I don't find $100m that surprising, and honestly don't think it's enough. They need the cash to expand to new cities. Motorized scooters are not cheap at all and cost $200-$300 each.
I'm baffled because of the inherent risk. Helmets are required, but not supplied. And they seem equally not street legal nor sidewalk legal. Seems one city council vote away from being squashed.
”On the roadway, it must be operated in the bicycle lane, if there is one. On roads without bicycle lanes, motorized scooters may operate where the speed limit is 25 mph or less“
Seems pretty limiting to me. Street legal in a VERY constrained set of circumstances. Only roads with bicycle lanes or a speed limit of 25mph or less. And probably varies wildly based on jurisdiction.
Edit: Downvoting? That’s cool, but please explain where I’m off base. Do you not think that “has bike lanes or a speed limit of 25mph” is pretty limited?
I didn’t downvote, however I would say that 25 mph speed limit is definitely compatible with street legal. Cyclist commuters hardly reach that speed. It’s faster than traffic in a congested city. And based on the look of those scooters, I have a hard time believing they’d even be stable above 25 mph.
It sounds to me the regulations may be more intended to restrict the speed of things that look like bicycles or mopeds, and probably won’t affect these scooters at all. Look at how small those wheels are.
I see, that does sound like they would be pretty much useless in the burbs, more useful in some downtown cores, but you’d have to keep track of the speed limit on the particular road you’re on.
The rules on ebikes in California are very different - there is a 20 mph speed limit for throttle control, and 28 mph speed limit for pedal assist. But the limit applies to the bike, not the road. I got confused by the differences between the two laws.
Investors want to replicate the massive success of overseas bikesharing companies. Ofo has over 60m users, Mobike has over 100m users. These companies are worth billions and do over 50m trips per day. Helmets, legality, and legislation haven't stopped these companies. Take Uber, they were illegal from the start & were always 'one city council vote away from being squashed' but that never stopped them.
I don't think there's anything similar to overseas bikesharing in US, and I can understand why VCs want to invest.
There's been a crack down on enforcing tickets to people riding these scooters without helmets - which are not supplied with the scooters that sit on sidewalks.
"Bird Rides Inc. has a business license to operate a
brick-and-mortar administrative office," Santa Monica
public information officer Constance Farrell told Los
Angeles Times, "but they do not have the appropriate
license to operate scooters in an ad hoc manner on the
public right of way."
In an attempt to increase safety, Bird has begun giving
out free helmets to its users – so far, they've delivered
2,500 free helmets which can be ordered from the "safety"
tab in the app, according to Los Angeles Times.
That's unfortunate. Seattle just launched a new bikesharing program (several, actually, which are privately operated and seem to be completing), and while we do have a helmet law, the cops have sort of informally agreed to look the other way provided you're not being seriously reckless: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/hel... It's pretty much a necessity for programs like this to work.
I think if you want these programs at all, you have to make difficult decisions. The fact is, nobody is going to carry a helmet around on the off chance they are going to use a rideshare. If they have one at all, they're using their own vehicle. I've used Seattle's bikeshares a few dozen times now, and I love it a great deal, but I never would've bothered if I had to wear a helmet - I would've just taken an Uber or something.
I have even seen some people claim that, measured in QALYs other such utilitarian metrics, helmet laws make people unhealthier on average in that they discourage riding bicycles and that the net effect of this is worse than the increased risk, but I don't know how reliable that result is.
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, I think you're making valid points. Paternalistic laws definitely have upsides and downsides (upside of safety, downside of lacking autonomy).
I think your idea might work in cities that have designated bike lanes or bike-only roads. For example, in Santa Monica, we have some bike-only lanes, so it might work here, but like in downtown LA, it would be a shitshow and I can basically guarantee that people will die at some point. And then you have to deal with that mess.
One of the things that makes cyclists safer is having more other cyclists on the road. I'm happy to wear my helmet, but if others don't, I just want them on the road. In aggregate, we'll all be safer, even though some will choose not to wear helmets.
Specifically: Even those that choose not to wear helmets will be safer due to the increase in ridership. The comparison to seat-belts isn't appropriate because my not wearing a seat-belt in a car accident increases risk for others (specifically others in the same car as me).
There is also fairly conflicted evidence that helmets are effective. There is a fairly narrow treatment range where they work well. Be hit by something going faster or slower than that range, and they don't matter much. They are nothing like full-face motorcycle helmets.
There is also evidence (although not well replicated?) that drivers treat helmeted cyclists worse than unhelmeted ones.
Looking at the bike riding and safety rates in the Netherlands, Denmark, or even Germany compared to the USA, there are obviously other better and safer ways to deal with biking than helmet laws. Of course, it would require actually prioritizing bicyclist infrastructure over cars.
I'd be interested to know where you got such a stat? The combining of seatbelt and helmet law lives seem a bit weird. Can't find any exact figures using google, but it looks like in 2016[1] 424 people died not wearing helmets, 137 with helmets and 274 died and it was not recorded if they were wearing a helmet. How to determine how many, if any lives are saved by bicycle helmets is not very clear,[2] especially if one tries to factor in the loss of exercise (and decrease in health) that helmet laws cause.
In such an non-clear cut case, I would suggest letting people decide for themselves, if they want to wear a helmet or not, would be the best option.
I don't see anything here about helmets. Not sure how to wear a seat belt on a scooter or a bicycle. Did you read my comment? Safety first "works" if you don't want to do anything.
Bicyclists aren't required to wear helmets in CA. As long as these scooters don't go more than 25 MPH I don't see why they shouldn't be treated any differently from a legal perspective.
They're all over West LA (Santa Monica, UCLA, Westwood, etc.). It's crazy to me that they are raising this much money for one simple reason: to ride the scooter, you are required by law to wear a helmet. I have friends that have gotten fined because they're riding a Bird without a helmet. And no one in their right mind will carry a helmet around on the off-chance they might ride a scooter.
But it's a neat idea. And if they change the law, it'll be super profitable (especially around campuses).
Helmet rental? Not a hard problem to solve. Already being done at ski resorts and go kart tracks across the country. They usually give you a "sock" to put over your head.
Also, if you rent a "real" scooter or motorcycle they usually have helmets you can use.
Ski Resorts and Go Kart Tracks are non-moving locations.
Scooters that you can leave anywhere, and find anywhere - that's not just "helmet rental in location X". That's "helmet rental _anywhere_". Seems like a hard problem to me.
Just to clarify: a "sock" won't work here, you need an actual hard helmet. The problem is that Birds are left just willy-nilly (on any street/at any location). It would defeat the purpose of the concept to have "base camps" where people grab helmets.
> Also, a sock is just a term for a disposable liner that goes inside the helmet.
Yeah, I know. I thought some places (like kiddie go-kart places) only give you the sock and don't require the hard helmet to go with it but maybe I'm wrong.
Anecdotally, my sense as a Santa Monica local is that the helmet requirement is no longer being enforced in Santa Monica. I've ridden by cops several times in the last few days, no issues.
So I think it has somehow been negotiated with the authorities.
Yeah, I live in SM and cops are pretty lenient -- the bike-only lanes (on Broadway/Santa Monica Blvd./etc.) I'm sure also help reduce risk of accidents. UCLA is a different story though.
Yeah, my sense was that Santa Monica simply wanted to get the company's attention so they could cooperate. Now that their talking, it seems like they've backed off a bit.
Still want the cops to warn or ticket the folks who ride on the sidewalk though.
> if they change the law, it'll be super profitable
It sounds like the Uber model: ignore the law and try to get big enough to change it. Honestly, how much would it cost them to equip each garbage scooter with a garbage helmet? An extra dollar or two?
Santa Monica and West LA were bad enough before becoming infested with incompetents on scooters.
Bird has been leaving their scooters on the sidewalks where I'm at in Marina Del Ray, CA which is a little surprising since there are a lot of homeless folks living on these same streets.
What would homeless people do with the scooters? They can’t ride them without paying, because the scooters need to be unlocked in the app, and there doesn’t seem to be an incentive for them to vandalize the scooters.
People will chop them up. I've seen homeless people with multiple Ford Go Bikes hooked up to their shopping cart. I kind of doubted they were doing Ford a service by relocating these bikes to higher demand locations...
That's a lot of coin. What makes a company like this worth investing that amount of money in? What are they doing different than all the other bike share companies out there?
For one, if personal mobility sharing services becomes a real estate problem (i.e. the footprint that docks or dockless bikes occupy), it makes sense that those with the smaller footprints will achieve better unit economics and be able to place their stations in more spots. Also it's way more efficient to move a bunch of scooters to a high-demand location than it is a bunch of bikes.
The usability difference between scooters and bikes is meaningful. They fit into a totally seamless user experience that would be very difficult to manage with bikes. They’re more tamper-proof, smaller, easier to hop on and off of, easier to manage in crowds, etc. Anectdotally, Bird scooters have melded into the environment in Santa Monica, Westwood, and the UCLA campus in a way that I can’t imagine happening with bikes. Bird scooters are all over the place these days without being nearly as cumbersome as I imagine bikes would be. As a few others have noted in this thread, Bird is exploding in LA right now, and I believe it’s because of their approach to a seamless user experience. The 10% difference in usability between bike sharing and electric scooter sharing seems to make all the difference.
How is such a business even remotely profitable? Such scooter will cost a few hundred bucks. They're easy to store and drag into the house. Even in a small room in a densely populated city, there is not much nuisance in owning one. Furthermore, these things get cheaper by the year; further calving off any rental market.
Genuinely interested in how such business is able to make a dime.
In the course of the last month a few different electric scooters have descended on downtown San Diego, this being one of them.
I dunno, they're all over the place and people seem to love them. For getting around a city center they're more convenient to rent simply because most of your destinations won't have a good solution for storage. You can pull up right to where you want to go and when you're ready to leave can usually find another one within a block or two.
I was surprised to see them here in SD. Westwood over by UCLA they are everywhere, and by everywhere I mean being ridden. Didn't think it'd be such a success outside of the college areas but it appears to really be picking up.
They don't make money. Ridesharing subsidies are like uber/lyft's but on an even bigger scale.
In china, Mobike charges $1.58 per month for unlimited* trips on their ridesharing bikes. Given how their bikes cost ~$100 each, and how they operate millions of bikes, they are losing massive amounts of money.
Investors have the same mentality (once we are a monopoly, we can charge more) but until then they are incinerating cash.
*Mobike rides have the first 2 hours of each trip free. If you stay on longer you need to pay. However, you can just switch bikes after 2 hours to avoid the fee.
Mobike rides have the first 2 hours of each trip free. If you stay on longer you need to pay. However, you can just switch bikes after 2 hours to avoid the fee.
That hasn't been my experience with Mobike. When I had a paid membership, I got 2 hours cumulative for free over a month. Didn't matter how many different bikes I used, it was cumulative. Once that was up, then I'd be charged additional fees.
I wonder how much money Mobike makes from people who forget to lock their bikes. I've given them something like ~$50 so far because I keep forgetting to lock my bike and then don't notice until later after someone has been riding my rented bike for free for a number of hours. Once I realize what happened, I notify them, and then they lock down my account and won't unlock it until I pay up the racked up fees.
This promo is for Singapore, it’s the same promo as China just in English. In this promo Mobike is offering unlimited free rides (<2hrs) with no deposit for $0.63/month. It says you can switch bikes to reset the time.
They are running this far below cost. I can’t see how Mobike makes any profit off this.
It's either that or lose the deposit I paid for the bike. This is cheaper. And if I'm at fault, what's the big deal? I agree I'm the one at fault for not locking the bike.
At this scale I wouldn't be surprised that they could get a whole painted bike + the lock + all the importation costs and taxes for 100 USD (maybe even less).
One ride costs 1 USD... That means they just need 100 rides to break even on a bike... If they get an average of 1 ride per bike in all their fleet (which is low imo), they just need 100 days of operation to break even on all their fleet. (These calculations don't take into account the operational costs, but you get the idea. As you grow and start creating more network effects and gaining economies of scales these costs will only grow linearly).
According to Seattle City Data, the average ride per bike here is something around 0.6 rides per bike (daily). That would likely improve again once it starts warming up.
Now regarding the Scooters, you could do a similar analysis. I was able to find foldable electric scooters at very cheap prices in bulk (45 USD, 80 USD, 70 USD, 120 USD, etc...). So it's also technically possible to break even very fast with scooters as well -> https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...
Finally, there are more angles to a business like this. There's a huge component which is gov subsidies. Local governments love this crap and I can totally see them paying these companies for providing a reliable alternative transportation. Another angle is just plain cheap advertising. You can basically wrap these crappy bikes and scooters with ad decals. You could also monetize based on geo-location and sell contextual ads as well as selling the data to brands.
You also made other good points like why wouldn't someone simply buy a scooter. What's appealing about this model is that you can just leave it anywhere. You don't have to get worried about this thing getting charged, or someone robbing it or vandalizing it. You use it when you need it and you continue with your life. Owning one adds an incredible amount of burden to something as mundane as moving from point A to point B.
> According to Seattle City Data, the average ride per bike here is something around 0.6 rides per bike (daily). That would likely improve again once it starts warming up.
In Seattle there are crews of people moving bikes around, usually from downhill areas to uphill areas. The public transportation & rideshare is good enough that many people are using bike shares for one way rides. Alternatively E-bikes might be used for the uphill half of the trip. The overhead of paying people to collect and move bikes doesn't scale the same way that app development and brand recognition does.
I would really like to see the numbers on how many bikes are relocated before reuse, as well as numbers on how often bikes are stolen, damaged, or lost.
I love biking, and I like the energy in urban biking that bike sharing is generating, but I am very bearish on the business of bike sharing.
Admittedly I haven't tried those bikes but I imagine 90USD buys you a 90USD bike and the quality that goes with it. Boris/Citi/Bixi bikes cost considerably more but are incredibly robust.
They break really, really quickly. Almost half of the ones i've ridden have had something broken. And not seemingly from abuse or collisions or anything, just stuff falling apart. Bad brakes, broken shifters, snapped off seat adjusters(the metal feels soda can cheap), bits just falling off from sheered off metal, etc.
One scooter could easily have 5-10 trips per day. At $2/trip, the payback period on a $400 scooter is 20-40 days. The economics here (and with dockless bikes) are quite impressive, which is why billions of dollars has been dumped into dockless electric personal transportation companies over the last few years.
The bigger question here is whether people will adopt scooters when they are more comfortable on bikes.
I made an educated guess. "Never" might happen just as well as 1 year, but it's unlikely considering other similar companies (we can't measure business skills of the operator); also we're talking about how it'd be if the business is a success. 1 year is more likely than 1 month; 50 years is extremely improbable (this business will probably either succeed or fail within just a few years, again, considering other similar companies).
This will vary from state to state, but in MA anyone who holds a class D (i.e. standard consumer vehicle) license is also allowed to ride any moped that's 49cc or below. I think there's now a yearly registration fee[1] that the owner must pay. So, for example, if I have a moped in good standing with the state, anyone with a valid drivers license is allowed to borrow it and legally ride it[2].
=====
[1] I want to say I paid something like ~30 USD, but this was ~10 years ago. Unlike a standard vehicle, however, there is no inspection check pre-requisite for safety nor emissions. I think the fee is purely for tags. Helmets are definitely a requirement though.
[2] AFAIK there are no additional insurance requirements though. There weren't any ~10 year ago when I one, but I can't remember if that's because my comprehensive car insurance did double-duty in the event were I to, say, hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk and they were to sustain damage.
These are motorised 'foot propelled' scooters, not small scale motorbikes. I don't know if these (and electric skateboards) are properly covered by UK law.
The law requiring wearing a helmet makes no sense to me. I think Bird is great.
The helmet law seems to have something much closer to a Vespa in mind. And while a Bird can move along at a good pace, it's slower than a bicycle at speed. I believe they lowered the max speed after launching.
You aren't required to wear a helmet on a bicycle if you're over 18, and I think bikes are much harder to control in low-speed contexts.
The law should change.
However people should definitely not ride Birds on sidewalks (although a majority of people do).
In my opinion the law should change in that bicycle riders should wear helmets, too. It's not how much you can control your bike/scooter/segway but what happens if something unexpected happens. Blown type, hitting a curb or large stone, or a car.
No, I mean that many motorist lives would be saved if they all literally wore helmets. They should be required to. Airbags and roll cages help, but they are (obviously) insufficient on their own to prevent the 20k car deaths every year.
Helmets are also insufficient on bikes but they significantly reduce injuries. With cars I'm not quite sure what problem you would be trying to solve because they probably wouldn't actually appreciably reduce injuries (I don't many of those car deaths are just really simple trauma to the top of the head that a helmet would actually protect against)
Oh come now, top of the head? Full face helmets are the better option, and if we're really looking to be safe, we should require them, and anti-whiplash headrest connections, as well.
Similarly six-point restraints, I'm always confused why there's just a lap-and-shoulder belt in most cars.
It would also help reduce the 200,000+ TBIs (traumatic brain injury) caused by car accidentals in the US every year.
I might be convinced to personally start wearing a helmet if an awareness campaign gained traction. As it is, I will take the additional risk to avoid looking dumb.
I personally believe that (personal adult) helmet laws are a violation of individual liberties but we should create laws that force bike/scooter sharing companies to make sanitary helmets available. It is better to regulate business behavior than personal behavior.
Sure, but the question remains whether mandatory helmets would prevent a significant number of car injuries and deaths (I'd say that's quite plausible). Whether cars have other safety features already is neither here nor there.
Don't forget about pedestrians. Helmets are like avoiding ECC RAM, soon you are giving them out on every level of abstraction because you don't want to face the fact that the danger comes from cars/memory with bit errors.
That's novel of you to try to solve this problem by "thinking", the true sign of a great programmer. Yet here we are and the statistics show plenty of head injuries for pedestrians, and the folly of your thought naturally.
The nanny states of Australia and New Zealand are the only two places on earth where that's the case, IMO. Australia even censored a tourism advertisement because it showed someone riding a bicycle without a helmet.
That crosses into personal attack. We ban accounts that do this, and I'm sorry to see that your account has been breaking the site guidelines quite a bit. Would you please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart when commenting here? That means this: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. And be scrupulously respectful toward your fellow users.
I've seen what happens to adults when they don't wear helmets while biking. It's not a good idea. Be it your fault or someone else's fault, in the end your head is at risk.
Interesting position to take on those two things, since wearing a helmet makes an awful lot of sense since flying off a scooter onto a pavement at 20km will cause massive head injuries...
...and a scooter hitting a pedestrian is not as traumatic as a car hitting a scooter. ..given the relative speed differences of people/scooters/cars and humans ability to process objects at speed remaining the same.
Can they knock a person down? Then we're talking about the possibility of serious injury or death. It doesn't have to be the initial impact, just what happens after that...
I don't think a stand-up electric razor scooter is particularly safe if it can travel at bike speeds. The wheels are too small and will have issues with road surfaces far worse than bikes. The danger would be careless riders pitching themself onto the concrete at bike speeds, and anyone who has done that knows it isn't fun. Better full electric bikes, at least they have the tire size to provide a stable ride.
A walking adult, if they trip, fall and hit their head will suffer massive head injuries. A ~2m fall for a human head is enough to kill you. Ergo, all pedestrians should wear helmets.
Furthermore, head injuries to car occupants would be reduced if they wore helmets (why else do race car drivers wear them?)
People generally know how to fall and not hit their head, and when they do their body softens the impact. Not such much with scooters and bikes, where you can literally go head first.
There are risk factors, then there is absurd. Racing drivers drive a lot faster than road vehicles, they also have minimal creature comfort protection like airbags because the car has to be light. They have roll cages however that you can thump your head on.
I suppose we could all walk around with goggles because y'know, someone might poke their eye put.
> However people should definitely not ride Birds on sidewalks (although a majority of people do).
This, is why we can't have good things. Because assholes ruin it for everyone.
Most electronic scooters I've encountered are on sidewalks and pavements, travelling at speeds that can injure pedestrains pretty badly.
It does seem (to me at least) that alot of these idiots take pride in their turning skills, weaving left and right, avoiding people at the last moment possible. Most people just have to stop moving and wait for the bikes to pass because their speed these things are travelling at, coupled with the distance they are away from them, leaves pretty much zero margin for their (the rider's) error. Theres literally nothing much you can do, except to hope they don't hit you.
Furthermore, these bike are pretty silent. When they come from behind, it's quite a shock to the pedestrain.
Its a nice innovation, but I'm inclined to towards heavy handed regulation towards these things because of assholes.
I agree with you, the way people will inevitably use them makes them unsafe to be used in the vast majority of the US urban scene.
In Europe, for example Amsterdam or Berlin, it would be a different story, however. They fit very well to the existing comprehensive system of bike lanes. They have a similar speed and manoeuvrability and also both the pedestrians and cyclist are already well conditioned for avoiding each other. Try stepping onto a bike lane in Berlin - you will be feeling really stupid in a hurry.
Ah, the University of Bath study again. That study was barely scientific. The researcher was his own test subject, and nobody has ever replicated the result.
Yet it is now a "fact" that helmets make car drivers pass closer to you, because of this study.
A lot of skepticism here regarding profitability, safety, and regulation. I can’t remember the last product I’ve seen gain traction so insanely fast as these scooters have in LA/SD. Between that and the bike companies (LimeBike, ofo, etc) it feels like when Uber/Lyft first came out, ie this is how urban transportation should be.
Perhaps this is the solution to the problem segways had, social acceptability. If it becomes mainstream among college students, it could easily spread to everyone else.
Social acceptability is part of it. But the bigger issue was likely part of what you see people arguing about here. Segways didn't belong on sidewalks and they didn't really work very well on roads. (And you can debate how great a fit they are/were even for bike lanes.)
I'm concerned these motorized vehicles masquerading as bicycles are going to ruin existing cycling/walking infrastructure even more than they already have. In NYC where I live, the ubiquitous delivery man on a motorcycle, err, electric bike is felt on every street, in every other moment. They are hard to spot, and I've narrowly missed being run over on many occasions. They congest bike lanes, make crossing bridges even more treacherous. I'd be curious to see incident reports on these things city wide. As far as I'm concerned they should be treated as every other motorized vehicle, requiring a license and to be driven on streets.
Your concern is 100% valid but I think what we're headed for in urban areas is something like a free-for-all until the adoption of non-vehicular transportation gets so high that streets are bifurcated: cars over here, everything else, over here. It's going to be messy, but if Uber has proved anything it's that laws will change to accommodate revolutionary utility.
I just don't understand how people don't steal these and hack them. If it was my company that would be my biggest concern. And I know it has GPS, but they can be turned off.
I don't understand the mindset of not wearing a helmet riding an electric vehicle at 15mph on a city street.
The chances of head & face trauma are substantially reduced, and the chance of a fatal injury reduced by almost 70% w/a helmet on.
I think that Bird's "we'll send you a free helmet" is a cute way to get around criticism & liability.
But given the clear market demand for bird and bike-sharing, I would love to see an entrepreneur really nail the "portable bike helmet" category or figure out a non-gross way to share helmets with strangers.
There are a few options on the market today that show people are thinking this problem through, but what else could be built besides a foldable / more portable solution?
Unfortunately, the mindset is 'everyone else is doing it'. I'm not sure where I stand on legally requiring helmets, but man I would not ride one in the company of cars without one.
There's also D3O material. [1] I wear a hat using this when I downhill ski. (Not really interested in a skiing helmet debate. I skied for years long before anyone besides racers wore helmets and I downhill ski very little these days and not very aggressively.)
I don't have a real opinion on when people "ought" to wear helmets. It's a tradeoff. People do have falls walking and accidents in cars where serious injury would have been prevented by wearing a helmet. And many of these sharing services are not practical if one is required to wear a "real" helmet.
This could work [0] but it's probably too expensive to include with the bikes/scooters since people would walk off with them. Certainly feasible for an individual to wear around the city though in case of need. I wonder if you could design some sort of airbag system into the bikes themselves.
Happy to see them succeed with two caveats: I really wish people using the scooters would (1) not ride on the sidewalks and (2) be more considerate of where they leave the scooters. I've had them left in front of my apartment driveway, blocking the way. I've seen them left in the middle of the sidewalk and on random lawns. I really wish they had partnered with the city to create places where people should leave them.
I used to pick up a Bird scooter to and from work (2 mile trip) everyday for a couple weeks until they started requiring helmets which now make it completely inconvenient and cops are eager to give you tickets.
The rides that they are using are the Xiaomi Mi Jia M365 scooter. You can get them for quite cheap at around $350 to $400. They usually last for more than two years, so they're really not that expensive. Maintenance is also quite cheap.
I own one myself. They have a max speed of 25Kmph, but usually you maximize distance, so you use the eco-mode which keeps you at 18Kmph.
This is probably better than bikes. I don’t sweat using them and they occupy much less space than a bike too. However they need to be charged after every use. How is that achieved?
I'm in Santa Monica at the moment and encountered these scooters for the first time upon my arrival. I've been paying attention to how they're used by people and where I see them, and playing around with their app. I've no particular reason for doing so, other than base curiosity.
Leaving my hotel one morning this week, around 6:30am and before commuter traffic had really started, I noticed there were eight of their scooters line up just outside the exit of the hotel. I maid a point to walk by other hotels on the way to work and about half seemed to have them outside. By 8 or so, they were gone.
So, to answer your question: I assume there are a bunch of couriers or "Field Agent" style gig employees that walk around the downtown and collect them, and that they have an app that shows the last known location of each one. I also assume that there is a van somewhere that picks them up once they're collected, takes them somewhere to charge at night, and then drops them off at hotels and transit stops before the morning rush begins.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 377 ms ] thread"riders of motorized scooters must be at least 16 years old, licensed drivers, wearing a helmet and not riding the scooters on sidewalks"
$100M ?
Seems pretty limiting to me. Street legal in a VERY constrained set of circumstances. Only roads with bicycle lanes or a speed limit of 25mph or less. And probably varies wildly based on jurisdiction.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_...
Edit: Downvoting? That’s cool, but please explain where I’m off base. Do you not think that “has bike lanes or a speed limit of 25mph” is pretty limited?
It sounds to me the regulations may be more intended to restrict the speed of things that look like bicycles or mopeds, and probably won’t affect these scooters at all. Look at how small those wheels are.
So, for example, a roadway with a posted 30mph limit, and no bike lanes...the scooters are not legal in that case.
The rules on ebikes in California are very different - there is a 20 mph speed limit for throttle control, and 28 mph speed limit for pedal assist. But the limit applies to the bike, not the road. I got confused by the differences between the two laws.
I don't think there's anything similar to overseas bikesharing in US, and I can understand why VCs want to invest.
1: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-scooters-20180307-s...
http://smdp.com/bird-lovers-tweet-as-tickets-ruffle-feathers...
https://dailybruin.com/2018/02/20/ucpd-begins-to-enforce-tra...
https://patch.com/california/santamonica/santa-monica-cracks...
I'm all for reducing government overhead and overreach, but I don't think helmet laws are a good example.
I have even seen some people claim that, measured in QALYs other such utilitarian metrics, helmet laws make people unhealthier on average in that they discourage riding bicycles and that the net effect of this is worse than the increased risk, but I don't know how reliable that result is.
I think your idea might work in cities that have designated bike lanes or bike-only roads. For example, in Santa Monica, we have some bike-only lanes, so it might work here, but like in downtown LA, it would be a shitshow and I can basically guarantee that people will die at some point. And then you have to deal with that mess.
Specifically: Even those that choose not to wear helmets will be safer due to the increase in ridership. The comparison to seat-belts isn't appropriate because my not wearing a seat-belt in a car accident increases risk for others (specifically others in the same car as me).
There is also fairly conflicted evidence that helmets are effective. There is a fairly narrow treatment range where they work well. Be hit by something going faster or slower than that range, and they don't matter much. They are nothing like full-face motorcycle helmets.
There is also evidence (although not well replicated?) that drivers treat helmeted cyclists worse than unhelmeted ones.
In such an non-clear cut case, I would suggest letting people decide for themselves, if they want to wear a helmet or not, would be the best option.
[1] https://helmets.org/stats.htm [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/do-bi...
> In such an non-clear cut case, I would suggest letting people decide for themselves,
I think it's pretty clear-cut in the case of seat-belts and helmets. Paternalistic laws do work.
[1] http://www.youthforroadsafety.org/news-blog/news-blog-item/t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_law_in_California#Bicy...
https://www.tracy.k12.ca.us/sites/bes/Documents/Bicyle%20Hel...
http://losangelesbicycleattorney.com/bicycle-helmet-laws-wha...
I wonder what they are getting ticketed for
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/scooters
Here's the full text:
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x....
I do wonder why they don't cover the face tho.
But it's a neat idea. And if they change the law, it'll be super profitable (especially around campuses).
Also, if you rent a "real" scooter or motorcycle they usually have helmets you can use.
Scooters that you can leave anywhere, and find anywhere - that's not just "helmet rental in location X". That's "helmet rental _anywhere_". Seems like a hard problem to me.
Yeah, I know. I thought some places (like kiddie go-kart places) only give you the sock and don't require the hard helmet to go with it but maybe I'm wrong.
So I think it has somehow been negotiated with the authorities.
Still want the cops to warn or ticket the folks who ride on the sidewalk though.
It sounds like the Uber model: ignore the law and try to get big enough to change it. Honestly, how much would it cost them to equip each garbage scooter with a garbage helmet? An extra dollar or two?
Santa Monica and West LA were bad enough before becoming infested with incompetents on scooters.
Don't tell me it's just electric scooters!
Genuinely interested in how such business is able to make a dime.
“I know. Scooters. They cost money, right? And it’ll need a ton of marketing!”
I dunno, they're all over the place and people seem to love them. For getting around a city center they're more convenient to rent simply because most of your destinations won't have a good solution for storage. You can pull up right to where you want to go and when you're ready to leave can usually find another one within a block or two.
If you, say, used one to get to & from work on a commute of a few miles you'd break even on buying your own scooter pretty quickly.
The big advantage is not having to deal with storing or charging the scooter, ever.
In Santa Monica & Venice there is usually a Bird or two within a block of you at all times.
In china, Mobike charges $1.58 per month for unlimited* trips on their ridesharing bikes. Given how their bikes cost ~$100 each, and how they operate millions of bikes, they are losing massive amounts of money.
Investors have the same mentality (once we are a monopoly, we can charge more) but until then they are incinerating cash.
*Mobike rides have the first 2 hours of each trip free. If you stay on longer you need to pay. However, you can just switch bikes after 2 hours to avoid the fee.
That hasn't been my experience with Mobike. When I had a paid membership, I got 2 hours cumulative for free over a month. Didn't matter how many different bikes I used, it was cumulative. Once that was up, then I'd be charged additional fees.
I wonder how much money Mobike makes from people who forget to lock their bikes. I've given them something like ~$50 so far because I keep forgetting to lock my bike and then don't notice until later after someone has been riding my rented bike for free for a number of hours. Once I realize what happened, I notify them, and then they lock down my account and won't unlock it until I pay up the racked up fees.
Maybe you are thinking of a different promo? Here’s the one I’m thinking of https://mobike.com/sg/blog/post/mobike-pass
This promo is for Singapore, it’s the same promo as China just in English. In this promo Mobike is offering unlimited free rides (<2hrs) with no deposit for $0.63/month. It says you can switch bikes to reset the time.
They are running this far below cost. I can’t see how Mobike makes any profit off this.
75 USD - 90 USD for a Bike (https://m.alibaba.com/product/60710077310/export-EU-standard...)
1 USD - 25 USD for the remote lock (https://m.alibaba.com/product/60623794401/GPRS-Bluetooth-Cho...)
At this scale I wouldn't be surprised that they could get a whole painted bike + the lock + all the importation costs and taxes for 100 USD (maybe even less).
One ride costs 1 USD... That means they just need 100 rides to break even on a bike... If they get an average of 1 ride per bike in all their fleet (which is low imo), they just need 100 days of operation to break even on all their fleet. (These calculations don't take into account the operational costs, but you get the idea. As you grow and start creating more network effects and gaining economies of scales these costs will only grow linearly).
According to Seattle City Data, the average ride per bike here is something around 0.6 rides per bike (daily). That would likely improve again once it starts warming up.
Now regarding the Scooters, you could do a similar analysis. I was able to find foldable electric scooters at very cheap prices in bulk (45 USD, 80 USD, 70 USD, 120 USD, etc...). So it's also technically possible to break even very fast with scooters as well -> https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...
Finally, there are more angles to a business like this. There's a huge component which is gov subsidies. Local governments love this crap and I can totally see them paying these companies for providing a reliable alternative transportation. Another angle is just plain cheap advertising. You can basically wrap these crappy bikes and scooters with ad decals. You could also monetize based on geo-location and sell contextual ads as well as selling the data to brands.
You also made other good points like why wouldn't someone simply buy a scooter. What's appealing about this model is that you can just leave it anywhere. You don't have to get worried about this thing getting charged, or someone robbing it or vandalizing it. You use it when you need it and you continue with your life. Owning one adds an incredible amount of burden to something as mundane as moving from point A to point B.
In Seattle there are crews of people moving bikes around, usually from downhill areas to uphill areas. The public transportation & rideshare is good enough that many people are using bike shares for one way rides. Alternatively E-bikes might be used for the uphill half of the trip. The overhead of paying people to collect and move bikes doesn't scale the same way that app development and brand recognition does.
I would really like to see the numbers on how many bikes are relocated before reuse, as well as numbers on how often bikes are stolen, damaged, or lost.
I love biking, and I like the energy in urban biking that bike sharing is generating, but I am very bearish on the business of bike sharing.
The bigger question here is whether people will adopt scooters when they are more comfortable on bikes.
In the UK any one who got their driving licence after 2001 must pass the CBT before they can ride a scoter and that's limited to 50cc
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[1] I want to say I paid something like ~30 USD, but this was ~10 years ago. Unlike a standard vehicle, however, there is no inspection check pre-requisite for safety nor emissions. I think the fee is purely for tags. Helmets are definitely a requirement though.
[2] AFAIK there are no additional insurance requirements though. There weren't any ~10 year ago when I one, but I can't remember if that's because my comprehensive car insurance did double-duty in the event were I to, say, hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk and they were to sustain damage.
The helmet law seems to have something much closer to a Vespa in mind. And while a Bird can move along at a good pace, it's slower than a bicycle at speed. I believe they lowered the max speed after launching.
You aren't required to wear a helmet on a bicycle if you're over 18, and I think bikes are much harder to control in low-speed contexts.
The law should change.
However people should definitely not ride Birds on sidewalks (although a majority of people do).
In my opinion the law should change in that bicycle riders should wear helmets, too. It's not how much you can control your bike/scooter/segway but what happens if something unexpected happens. Blown type, hitting a curb or large stone, or a car.
Similarly six-point restraints, I'm always confused why there's just a lap-and-shoulder belt in most cars.
I might be convinced to personally start wearing a helmet if an awareness campaign gained traction. As it is, I will take the additional risk to avoid looking dumb.
I personally believe that (personal adult) helmet laws are a violation of individual liberties but we should create laws that force bike/scooter sharing companies to make sanitary helmets available. It is better to regulate business behavior than personal behavior.
On a bike you are exposed. In a car, you are not. On a bike you travel around 30km average. In a car, up to 100km average.
When travelling at 100km with no seatbelt (legal in many areas), in a collision, you become exposed rather suddenly.
Fix the problem, styrofoam will not save you.
Pedestrians are on a sidewalk often with parked cars between them and the threat of tons of steel at velocity.
Scooters or anything going 15mph should not be on a sidewalk.
Is there a word for this? Theorizesplaining?
You'd fit right in.
Laws are facts not opinions. There are 49 all age helmet laws in the US, most at the city/county level.
https://www.helmets.org/allageshelmetlaws.htm
That crosses into personal attack. We ban accounts that do this, and I'm sorry to see that your account has been breaking the site guidelines quite a bit. Would you please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart when commenting here? That means this: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do. And be scrupulously respectful toward your fellow users.
...and a scooter hitting a pedestrian is not as traumatic as a car hitting a scooter. ..given the relative speed differences of people/scooters/cars and humans ability to process objects at speed remaining the same.
Are children allowed to ride bikes on sidewalks in your country/state/city? If so, can't they murder someone with that bike?
Furthermore, head injuries to car occupants would be reduced if they wore helmets (why else do race car drivers wear them?)
There are risk factors, then there is absurd. Racing drivers drive a lot faster than road vehicles, they also have minimal creature comfort protection like airbags because the car has to be light. They have roll cages however that you can thump your head on.
I suppose we could all walk around with goggles because y'know, someone might poke their eye put.
I somehow find this thread highly related to it.
This, is why we can't have good things. Because assholes ruin it for everyone.
Most electronic scooters I've encountered are on sidewalks and pavements, travelling at speeds that can injure pedestrains pretty badly.
It does seem (to me at least) that alot of these idiots take pride in their turning skills, weaving left and right, avoiding people at the last moment possible. Most people just have to stop moving and wait for the bikes to pass because their speed these things are travelling at, coupled with the distance they are away from them, leaves pretty much zero margin for their (the rider's) error. Theres literally nothing much you can do, except to hope they don't hit you.
Furthermore, these bike are pretty silent. When they come from behind, it's quite a shock to the pedestrain.
Its a nice innovation, but I'm inclined to towards heavy handed regulation towards these things because of assholes.
In Europe, for example Amsterdam or Berlin, it would be a different story, however. They fit very well to the existing comprehensive system of bike lanes. They have a similar speed and manoeuvrability and also both the pedestrians and cyclist are already well conditioned for avoiding each other. Try stepping onto a bike lane in Berlin - you will be feeling really stupid in a hurry.
Yet it is now a "fact" that helmets make car drivers pass closer to you, because of this study.
Is there any studies that have looked at that?
Essentially an origami helmet. Does anyone have some data points as to the efficacy of such a thing?
You can buy your own on amazon by just searching for "Xiaomi scooter". They're currently $500.
The chances of head & face trauma are substantially reduced, and the chance of a fatal injury reduced by almost 70% w/a helmet on.
I think that Bird's "we'll send you a free helmet" is a cute way to get around criticism & liability.
But given the clear market demand for bird and bike-sharing, I would love to see an entrepreneur really nail the "portable bike helmet" category or figure out a non-gross way to share helmets with strangers.
There are a few options on the market today that show people are thinking this problem through, but what else could be built besides a foldable / more portable solution?
https://www.ecohelmet.com
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fendhelmet/fend-the-col...
https://www.morpherhelmet.com
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/sep/22/bicycle...
I don't have a real opinion on when people "ought" to wear helmets. It's a tradeoff. People do have falls walking and accidents in cars where serious injury would have been prevented by wearing a helmet. And many of these sharing services are not practical if one is required to wear a "real" helmet.
[1] https://www.d3o.com/
[0]: https://hovding.com
I own one myself. They have a max speed of 25Kmph, but usually you maximize distance, so you use the eco-mode which keeps you at 18Kmph.
Leaving my hotel one morning this week, around 6:30am and before commuter traffic had really started, I noticed there were eight of their scooters line up just outside the exit of the hotel. I maid a point to walk by other hotels on the way to work and about half seemed to have them outside. By 8 or so, they were gone.
So, to answer your question: I assume there are a bunch of couriers or "Field Agent" style gig employees that walk around the downtown and collect them, and that they have an app that shows the last known location of each one. I also assume that there is a van somewhere that picks them up once they're collected, takes them somewhere to charge at night, and then drops them off at hotels and transit stops before the morning rush begins.
[...] charge Birds at your home or office. Earn up to $100/night. $5 per battery, up to 20 birds