If they're still running this business in the UK... why not ship them there? It's unbelievable that there isn't a better use of these than recycling them (but I do think that's mostly their mistake to make).
This whole thread is full of people expressing lament over the glaring waste, but I suggested a concrete cause to consider and it was met with silent downvotes. Individuals don't generally destroy perfectly good bikes. It's the economy, stupid. ZIRP pushes capital to make far-off bets, in hopes that some might turn into recurring income streams.
The e-rental industry is a glaring example of this in action, where "investors" are buying fleets of easily-affordable consumer goods, hoping to put enough on the sidewalk that people will trip over them and their credit cards will fall in. I know everyone in Silly Valley has been benefiting from this deluge of make-work, but eventually we're going to have to reconcile our goal of technology making us more productive with this regressive policy of "full employment". And sorry, I doubt the answer is obtuse "basic income".
But it may be very expensive to design and manufacture a new charger, and they certainly don't want to sell the bikes to a bunch of techies who will stick random wires on them until 990 of them are happy and 10 generate news articles because they set their houses on fire with their hack.
Unclear if they are charged by battery swapping or being taken to a third location -- but either way in a world where they'd sell them would they not include a charger?
The motors likely use a relatively standard voltage/current & would very likely be amenable to a consumer e-bike battery— an expensive component, for sure, but much cheaper than a whole bike.
Jesus Christ that is madness. What kind of a world is it when an individual can try and sell some old stuff for cheap and end up in a law suit for 30K.
Yes, lawsuits can easily be abused as a form of asymmetric warfare, where they cost exceptionally little to initiate and exceptionally more to defend against even the most baseless and outrageous claim.
I would suggest this forum is also supposed to be cordial and welcoming. I appreciate your "can-do" spirit, and would suggest a different way of portraying the sentiment --
"Wrenching on bikes is super fun and accessible to anyone with the systems inclination that would bring them to HN. Way easier to understand and fix bikes than, say, cars, and it is fun to have mastery of the machine -- or you can take it to your LBS for a fixup and support your local biking community in the process."
In the UK, Jump bikes were a far superior option over Lime. My experience with both was that Lime bike maintenance was very poor; with two-thirds of all rides requiring a refund due to the bike not functioning or having physical damage.
Getting support and refunds from Lime was exceptionally painful. Uber also supported bike drop off in the East, where as Lime would silently fine you.
The Jump bikes were just a different league. Smooth ride. Lime bikes for me were a last resort when I was doing the bike share thing. Half of them were broken, more physical effort than riding a decent road bike and no refund when the bike is broken. I'd rather get a Boris bike than a Lime.
There'd be significant costs to make sure all the bikes are safe and in good working order, and it sounds like they decided those costs exceeded what they'd get from selling them.
Typically it's liability. If they sold a defective scooter and someone got hurt, they could be in a world of trouble.
Reminds me of that article about the ship transporting new Toyotas that tipped over. Half of the cars didn't even get wet, but they pulled all the cars off the ship and destroyed them. It wasn't worth the hassle of inspecting and repairing and still being at risk for liability.
>Typically it's liability. If they sold a defective scooter and someone got hurt, they could be in a world of trouble.
This is/was something traditionally handled with a document signed by the buyer stating the sale is as-is. Tons of broken stuff gets sold all the time.
Waivers cannot always override laws that protect consumers, and these laws vary widely by locale.
For one example: Where I'm at, if you sell some things "as-is" and don't disclose all known defects, you can be held liable for those defects regardless of your "as-is" agreement.
Toyota has said "don't worry we've fixed the frames on the new ones" for ~40yr now and the Tacoma still sells. If anyone can get away with it they can. Still probably not smart to risk it though.
Those bikes have been depreciated to a specific value and selling or giving them away might contradict that.
I'm sure Uber tried to sell the whole passle off to companies who do this kind of liquidation thing. The fact that Uber had to destroy them tells me that either A) Uber is making a lot more money by pulling the batteries and motors and selling those while cruching the rest or B) nobody wanted to touch them and Uber got stuck doing this themselves.
I suspect Uber got stuck. LiPol batteries are a liability and probably nobody wanted to deal with them.
I've been sad about this sale for a few weeks -- was a pretty heavy Jump bike user in DC and they've just been sitting on the streets disabled -- vanished from the apps overnight. They were/are well built machines and I hope Lime or someone reactivates them. They also feel much more practical and safe than the cheap bird/etc scooters(having eaten shit on a bird before going over a curb) -- bigger tires for bump tolerance, more stable position, etc.
We have another dockless ebike entrant in town called Helbiz and they're pretty nice, plus have an unlimited subscription option -- hoping they get traction and stick around - I have already noticed some of the bikes being seemingly vandalized on purpose(pedals ripped off and strapped in the basket) which is sad.
It feels that the timing could be right with very limited Metro and Bus service(and widespread virus related public transit anxiety).
edit: I could also see this business model as being self cannibalizing -- I'd never ridden an ebike pre JUMP and now would consider buying one myself for 1-2k. How many people who really enjoy the JUMP experience would similarly leave the platform for a nicer model, long run cheaper experience. Introduces other tradeoffs like security, having to take the bike home(so you can't really ride it out if you're going to be drinking), etc.
Same here! There was a brief golden time in Mt. Pleasant when it was starting to get nice out and there were Jump bikes everywhere. So convenient, so nice for doing socially-distanced wanderings of neighborhoods. What a waste! I hope something like them returns.
For me, the biggest value prop was that I could leave them anywhere and didn't have to maintain them. I could buy myself one, but then I'd need to take care of it and make sure it doesn't get stolen. I'm not sure I'm interested in that.
A few bucks a month is a lot of money. Try buying an annuity for a few bucks a month over the lifetime of the average bicycle and you're probably doubling the cost of the bike.
Yeah...that's kinda the problem. People who leave them anywhere. The scooter thing is a great example of how thoughtless people can be when offered convenience.
The JUMP bikes were the best ride for sure. Much smoother than Lime. If Lime downgrade the bikes then I'm getting my own electric bike. Just sucks I have to think about locking it up, riding it home etc.
The biggest loss here for me personally is that Uber allowed you to pair AmEx Uber credits to scooters, which meant I could often do 5-10 free rides a month.
As much as I would love a cheap e-bike to tinker with and restore (even if it's old), I can't say I'm surprised these are being recycled.
On one hand, how would it benefit their/Lime's business to have loads of people owning electric scooters and bikes? On the other hand, there really are logistical and liability issues involved with distributing old gear in varying states of repair.
It's a shame they don't do something like gov/edu institutions and auction off the stuff as-is. At least then someone could theoretically buy it up to do something with it.
> On one hand, how would it benefit their/Lime's business to have loads of people owning electric scooters and bikes?
It stimulates demand for cycling/scooting infrastructure. A few owners of scooters aren't competing with renters.
> auction off the stuff as-is
That's pretty close to what recycling does, for items that can't be practically used due to design issues. The metals and batteries are resold as scrap.
Agreed, but unfortunately legal liabilities create huge wastes like this. It's why grocery stores go through extensive efforts to ensure you can't recover their thrown out good that has reached it's sell by date but is still good.
In the US, the Good Samaritan Food Donation Act of 1996 eliminates the liability of grocery stores from donating or allowing people to "glean" food that it no longer can sell. If you know of a store that is destroying this type of food, please let them know that they can donate it without worrying about getting sued.
It does underline the point though. A law had to be made almost 25 years ago to prevent this with food and people are still worried. Doesn't paint a rosy picture for everything else.
It depends on how things got there. If the law was made because of unjustified paranoia, to settle it, then you can't use the existence of that law as justification for the paranoia.
I don't believe that's the case for one second. People sell second hand cars/motorcycles/bicycles/rollerblades all the time without worrying about liability afterwards, otherwise you'd be saying that US has no market for second hand equipment.
If you own an e-bike you can reason that you don't need a car. You still need a car once in a while. That's the time to call an Uber. You may even ride an Uber every day, but you don't buy a car because you want to start riding your bike tomorrow because it is good for your health.
I was walking in our electronics department's hallway when I stopped and walked a few steps back. My peripheral vision picked up a pile of yummy: a load of lab gear in an office. I went in and asked about it. The person said they were to be discarded. I asked if I could take some. They said they were to be sold by the kilogram to a company. I asked if I could buy a few kilograms of oscilloscopes, multimetres, stabilized power sources, etc. They said no. Regulations, auctions, etc.
Here I was, a broke electronics student, trying to procure electronics equipment, in an electronics department, with lunch money I was willing to part with, but unable to do so because someone needed to melt that thing down and make a horse shoe or some fork.
Somebody already bought the picking rights. I would have gone over the head of the person you asked, or call in a favor with someone at the same level of hierarchy. Ask them if you can have some of the stuff. If they say yes, tell the first person x said it's fine, and just take what you are allowed to take.
Their red tape is only your problem if you can't self-help. It's not your job to enforce their agreements with third parties who aren't you. It's also not your job to inform them of existing agreements with third parties which you are privy to.
Oh, the things I would have done in that situation if it took place somewhere where you don't get disappeared for a Facebook post, friend. I'll leave it at that.
The underlying context is that I was practically a persona non grata. Teachers would happily leave the class to me during labs but hated the fact I barely attended. I'm talking not even grading your exam sheet, or putting an arbitrary grade, and not displaying it until the recourse deadline has passed because "screw you" and I'm talking putting "0" on all your grades because you missed one exam. Nobody will take the side of a student who'll be there for a limited time against a colleague they've worked with for 20+ years. Even if the behavior is unjust, the rationale for them is that you'll live and learn and forget about it and leave, but they're staying and have to work with the other person.
Sure, the obvious step is to go manoeuver or call out these practices, invovle lawyers, and the media, and what not. Which brings me to my first paragraph. What is obvious and possible somewhere isn't somewhere else, or is but the stakes are too high. If I wanted to manoeuver in a cesspool, I would have become a politician. If I wanted to go to war, I would have become a martyr. The former is frowned upon, the latter is admired in other people from a distance.
I was luckier one time: I remember buying an oscilloscope for around 400NOK (about $40) back somewhere in 2002-2003.
Other times I was more persistent. Once I tried to get some PC parts so I said I could disassemble it and only take the exact parts at which point the bloke told me he'd rather want me to take the whole thing as lo g as I was quick so nobody saw it :-)
>I don't think most of their clientele (or the staff) even knew what it was.
I bought a pair of nice Roland studio-level reference monitor speakers from a pawn shop like that once. They cost me 90 dollars, they retailed for something like 1750.
When I paid the person behind the counter told me that many people had tried to get these to work and brought them back because they couldn't figure out the cable to use -- and due to that difficulty they had marked them down from 200 to 90.
Pawn shops are filled with audio gear from desperate, broke artists. XLR is a pretty standard in the audio community. I even have a 2.5mm-to-XLR adapter on my desk. This pawn shop must be really far from any place with performance venues.
Now on the other hand I had some old Bang and Olufsen speakers that used proprietary everything. Even the audio input was some kind of balanced 24V signaling 5-pin DIN connectors. Basically you could not plug into anything except another B&O.
I had the opposite experience with one of my old electronics teachers. The place was was replacing a bunch (40-50 or so) of 100Mbps rackmount switches with gigabit versions (this was mid-2000s, so 100Mbps was still more than adequate for home use). I can't remember the exact scenario, but they were either selling the old ones as scrap or had to pay for them to be recycled. My teacher said I could skim whatever I wanted off the top, providing I didn't make it too public (I don't think he asked permission, just knew they wouldn't be missed).
A 48-port switch (Netgear FS750T or something very similar), as well as a couple of 16-port versions and a hub that had somehow still been in use, was probably overkill for home use, but I wasn't complaining.
I was in the same predicament when a student. They said they’d give me my pick of scope if I went through a checked out the other 20 that were to be sold. 30 years later I still have that 20 MHz Tek scope.
And with proper care and feeding, that Tek 20 MHz scope will be working in another 30 years. They were well built to put it mildly. I have a friend who's scope is a Tek 500 series, I think 30MHz, built around 50 years ago. Works fine once it warms up. He uses it for audio work, so 30Mhz is mostly overkill.
When a uni department replaced all their Macs, I got my hands on a power Mac G4 Cube (yes, one of those that sits in the MoMA). I haven't been able to fix it (something's fried) but I plan to keep the shell and most of the innards as well as the awesome take-out mechanism and add an RPi or something else inside. Passively cooled and beautiful enough to display in the living room...
It appears these bikes were designed to not be user serviceable. Bespoke tools are needed to do any maintenance and there aren't off the shelf parts for anyone who would need anything replaced. This seems very different than selling a used car where the new owner would still have some expectation of being able to service and repair it. Presumably they also have bespoke chargers and not enough to sell with every bike so some people would be buying e-bikes that can't ever be charged.
That's not an argument for not making them available. But it does substantially decrease the value. It's possible it pushes the value below what they'd get from recycling. If that's the case, it's easy to see why they'd recycle them instead of spending more time/money to try to sell a non-servicable and non-chargeable used bike.
That's the thing: it should matter, by law.
The big problem with the actual model, is that it doesn't take into account externalities (pollution, rarefaction of ressources, ...).
Remember the old mantra of reduce > reuse > recycle? Environmental consumerism is supposed to be primarily focused on reducing when you can. If you cannot reduce consumption, then try to reuse as much as possible. And if you've exhausted reduce or reuse, then you try to recycle.
Everything can be reduced and reused if you're willing to spend enough money. But obviously you have to recycle if the other options are too expensive. Environmentalists seem to forget that spending money is itself a waste - a waste of human effort and natural resources even if it saves something tangible like a wheel or an electric motor.
>On one hand, how would it benefit their/Lime's business to have loads of people owning electric scooters and bikes
I see these as different use cases. I own an eBike which I use for commuting. I also use Lime bikes (before they shut down) to get around the city. The key difference is storage. If I take MY bike, I have to very securely lock it up, carry a heavy lock and chain around, and worry about whether my destination has storage. As such, it only gets me between work, home, and occasionally the store.
On the other hand, I use Lime bikes to get across the city anywhere. If I'm going to a brewery or a concert or whatever, I just get close to my destination, find an out of the way, and get off the bike. It's significantly easier.
>Uber said it had decided to destroy thousands of its older-model vehicles due to maintenance, liability and safety concerns.
(At risk of sounding mean or bitter, I was originally planning to post that quote as a top-level comment, but I was like, "come on, that's so short and unhelpful and high in the article, that anyone wondering it would just click the link, right?")
Right, because all the people wanting this would do more than just go silent when the first bike explodes on someone it was donated to.
The reality is that it's a PR nightmare. One of them fails and all those advocating donations just instantly fall silent. It's like they were never there. And there'll be a massive furore over how these are being dumped on innocent people who were not properly informed, etc. etc.
Oh, I'm not saying you'll be part of the mob. Just that you'll walk away. That's why no one listens to the advocates who have no skin in the game. They are fair weather friends.
And then there'll be the lawsuits. And you either win those painfully or you settle (and everyone assumes you did because you're guilty).
over 1 million cars, in every condition including unsafe to drive and about to explode, get donated every year. 0 lawsuits. zero.
These stories of overly litigious malcontents ruining the do-gooders of the world, it's just that, a story.
Donating these electric bikes would have be fine. Uber destroyed them for the same reason that textbook manufacturers and high end fashion destroys their product instead of donating them, because the slightest imagined possibility of a risk to their ego, brand, or margins are more important than a clear and tangible benefit to society. Everything we've heard about uber tells us this is exactly what they'd do, they're assholes.
Look at the companies ex-uber people did, they're all asshole companies like Bird or that ex-uber guy that google successfully sued for $179 million for stealing their ip. I've met with uber at work, they strung us along, telling us literally anything, trying to get all the intel they can, but then got pissed off and start yelling at us when we asked for legal paperwork prior to disclosure of business IP. I've seen people played that way before and I always look out for these kind of spy ruses -- last company that I saw do it was GoDaddy.
Of course they'll crush the bikes and no, it has nothing to do with fear of lawsuits, they're just jerks like that.
For the record, absent some kind of serious negligence, there is no risk of any restaurant or grocer being sued for donating food. The US (and elsewhere I'm sure) has Good Samaritan laws to protect the donors.
It amazes me how prevalent this myth is.
(See my comment elsewhere in this thread for citations)
Given how bad their riders behave on the sidewalk, how they try to block the sidewalk, and how they ignore boundries. I love the fact that scooters are being destroyed.
With cars those problems are easier to fix. (You need a license to operate a vehicle, but not a scooter).
Scooters do produce pollution (someone has to dive more than the distance of the scooter traveled to recharge, plus the environmental cost of the batteries, and the shorter lifespan), traffic and accidents as well.
The lower energy due to lower speeds and vehicle masses make ebike crashes far less severe than motor vehicle crashes. We have 40,000 dead a year in the US in car crashes, plus three million nonfatal injuries. I'm sure someone among your friends & family has been killed by a car crash.
This can be improved with lighter cars, lower speeds, and pedestrian safety standards, but it can also be improved by fewer VMTs by getting more road users on intrinsically-safer vehicles.
Uber should not exist. If it's still alive after the pandemic, it will only be because of governments all around the world forcing the hand of people, with interest rates near zero or even negative, to pour money on unsustainable businesses like this. No company should exist that wastes as much money as Uber, with no path to profit shown till today. Americans 401ks are going to be devastated when this crazy easy money startup frenzy comes to an end on a (increasingly) near future.
Yeah, someone would accidentally puncture a battery and it'll burn them and then the headlines will say "Uber is dumping exploding bikes on Third World people".
Exactly like when restaurants would rather throw away food instead of donating it. If they sell bikes to people that would otherwise use their service, they wouldn't have any customers.
But they're wrong, people that own bikes aren't the same people that want to use a bike ad-hoc.
That's not why restaurants throw away food. They do it because of liability laws. There is a super high risk of getting sued if you give away food and someone gets sick.
In the US it's often tax-neutral for corporations, which is kind of unfortunate. If they donate it to a nonprofit the cost is deductible, but if they throw it away as spoiled food then it still is as a write off (cost of doing business). It basically means businesses can't get the deduction for donating their old stuff because they'd lose an equivalent deduction they were already getting.
What would fix it is to let them deduct the value of the donated food/whatever instead of its cost, because then the deduction would be bigger from donating something than throwing it away.
The result would be a huge reduction in taxes on businesses, because then everybody would do it and get a ton of tax deductions, but it could be well worth it for the enormous reduction in waste and increase in charitable donations.
And it might not even cost that much in tax revenue, because it would be an alternative to a lot of the shell games corporations already play to reduce their tax burden, but in this case it would actually be helping somebody.
> It basically means businesses can't get the deduction for donating their old stuff because they'd lose an equivalent deduction they were already getting.
That's because according to the tax code, businesses can claim depreciation of all capital property. They can't claim their cost of the donated property because they are already claiming the depreciation.
> What would fix it is to let them deduct the value of the donated food/whatever instead of its cost
The IRS already bases deductions for donations on Fair-market-value (FMV) of the donation. They have an entire guide for assessing FMV for the purposes of donation:
The guide explicitly addresses the question of cost vs value and how time between the initial purchase and sale might affect the value.
This is even easier for businesses, since for things like bikes that strictly decrease in value, the donation value is probably just the purchased price - accrued depreciation (which itself was modeled using methods similar to FMV).
> That's because according to the tax code, businesses can claim depreciation of all capital property.
Food isn't "capital property" in general, so it's a different deduction, but in the end it comes out much the same. Which is what I said. The price they paid for it is already a deduction, so there is generally no further deduction from donating it vs. throwing it away and writing it off.
> This is even easier for businesses, since for things like bikes that strictly decrease in value, the donation value is probably just the purchased price - accrued depreciation (which itself was modeled using methods similar to FMV).
But that's the problem. They buy something, use it (or intend to use it but don't), and then throw it away. One way or another that allows them to write off the entire cost.
Which means there isn't any additional deduction available for donating it to a charity instead of wasting it at the end, so there is nothing there to offset their cost/risk of making a donation instead of throwing it in a dumpster, and that causes tons more stuff to end up in the dumpster.
That's not true, and it is frustrating to read such a pointless falsehood. I worked in a soup kitchen for years. The Bill Emerson's Good Samaritan Act of 1996 codified in federal law what states had started implementing in the 70s, that good faith donations won't hold people/corporations liable to food injury.
That doesn't stop you from getting sued. That law still says you can sue for "gross negligence". You still have to go to court to prove you weren't grossly negligent.
General liability. There are some laws that specifically exempt food donations, but they still have "gross negligence" clauses, and it's easier to just not donate than worry about getting sued for gross negligence.
Why are you all over this topic trying to support this misinformation? You've already been corrected (with citations) and yet you continue. Is it just a matter of being seen as "wrong", because it's okay. Really, it is. It's a very common myth.
You claimed "There is a super high risk of getting sued if you give away food and someone gets sick". Now if you want to continue this claim, you need to provide citations. Who, exactly says that such "high risk" exists?
I worked with restaurants in a previous business. We tried to get them to donate food. Not a single one would because they were afraid of even the chance of being sued, because their liability insurance would not cover donations.
Their insurers and lawyers all advised against donating unused food because of the risk of a lawsuit that wasn't covered by insurance.
So people can post all the "facts" they want to but the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
> So people can post all the "facts" they want to but the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
Very. I resorted to creating a cycle count in the walk in after every shift (off the clock) and giving it away pre-packaged 'meal prep' to employees, as most were just college kids, as so much high quality Salmon, chicken breast and other proteins that otherwise just ended up wasted.
Its ironic because this restaurant got a James Beard Award for sustainability and low waste practices.
In other places I just made family meal with the 'scraps' leftover for BOH/FOH family meals as we normally got off at ~2am and choices for food sucked. Its just something I had adapted to after my apprenticeship in Biodynamic Ag, and wished I saw more of it in the Industry.
I'm not sure what to make of the bike thing, as the Lime scooters I rode were already pretty beat up and I used them not long after the deployed. I can't imagine what it must of have been for these bikes, the Google bikes around the Boulder campus look decent from afar (they're non EV, I think), but I never rode one so can't speak to its life-time.
Waste in all transportation looks like this, I wish I could show the amount of recall parts I threw out on a daily basis at BMW but I signed an NDA. Its often cheaper to just discard the parts as-is at a minor loss than it is to pay for a much bigger loss for shipping back to a factory and then pay staff to sort through it and only to do the same at their local facility.
I'm talking about pallet loads of differentials, driveshafts, and engine blocks as well as crate loads of ECUs etc... Although to be fair we did sell those for metal for their junk PM prices if/when I had down time.
I actually re-learned how to solder, barely only ok at it now, because I was taking wiring harnesses and LED taillights home and tearing them apart and putting them back together.
This is how a lot of VWs sat for a little over 2 years after the buyback [1]. Some made it back into the market, many didn't and I was just glad I wasn't in the Industry by then as it made me physically ill to see the waste a SOFTWARE issue ended up costing in an Environmental level.
I referenced a legal organization which specializes in the area. The other citation quoted two additional lawyers plus organizations which do this regularly. If you want to dispute what they said, provide your own rebuttal with citations. Don't be childish by suggesting I've made misrepresentations.
> the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
The risk is so infinitesimally small that's it has never happened in the 25 or so years since the relevant legislation was introduced! I mean, if you want to describe that as "super high risk" like you did, I don't know what to tell you. I really don't.
> I worked with restaurants in a previous business. We tried to get them to donate food. Not a single one would because they were afraid of even the chance of being sued, because their liability insurance would not cover donations. Their insurers and lawyers all advised against donating unused food because of the risk of a lawsuit that wasn't covered by insurance.
Based on your cavalier attitude in spreading false information around the topic (while millions of Americans starve) I find it really, really hard to believe that this is something you would champion. Like, impossibly hard. Never mind that I'd expect someone intelligent like yourself to know what the law actually says if you were lobbying donations.
I'm frankly, very surprised you're so cavalier in spreading this misinformation. Stop spreading this lie and maybe less people will go hungry.
Frankly, I expected better from such a prominent HN'er.
Food waste is a terrible problem in this country. It is driven by a poor regulatory and legal environment that introduces unnecessary risk for restaurant owners to donate their food.
With the way things are now, it is too risky for a restaurant to donate. They haven’t been sued because they don’t typically do it.
I think major changes need to be made.
I think restaurants should be required to donate all extra viable food.
I think insurance should be required to cover those donations so they absorb the liability and therefore enforce safety.
But the way things stand now, you can’t in good conscience tell a restaurant to donate food without an intermediary organization in the area, and even then it’s risky.
No it isn't. It's perceived as too risky but that perception is demonstrably false. I've provided solid proof of this and you've provided nothing.
>They haven’t been sued because they don’t typically do it.
You can keep repeating the same things over and over all you want. But until you back it up with supporting citations it appears you're just making things up. Statistically speaking, if X00,000 restaurants and stores are doing it today without being sued, it's pretty safe to say it will be similar for X,000,000.
>But the way things stand now, you can’t in good conscience tell a restaurant to donate food without an intermediary organization in the area, and even then it’s risky.
Show me anything (tweet, blog post, whatever) from an actual lawyer or legal organization supporting this opinion and I'll donate $25 to the Food Bank of your choice (I'm serious).
I've provided legal support for my side of the argument already. It's your turn.
The thing that's so infuriating here is that that you're exasperating the problem you claim to want to solve. People scan threads and see this myth repeated so it reinforces their misconception about the matter.
Not only are you not helping, you're actively making it worse. Shame on you.
> That's not why restaurants throw away food. They do it because of liability laws.
Here is an organization that collects excess food from restaurants, etc, and uses it to provide 20K meals a week to hungry people (in supposedly over-regulated San Francisco no less):
If restaurants are throwing away food, it's because they don't care about the waste because there is no financial loss to them - and there are no local organizations like Food Runners to facilitate the donation.
No they do not assume liability. From Public Law 104-210 - OCT. 1, 1996 (linked from that page):
"(2) LIABILITY OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION.—A nonprofit
organization shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability
arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that
the nonprofit organization received as a donation in good faith
from a person or gleaner for ultimate distribution to needy
individuals."
The protections for nonprofits doing this sort of work are pretty extensive, in part because many such organizations in the US are religiously affiliated nonprofits.
> That's not why restaurants throw away food. They do it because of liability laws.
Regarding the food distribution nonprofits:
> They assume the liability
> Right exactly. They are not liable
I'm not sure how to reconcile those comments of yours, but regardless, I think we agree that donations of food to non-profits for distribution to the needy incurs no liability for any of the parties involved, and haven't since 1996. It is a persistent myth that liability is a major disincentive to food donation, motivated by who-knows-what.
The USDA has even clearer guidance on this subject here:
The article I cited says one organization alone "has 650 cafes nationwide and donated more than 286,000 pounds of food last year." It also mentions several other organizations who do similar work.
The root problem is people spreading this misinformation. Please don't.
This is not at all like when restaurants throw away food. The key distinction here is is that the bikes are getting recycled. They will be broken down and sold as scrap materials.
Heavy Jump user here. They're perfect for commuting for me, dealing with hills and getting to and from the office, and then not having to worry about the bike once I got to the office. This news makes me sad.
Uber no longer owns the bikes. Lime does. The title should read "Lime is destroying thousands of electric Jump bikes and scooters after buying them from Uber"
Other important details:
- these bikes and scooters intentionally use custom parts to deter theft and make it so it isn't viable to strip them for parts. It will be impossible for the purchaser of a used bike to buy replacement parts or charging equipment.
- the software used on these bikes is now owned by Lime
- there is a liability and regulatory issues with selling devices with rechargable batteries. None of the battery parts involved in the bikes are certified for legal sale.
Large quantities of used lithum-ion batteries that have been in heavy street use are not a great thing to acquire. There are recycling companies; if you have more than 500lbs you can get a free pickup. When the HAZMAT truck leaves, you can breathe a sigh of relief.
233 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] threadThe e-rental industry is a glaring example of this in action, where "investors" are buying fleets of easily-affordable consumer goods, hoping to put enough on the sidewalk that people will trip over them and their credit cards will fall in. I know everyone in Silly Valley has been benefiting from this deluge of make-work, but eventually we're going to have to reconcile our goal of technology making us more productive with this regressive policy of "full employment". And sorry, I doubt the answer is obtuse "basic income".
But it may be very expensive to design and manufacture a new charger, and they certainly don't want to sell the bikes to a bunch of techies who will stick random wires on them until 990 of them are happy and 10 generate news articles because they set their houses on fire with their hack.
https://therideshareguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/7b019...
Further, have you ever notice bicycle maintenance shops?
Have you ever heard of tinkering with an old bike for fun?
Just asking.
I mean, WTF. This forum is supposed to be the elite?
"Wrenching on bikes is super fun and accessible to anyone with the systems inclination that would bring them to HN. Way easier to understand and fix bikes than, say, cars, and it is fun to have mastery of the machine -- or you can take it to your LBS for a fixup and support your local biking community in the process."
Getting support and refunds from Lime was exceptionally painful. Uber also supported bike drop off in the East, where as Lime would silently fine you.
Reminds me of that article about the ship transporting new Toyotas that tipped over. Half of the cars didn't even get wet, but they pulled all the cars off the ship and destroyed them. It wasn't worth the hassle of inspecting and repairing and still being at risk for liability.
This is/was something traditionally handled with a document signed by the buyer stating the sale is as-is. Tons of broken stuff gets sold all the time.
For one example: Where I'm at, if you sell some things "as-is" and don't disclose all known defects, you can be held liable for those defects regardless of your "as-is" agreement.
Nothing would ruin your brand more than having thousands of new cars breaking down.
Those bikes have been depreciated to a specific value and selling or giving them away might contradict that.
I'm sure Uber tried to sell the whole passle off to companies who do this kind of liquidation thing. The fact that Uber had to destroy them tells me that either A) Uber is making a lot more money by pulling the batteries and motors and selling those while cruching the rest or B) nobody wanted to touch them and Uber got stuck doing this themselves.
I suspect Uber got stuck. LiPol batteries are a liability and probably nobody wanted to deal with them.
We have another dockless ebike entrant in town called Helbiz and they're pretty nice, plus have an unlimited subscription option -- hoping they get traction and stick around - I have already noticed some of the bikes being seemingly vandalized on purpose(pedals ripped off and strapped in the basket) which is sad.
It feels that the timing could be right with very limited Metro and Bus service(and widespread virus related public transit anxiety).
edit: I could also see this business model as being self cannibalizing -- I'd never ridden an ebike pre JUMP and now would consider buying one myself for 1-2k. How many people who really enjoy the JUMP experience would similarly leave the platform for a nicer model, long run cheaper experience. Introduces other tradeoffs like security, having to take the bike home(so you can't really ride it out if you're going to be drinking), etc.
On one hand, how would it benefit their/Lime's business to have loads of people owning electric scooters and bikes? On the other hand, there really are logistical and liability issues involved with distributing old gear in varying states of repair.
It's a shame they don't do something like gov/edu institutions and auction off the stuff as-is. At least then someone could theoretically buy it up to do something with it.
It stimulates demand for cycling/scooting infrastructure. A few owners of scooters aren't competing with renters.
> auction off the stuff as-is
That's pretty close to what recycling does, for items that can't be practically used due to design issues. The metals and batteries are resold as scrap.
Here I was, a broke electronics student, trying to procure electronics equipment, in an electronics department, with lunch money I was willing to part with, but unable to do so because someone needed to melt that thing down and make a horse shoe or some fork.
Their red tape is only your problem if you can't self-help. It's not your job to enforce their agreements with third parties who aren't you. It's also not your job to inform them of existing agreements with third parties which you are privy to.
The underlying context is that I was practically a persona non grata. Teachers would happily leave the class to me during labs but hated the fact I barely attended. I'm talking not even grading your exam sheet, or putting an arbitrary grade, and not displaying it until the recourse deadline has passed because "screw you" and I'm talking putting "0" on all your grades because you missed one exam. Nobody will take the side of a student who'll be there for a limited time against a colleague they've worked with for 20+ years. Even if the behavior is unjust, the rationale for them is that you'll live and learn and forget about it and leave, but they're staying and have to work with the other person.
Sure, the obvious step is to go manoeuver or call out these practices, invovle lawyers, and the media, and what not. Which brings me to my first paragraph. What is obvious and possible somewhere isn't somewhere else, or is but the stakes are too high. If I wanted to manoeuver in a cesspool, I would have become a politician. If I wanted to go to war, I would have become a martyr. The former is frowned upon, the latter is admired in other people from a distance.
I was luckier one time: I remember buying an oscilloscope for around 400NOK (about $40) back somewhere in 2002-2003.
Other times I was more persistent. Once I tried to get some PC parts so I said I could disassemble it and only take the exact parts at which point the bloke told me he'd rather want me to take the whole thing as lo g as I was quick so nobody saw it :-)
I bought a pair of nice Roland studio-level reference monitor speakers from a pawn shop like that once. They cost me 90 dollars, they retailed for something like 1750.
When I paid the person behind the counter told me that many people had tried to get these to work and brought them back because they couldn't figure out the cable to use -- and due to that difficulty they had marked them down from 200 to 90.
It was an XLR plug. They worked beautifully.
Now on the other hand I had some old Bang and Olufsen speakers that used proprietary everything. Even the audio input was some kind of balanced 24V signaling 5-pin DIN connectors. Basically you could not plug into anything except another B&O.
A 48-port switch (Netgear FS750T or something very similar), as well as a couple of 16-port versions and a hub that had somehow still been in use, was probably overkill for home use, but I wasn't complaining.
That's not an argument for not making them available. But it does substantially decrease the value. It's possible it pushes the value below what they'd get from recycling. If that's the case, it's easy to see why they'd recycle them instead of spending more time/money to try to sell a non-servicable and non-chargeable used bike.
I see these as different use cases. I own an eBike which I use for commuting. I also use Lime bikes (before they shut down) to get around the city. The key difference is storage. If I take MY bike, I have to very securely lock it up, carry a heavy lock and chain around, and worry about whether my destination has storage. As such, it only gets me between work, home, and occasionally the store.
On the other hand, I use Lime bikes to get across the city anywhere. If I'm going to a brewery or a concert or whatever, I just get close to my destination, find an out of the way, and get off the bike. It's significantly easier.
https://www.gocopia.com/help#business-4
>Uber said it had decided to destroy thousands of its older-model vehicles due to maintenance, liability and safety concerns.
(At risk of sounding mean or bitter, I was originally planning to post that quote as a top-level comment, but I was like, "come on, that's so short and unhelpful and high in the article, that anyone wondering it would just click the link, right?")
The reality is that it's a PR nightmare. One of them fails and all those advocating donations just instantly fall silent. It's like they were never there. And there'll be a massive furore over how these are being dumped on innocent people who were not properly informed, etc. etc.
Oh, I'm not saying you'll be part of the mob. Just that you'll walk away. That's why no one listens to the advocates who have no skin in the game. They are fair weather friends.
And then there'll be the lawsuits. And you either win those painfully or you settle (and everyone assumes you did because you're guilty).
These stories of overly litigious malcontents ruining the do-gooders of the world, it's just that, a story.
Donating these electric bikes would have be fine. Uber destroyed them for the same reason that textbook manufacturers and high end fashion destroys their product instead of donating them, because the slightest imagined possibility of a risk to their ego, brand, or margins are more important than a clear and tangible benefit to society. Everything we've heard about uber tells us this is exactly what they'd do, they're assholes.
Look at the companies ex-uber people did, they're all asshole companies like Bird or that ex-uber guy that google successfully sued for $179 million for stealing their ip. I've met with uber at work, they strung us along, telling us literally anything, trying to get all the intel they can, but then got pissed off and start yelling at us when we asked for legal paperwork prior to disclosure of business IP. I've seen people played that way before and I always look out for these kind of spy ruses -- last company that I saw do it was GoDaddy.
Of course they'll crush the bikes and no, it has nothing to do with fear of lawsuits, they're just jerks like that.
It amazes me how prevalent this myth is.
(See my comment elsewhere in this thread for citations)
Too many cars on the road, that's a city/government issue. They should improve and increase public transit options.
Scooters detract from public transit and from resources used to keep the city clean and/or enforcement from the problems they create.
Pollution, traffic, accidents.
Scooters do produce pollution (someone has to dive more than the distance of the scooter traveled to recharge, plus the environmental cost of the batteries, and the shorter lifespan), traffic and accidents as well.
This can be improved with lighter cars, lower speeds, and pedestrian safety standards, but it can also be improved by fewer VMTs by getting more road users on intrinsically-safer vehicles.
These things would rock Kathmandu.
But they're wrong, people that own bikes aren't the same people that want to use a bike ad-hoc.
What would fix it is to let them deduct the value of the donated food/whatever instead of its cost, because then the deduction would be bigger from donating something than throwing it away.
The result would be a huge reduction in taxes on businesses, because then everybody would do it and get a ton of tax deductions, but it could be well worth it for the enormous reduction in waste and increase in charitable donations.
And it might not even cost that much in tax revenue, because it would be an alternative to a lot of the shell games corporations already play to reduce their tax burden, but in this case it would actually be helping somebody.
That's because according to the tax code, businesses can claim depreciation of all capital property. They can't claim their cost of the donated property because they are already claiming the depreciation.
> What would fix it is to let them deduct the value of the donated food/whatever instead of its cost
The IRS already bases deductions for donations on Fair-market-value (FMV) of the donation. They have an entire guide for assessing FMV for the purposes of donation:
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p561 [1]
The guide explicitly addresses the question of cost vs value and how time between the initial purchase and sale might affect the value.
This is even easier for businesses, since for things like bikes that strictly decrease in value, the donation value is probably just the purchased price - accrued depreciation (which itself was modeled using methods similar to FMV).
Food isn't "capital property" in general, so it's a different deduction, but in the end it comes out much the same. Which is what I said. The price they paid for it is already a deduction, so there is generally no further deduction from donating it vs. throwing it away and writing it off.
> This is even easier for businesses, since for things like bikes that strictly decrease in value, the donation value is probably just the purchased price - accrued depreciation (which itself was modeled using methods similar to FMV).
But that's the problem. They buy something, use it (or intend to use it but don't), and then throw it away. One way or another that allows them to write off the entire cost.
Which means there isn't any additional deduction available for donating it to a charity instead of wasting it at the end, so there is nothing there to offset their cost/risk of making a donation instead of throwing it in a dumpster, and that causes tons more stuff to end up in the dumpster.
It's easier to just not donate.
You claimed "There is a super high risk of getting sued if you give away food and someone gets sick". Now if you want to continue this claim, you need to provide citations. Who, exactly says that such "high risk" exists?
Their insurers and lawyers all advised against donating unused food because of the risk of a lawsuit that wasn't covered by insurance.
So people can post all the "facts" they want to but the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
Very. I resorted to creating a cycle count in the walk in after every shift (off the clock) and giving it away pre-packaged 'meal prep' to employees, as most were just college kids, as so much high quality Salmon, chicken breast and other proteins that otherwise just ended up wasted.
Its ironic because this restaurant got a James Beard Award for sustainability and low waste practices.
In other places I just made family meal with the 'scraps' leftover for BOH/FOH family meals as we normally got off at ~2am and choices for food sucked. Its just something I had adapted to after my apprenticeship in Biodynamic Ag, and wished I saw more of it in the Industry.
I'm not sure what to make of the bike thing, as the Lime scooters I rode were already pretty beat up and I used them not long after the deployed. I can't imagine what it must of have been for these bikes, the Google bikes around the Boulder campus look decent from afar (they're non EV, I think), but I never rode one so can't speak to its life-time.
Waste in all transportation looks like this, I wish I could show the amount of recall parts I threw out on a daily basis at BMW but I signed an NDA. Its often cheaper to just discard the parts as-is at a minor loss than it is to pay for a much bigger loss for shipping back to a factory and then pay staff to sort through it and only to do the same at their local facility.
I'm talking about pallet loads of differentials, driveshafts, and engine blocks as well as crate loads of ECUs etc... Although to be fair we did sell those for metal for their junk PM prices if/when I had down time.
I actually re-learned how to solder, barely only ok at it now, because I was taking wiring harnesses and LED taillights home and tearing them apart and putting them back together.
This is how a lot of VWs sat for a little over 2 years after the buyback [1]. Some made it back into the market, many didn't and I was just glad I wasn't in the Industry by then as it made me physically ill to see the waste a SOFTWARE issue ended up costing in an Environmental level.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/business/volkswagen-diese...
I referenced a legal organization which specializes in the area. The other citation quoted two additional lawyers plus organizations which do this regularly. If you want to dispute what they said, provide your own rebuttal with citations. Don't be childish by suggesting I've made misrepresentations.
> the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
The risk is so infinitesimally small that's it has never happened in the 25 or so years since the relevant legislation was introduced! I mean, if you want to describe that as "super high risk" like you did, I don't know what to tell you. I really don't.
> I worked with restaurants in a previous business. We tried to get them to donate food. Not a single one would because they were afraid of even the chance of being sued, because their liability insurance would not cover donations. Their insurers and lawyers all advised against donating unused food because of the risk of a lawsuit that wasn't covered by insurance.
Based on your cavalier attitude in spreading false information around the topic (while millions of Americans starve) I find it really, really hard to believe that this is something you would champion. Like, impossibly hard. Never mind that I'd expect someone intelligent like yourself to know what the law actually says if you were lobbying donations.
I'm frankly, very surprised you're so cavalier in spreading this misinformation. Stop spreading this lie and maybe less people will go hungry.
Frankly, I expected better from such a prominent HN'er.
Food waste is a terrible problem in this country. It is driven by a poor regulatory and legal environment that introduces unnecessary risk for restaurant owners to donate their food.
With the way things are now, it is too risky for a restaurant to donate. They haven’t been sued because they don’t typically do it.
I think major changes need to be made.
I think restaurants should be required to donate all extra viable food.
I think insurance should be required to cover those donations so they absorb the liability and therefore enforce safety.
But the way things stand now, you can’t in good conscience tell a restaurant to donate food without an intermediary organization in the area, and even then it’s risky.
No it isn't. It's perceived as too risky but that perception is demonstrably false. I've provided solid proof of this and you've provided nothing.
>They haven’t been sued because they don’t typically do it.
You can keep repeating the same things over and over all you want. But until you back it up with supporting citations it appears you're just making things up. Statistically speaking, if X00,000 restaurants and stores are doing it today without being sued, it's pretty safe to say it will be similar for X,000,000.
>But the way things stand now, you can’t in good conscience tell a restaurant to donate food without an intermediary organization in the area, and even then it’s risky.
Show me anything (tweet, blog post, whatever) from an actual lawyer or legal organization supporting this opinion and I'll donate $25 to the Food Bank of your choice (I'm serious).
I've provided legal support for my side of the argument already. It's your turn.
The thing that's so infuriating here is that that you're exasperating the problem you claim to want to solve. People scan threads and see this myth repeated so it reinforces their misconception about the matter.
Not only are you not helping, you're actively making it worse. Shame on you.
Here is an organization that collects excess food from restaurants, etc, and uses it to provide 20K meals a week to hungry people (in supposedly over-regulated San Francisco no less):
http://www.foodrunners.org/
If restaurants are throwing away food, it's because they don't care about the waste because there is no financial loss to them - and there are no local organizations like Food Runners to facilitate the donation.
http://www.foodrunners.org/donor-liability/
"(2) LIABILITY OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION.—A nonprofit organization shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that the nonprofit organization received as a donation in good faith from a person or gleaner for ultimate distribution to needy individuals."
The protections for nonprofits doing this sort of work are pretty extensive, in part because many such organizations in the US are religiously affiliated nonprofits.
Regarding the food distribution nonprofits:
> They assume the liability
> Right exactly. They are not liable
I'm not sure how to reconcile those comments of yours, but regardless, I think we agree that donations of food to non-profits for distribution to the needy incurs no liability for any of the parties involved, and haven't since 1996. It is a persistent myth that liability is a major disincentive to food donation, motivated by who-knows-what.
The USDA has even clearer guidance on this subject here:
https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-good...
And there are no lack of organizations to facilitate these donations with no liability:
https://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/resources/donations.htm
"There is no available public record of anyone in the United States being sued...because of harms related to donated food." [1]
[0] https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/re...
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/restaurants-that-dont-do...
The article I cited says one organization alone "has 650 cafes nationwide and donated more than 286,000 pounds of food last year." It also mentions several other organizations who do similar work.
The root problem is people spreading this misinformation. Please don't.
Lebron James gives bikes away as charity to help kids have a sense of freedom and mobility. I dont see how there isnt a better solution here https://www.bicycling.com/news/a22613790/a-bike-saved-lebron...
Uber no longer owns the bikes. Lime does. The title should read "Lime is destroying thousands of electric Jump bikes and scooters after buying them from Uber"
Other important details:
- these bikes and scooters intentionally use custom parts to deter theft and make it so it isn't viable to strip them for parts. It will be impossible for the purchaser of a used bike to buy replacement parts or charging equipment.
- the software used on these bikes is now owned by Lime
- there is a liability and regulatory issues with selling devices with rechargable batteries. None of the battery parts involved in the bikes are certified for legal sale.
> However, there were also "tens of thousands" of older-model bikes that Lime did not inherit as part of the deal.
and it's these.
> "tens of thousands" of older-model bikes that Lime did not inherit as part of the deal.
> Uber said in a statement. [...] "[...] we decided the best approach was to responsibly recycle them."