I would love to see some stats on repeat usage.
Is this a fad where people just want to try something new? Or are people actually shifting regular transportation to these?
Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
291–300 of 488 posts
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#292Lime and Bird have collectively raised nearly a billion dollars within 14 months of founding at valuations of $1.1 billion and $2 billion, respectively. For reference, American Airlines has market cap of $18 billion and 950 jet planes.
Actually, I’m pretty sure American Airlines has 950 jet planes on lease , and they have a century’s worth of pension and other obligations that remain hidden in their books. Companies are far too complicated to compare based on single numbers. Try not to make this mistake —- it’s great for clickbait, not so much for critical thinking.
$41B on the balance sheet. https://americanairlines.gcs-web.com/node/36886/html
Yes they do have debt. $44B of revenue. Still Lime and Bird valuations are insane.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
"without helmets" - curious why you felt this was worth mentioning?
Because, by law, you need to wear a helmet when riding a scooter.
Why would that bother you? It's not your skull going unprotected, right?
If you stretch an argument to worry about public funds lost to medical bills or lawsuits, someone might respond that the more people we encourage to leave their cars at home, the better we are off when it comes to safety, pollution, congestion, noise, etc.
I walk out of my place and there are huge lines of cars parked against the kerb, I can hear car traffic constantly even from inside the building, it can be dangerous to cross the road, and so on. I've been to Santa Monica a few times and know that the same applies there. What gives you such a strong reaction to this new option that you might not apply to an existing technology?
With anything new there is a settling period. It makes for an interesting discussion (where to park them, etc) but you sound pretty outraged: cannot stand. littered. annoying. constantly riding them without helmets! nuisance. ban.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've used a bike for my primary transportation for the last 15 years. I'm not sure if your points are all real, or just what you imagine would be blocks. Let's go through some! - I live in a 570ft studio so storage space is limited. We have bike storage in my building, but it's $15 a month. Hang the bike up with a hook. - If I go somewhere and bring the bike with me, I have to bring it back. If it starts raining, I c…
Nah, all of these are real points from my life. I live in Seattle and live close enough to work that I can walk. When I moved up here I sold my car and as part of that, I looked into buying a decent bike to use as my main transportation and came to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth it. My original plan was a mix of walking and the bus, but now it's more walking and transportation sharing services (Uber/Lyft, C…
I think what helped me, when I transitioned to using a bike for everything was having a large circle of friends that also rode bikes primarily. We laughed, we cried, but we also saw what we did as being normal things to overcome. For example, if we all went out, we did so on bikes. If it rained - so be it! We all got wet, and we laughed about it. In Seattle, I've joined up with these guys:
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
I must be in a bit of a minority but my main objection to these would be the installation of an app to use them - I am perhaps too privacy-conscious and admit I haven't attempted the signup process but even with a throwaway email address, I'm not comfortable installing it on a device I take with me when I leave the house; I even Uber via the web interface and would probably stop using the service if they hamstrung th…
Isn't it exhausting to live like that? Will convenience ever win out for you? This is a serious question.
It's a great question! It's honestly not too bad, although every now and again I flirt with throwing in the towel on account of the fact I'm sure I'm not really making a difference to the data collection at large. I browse with Firefox, an ad-blocker CookieAutoDelete and NoScript also, which sounds horrific, but actually works well (although I'm under no illusions that combined with routing my traffic through a VPS and browser fingerprinting are not hiding me at all). Browsing on ios with Firefox Focus is needlessly laborious also, but other than that I've found it to be fine.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to mention $200+ to own a bike may not seem like a lot to you, but could be a lot to someone with low income. The capex cost can be prohibitive. Compared to a car, it's very cheap. Flat tires... hmm: I average about one a year, maybe. It's not the biggest deal. Are flat tires really that big of a barrier to entry?
Most people I know don't know how to, or couldn't be bothered to, change a bicycle tire. You have to also bring around a spare tire, a portable air pump, etc... or face the prospect of walking your bike somewhere. Perhaps we should differentiate here between bike ownership and these bike/scooter share approaches. Scooters also have flat tires. Compare ownership to a shared scooter or bike service, where these costs a…
HN is full of smart people - changing a bike tire isn't beyond the pale of the intelligence herein. :)
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uhh the antitheft devices don't actually do anything, the police won't follow up on a good theft report, and passers-by don't care either. Literally all of the Chinese ebikes and escooters have standardized parts, so it's easy to sell parts or buy cheaper replacements. The lipoly cells themselves are also nice. I've personally converted birds back to stock xiaomi scooters for about $20usd per scooter (replace the "da…
Do you not subscribe to the idea stealing=bad?
Is it ok to steal from the rich (nation-state and ultra-wealthy investors) to help the poor (me)? If I could steal a million dollars out of YC's checkbook I would do it in a heartbeat, wouldn't you?
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dockless bike share is a thing. They had them all over the East SF bay area for a while but a contract with the existing docked bikes got rid of them in most of the areas. I think they still have them in SF. As you guessed, many people hate them but honestly, parked cars take 100x the space, just allocate some parking spaces to bikes, problem solved.
Shameless plug: we've got a map of dockless scooters & bikes available in cities across the US over at https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/mapping-the-impact-of-d...
Neat, although I was optimistically hoping your map aggregated all the actual GPS positions of all the different brands of dockless bikes and scooters onto one map. Since all the bikes (or scooters) are effectively equivalent it would seem useful for the customer to have an aggregated map app (less so for bird/lime/whatever).
Also, I wasn't aware South Lake Tahoe has scooters!
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
I must be in a bit of a minority but my main objection to these would be the installation of an app to use them - I am perhaps too privacy-conscious and admit I haven't attempted the signup process but even with a throwaway email address, I'm not comfortable installing it on a device I take with me when I leave the house; I even Uber via the web interface and would probably stop using the service if they hamstrung th…
Uber stores the route of your trip anyway. So all info you withhold from them is the few meters walk from where you ordered to where you got picked up.
Probably stored indefinitely. Imagine 30 years from now, a company being able to go back and check on the current president's ride history when he was in his 20s.
Re: Lime and Bird are growing rapidly
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
I must be in a bit of a minority but my main objection to these would be the installation of an app to use them - I am perhaps too privacy-conscious and admit I haven't attempted the signup process but even with a throwaway email address, I'm not comfortable installing it on a device I take with me when I leave the house; I even Uber via the web interface and would probably stop using the service if they hamstrung th…
Uber stores the route of your trip anyway. So all info you withhold from them is the few meters walk from where you ordered to where you got picked up.
Well of course and you make a fine point, but I don't know what the app is up to when I'm not using it. And there was also the fiasco of them tracking after rides were completed [1].
I suppose what it comes down to is that we pour huge amounts of information into our phones and by extension, companies that don't necessarily have our best interests at heart, and any steps I can take to ameliorate that without a huge trade-off of inconvenience, I am all about doing. I don't know what my data will be worth in a few years!
[1] - https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/29/16219542/uber-location-tr...