Ah, but public transit is inherently the slowest option. I have no desire to make 10 stops before I get where I'm going. I also have zero desire to rent my modes, as that encourages literally rent seeking behavior. Either we need to figure out how to drop off and pickup passengers at speed, or penalize individualized transport that is space inefficient (like cars). Good luck pursuing the latter in the US; punitive me…
Scooter is a horrible horrible mean of transporation for the mass. I lives in Vietnam, where scooters are dominant. It is even less compact than car on the road.
Almost everyone means an electric kick scooter, not the vehicles in Vietnam - those are motor scooters.
Surprised that the companies haven't either merged or coordinated to limit competition in each city.
I expect that cities can support a limited number of scooter companies, but every single vc backed startup.
Can we please just make this (scooters, bikes) public transit? Not profitable - check Good for society - check In need of regulation - check
I wish, but corruption and graft has lead LA's metrobikes to cost something like $2500 each and that program is quickly spiraling out of existence. Greedy contractors and privatization aside, you need infrastructure for transit, and for these scooters and bikes that means building bike lanes. Otherwise, it's no surprise that ridership is declining as they aren't safe on roads with LA drivers who kill more pedestrians…
>I wish, but corruption and graft has lead LA's metrobikes to cost something like $2500 each
That doesn't seem too excessive to me. What do you think would be a more reasonable price for purchasing an electric bike* with a fair degree of customization and a corresponding maintenance contract?
* IIRC the bikes have integrated NFC readers for your TAP card, built in U-locks, probably GPS, and that sweet sweet Metro paint job.
Curious how many of the scooter-haters in this thread drive cars daily. In my experience they're a huge boon to walkable, car-free or car-lite lifestyles, and all but useless in the suburban parking-minimum wastelands that characterize most of the United States' postwar built environment.
Every time I've thought about renting a scooter, Uber has been both cheaper and faster. Hard to compete against that, and in my experience Uber cars are a lot safer than scooters— I've rented Bird scooters with throttles that get stuck at 100%, broken brakes, etc.
Does anyone actually think this is a profitable market? Electric scooters are expensive, repair and charging is expensive. It’s a seasonal business. Vandalism/abuse is fairly common. In terms of any environmental benefit, I highly suspect more gasoline is being consumed to collect and distribute scooters than the offset of a few last mile transports. I suspect the cost to the consumer would have to double for it to m…
> Why did the VCs value these as billion dollar companies? Desperation? That's my guess. 10+ years of very low interest rates and wealthy people having more and more free cash seems to have led to a lot of crazy valuations in tech investing and elsewhere.
Interest is already negative in Japan for years, and now it's negative on Europe too. The US is heading fast to this insane reality of negative interests too. Since 2008 the FED has multiplied the amount os dollars in circulation by what, 5-10 times? This created this crazy scenario where the Softbanks of the world see a business model that is clearly destined to fail and never be profitable, and still keep pouring money on it at higher and higher valuations. I live in Brazil, and the price these companies charge for the scooter rides here is totally out of our economic reality. I'm just waiting for this HUGE bubble to explode. UBER, Netflix, WeWork, Tesla to some extent. All multi billion dollar companies that never return profits to their investors. I for one am glad to be getting cheap UBER rides down here at the expense of the pension funds of millions of americans, but this can not go on forever. Since the end of 2019 I began to switch my investments to gold and wait for the crash. Trump gave me some help with this gold idea this week, so far so good ;-)
If nobody ever stole anything, I'd wholeheartedly support that. In fact, I'm willing to shell out 5 times the regular cost for a bike that would never ever be stolen wherever I leave it. Finding places to park and lock and worry about it not getting stolen is just way too much. Relevant: I've owned 4 $1000+ bike over the past 10 years, one of which is stolen right outside home, another is almost stolen (moved then fo…
Scooter is a horrible horrible mean of transporation for the mass. I lives in Vietnam, where scooters are dominant. It is even less compact than car on the road.
Almost everyone means an electric kick scooter, not the vehicles in Vietnam - those are motor scooters.
Which I also find a weird language abuse. The original meaning of "scooter" is the vehicle in Vietnam. Why did we suddenly agree to call those "kick scooters" as "scooters".
This is even more confusing for companies like "scoot" that rent both "scooters" and "kick scooters"
Ah, but public transit is inherently the slowest option. I have no desire to make 10 stops before I get where I'm going. I also have zero desire to rent my modes, as that encourages literally rent seeking behavior. Either we need to figure out how to drop off and pickup passengers at speed, or penalize individualized transport that is space inefficient (like cars). Good luck pursuing the latter in the US; punitive me…
> Ah, but public transit is inherently the slowest option. This isn't true if you are in a dense city with good public transit. This is currently mid day (3 PM), and it's about 30% faster (21 minutes vs 29 minutes) to go from my current location in Manhattan to a bar I enjoy hanging out in Brooklyn via public transit than car, according to Google Maps. It would be even better around rush hour.
New York City is perhaps the only major city in the US where public transit is indeed faster than individual modes transportation (scooter, car, bike, whatever).
This whole model is incredibly, impossibly, flawed. 9/10 times, my net displacement for the day is 0. If my net displacement is zero, I would prefer to own the medium I'm using to move. Bike, car, scooter etc. Only exception is stuff with really high capital costs, like planes and trains, in which case I pay a small fee to avoid owning a railway or airline. For scooters, there are no high capitals costs; the cost of…
If I commute between two well-known locations on a daily basis (for example from home to work) I definitely want to own my scooter, or figure out a stable and cheap way to do this commute.
The use-case for scooter rentals is different though. I use them sometimes when I need to go to a different unknown place. A bar for example, where it would be inconvenient to bring my own transportation and deal with parking
If you have a cane or a wheelchair then good luck when you come across a pile of bikes on the sidewalk. Even one of those JUMP bikes tipped over can be a problem. I used to see this all the time in Santa Monica. Bikes lined up close together would either fall like dominoes or get kicked over by hoodlums, blocking walking paths or potential parking spots. What's hilarious is the number of believers willing to say abou…
Compared to a car parking on the sidewalk and totally blocking it which happens so often?
I don't think I've ever seen that where I live. The closest I've seen is in suburban neighborhoods where people don't park their car all the way into their driveway, but even that's pretty rare.