Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business • Hacker News Board

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#241

Post by yungchin » Wed, May 23, 2018, 12:44 PM UTC

SonicSoul wrote: post #213

samnwa wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only pay $5 per Bird per night. If each Bird "works" only 3 hours a day on 15 minute trips, that's about $30 a day earned per Bird. They probably get the scooters for ~$300 so each one pays itself off in 10 days. Call it 12 to account for damaged Birds. Extrapolate that out to say, 1000 Birds in a City, and that's at least $1MM in revenue monthly per city.

3 hours seems very optimistic. Also what about the cost of actually running the company ? It exists even if it doesn’t directly handle scooters day to day

Yes but going by these numbers, even 1 hour of use a day would produce a marginal profit on every scooter added. An hour sounds attainable. And coming up with clever operations hacks that push utilisation towards two hours a day sounds like the sort of challenge that most startup founders would love to be dealing with :)

(edit: another comment in this thread mentions the current batteries only last one hour, so that probably limits daily usage.... taking the long view that's ok I think, because at this point it seems a safe bet that batteries will be a lot cheaper in a few years time.)

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#242

Post by s73v3r_ » Wed, May 23, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

hmd_imputer wrote: post #238

s73v3r_ wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because they're just trying to get an exemption for themselves. If they were advocating for a change for all, that'd be better.

you cannot advocate for a change for all if you are the only company in that field. Uber was literally a revolution of transportation. However, as a side effect, the changes you advocate sets a precedence, thus also affects everyone, which was the case in the US. There were a few other companies who also benefited from the changes, such as Lift.

"you cannot advocate for a change for all if you are the only company in that field."

But they're not. They're a taxi company. There are tons of those around.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#243

Post by Faaak » Wed, May 23, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

hmd_imputer wrote: post #97

Faaak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general business tariffs are lower, so I don't see the problem.

nope, not in Europe. Businesses have to pay a lot more than private residences.

It is the case in France and Switzerland, at least.