours per square foot, and the standing pads are probably no more than half a square foot (being generous) so even if you could have an edge to edge panel it would take 28 hours of direct sunlight to fully charge. Even if they were perfectly positioned all day they wouldn’t get more than 7 hours of sun, only 3-4 of those at peak power so…

What if they were free to manually ride but used like 20% of the energy or so to charge the battery until it was full? Would something like that be feasible?

20% sounds like it'd be a lot of drag. I don't know if regenerative breaking would make sense in terms of cost and energy output but, that seems more feasible than a constant drag of an alternator hooked up to a wheel.

Re: Bird has officially raised a whopping $300M as the scooter wars heat up

#24

Post by wwweston »

gcb0 wrote: post #20
wwweston wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

West LA east of the 405 is... definitely LA municipality. There's absolutely lots of Bird scooters in Westwood. I think I've seen some in Hollywood.

the grove, miracle mile, west LA, ucla, pier... those are all three things: (mostly) tourist (or university) destinations, flat and isolated. meaning you will use the scooters to circle around a small flat area. those things are hardly transportation for people that live walking distance to work. it wont replace anything but the $3 to $5 lyft/uber ride.

Oh, yeah. If you live walking distance to work, you'd... continue to walk.

The $3-5 crowdcab... what we're really talking about here is the last mile, and it's been enough of a subject of conversation that it's not a market I'd estimate low lightly.

Also, West LA contains enough people who are doing other phases of life besides school or touring that there's no way everybody who's using the scooters on/around my block is a student or tourist.

Re: Bird has officially raised a whopping $300M as the scooter wars heat up

#25

Post by gcb0 »

wwweston wrote: post #8
gcb0 wrote: post #2

> scooters you’ll see pretty much all over the place in cities like Los Angeles. have to laugh at this. The touristy areas are indeed packed with them. you can't even see the floor on 3rd street promenade because it is now covered in five companies' scooters. Maybe you see a couple in the silicon beach (which is not around snapchat house, and neither on the beach anymore). but actual places you'd call Los Angeles? no…

West LA east of the 405 is... definitely LA municipality. There's absolutely lots of Bird scooters in Westwood. I think I've seen some in Hollywood.

west LA is also a mix of college city and tourist destination.
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