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Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

theatlantic.com

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Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#61

Post by kaptain »

Reminds me of bike sharing in China. Now THAT is out of control. In China, the companies pay committed employees or contractors to gather bikes, as opposed to crowd-sourcing it. There's pros//cons to that (as per the article itself).

At least in China, people don't respect the bikes. They trash them. They leave them everywhere. It sounds like a similar attitude exists with these Bird scooters. As societies/cities grow larger, people take less responsibility for things they use and spaces they exist in. I suspect it's partly a cultural thing (see Japan) but I'm pretty sure Japan has litter too. Bird has to incentivize the right behavior and disincentivize (i.e. even enforcement of charging policy) poor behavior.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#62

Post by isostatic »

gambiting wrote: post #58
isostatic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax the fuel to cover the total externalities

Going forward we'll have to figure out how to tax electricity used for charging electric cars(probably special chargers that have a car-taxed tariff).

Why? Does electricity used by cars have more externalities than electricity used by a washing machine?

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#63

Post by tom_ »

blocked_again wrote: post #44
lordnacho wrote: post #17

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…

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.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#65

Post by pjc50 »

gambiting wrote: post #58
isostatic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax the fuel to cover the total externalities

Going forward we'll have to figure out how to tax electricity used for charging electric cars(probably special chargers that have a car-taxed tariff).

Why? We're still in the phase of giving out huge subsidies for them. More likely would be a general weight-miles tax to cover repairing the roads.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#66

Post by TorKlingberg »

jlebar wrote: post #28
Illniyar wrote: post #10

Doesn't seem at all out of control. Seems like an awesome idea and the process needs to be refined to dissuade bad behavior. Considering the company was founded about a year ago is probably a lot of room for improvements and innovation (and angering your contractors in the process).

There headline may be a slang reference, "out of control" = "awesome" or "dope".

The title of the article used to be "Who Charges Those Electric Bird Scooters?"

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#67

Post by lajhsdfkl »

joosters wrote: post #59
CalRobert wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the _only_ thing Bird does is enable people not to use parking spaces, and thereby permit the land for such to be allocated to other things (housing, retail, parks, etc.) that is a huge boon. It should also mean reduced vmt (for cars at least) meaning more lives saved, especially those of people walking or cycling since these scooters are in city centres, where cars are especially dangerous. Similarly one van…

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?

>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.

These companies have existed for how long? The point is that if more and more people switch from using cars to using alternative transportation options we may move away from being a car centric society.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#68

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

geezerjay wrote: post #35
danso wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Riders can locate and unlock scooters using the company’s smartphone app, and after paying the $1 unlocking fee are charged 15 cents per minute during use.

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.

Your calculation is completely off. 150 min * 0.15 $/min = $22.50. In the US you can get a kWh for about 12 cents. That means you can get 187.5 kWh. The largest Tesla Model S has a 100 kWh. I don't know what kind of battery these scooters have, but I am sure it's not nearly as big as a Tesla battery.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#69

Post by ccozan »

tom_ wrote: post #63
blocked_again wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for this very interesting point of view, a company as a product. If you look this way, then a lot of stuff makes sense in the VC/Start-Up world.

Re: Charging electric scooters is a cut-throat business

#70

Post by pbhjpbhj »

gambiting wrote: post #54
piokoch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it legal in US to use electricity at home for business purposes? In some countries that's against contract with electricity provider, as they have different tariffs for business.

Even in the regulation-stricken UK, it's fully legal to work from your private home (so called "clerical" work). And fyi, something being against the contract is not automatically illegal.

Leaseholds often excludes business activities as does home insurance.
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