My analysis of Bird's unit economics in Tel Aviv:
https://twitter.com/ido_co/status/1080883756184023041
</Shameless-plug>
Wow, I find that pretty expensive.
I don't have scooter numbers for comparison and no idea aboul general cost of living in TLV, but in Munich I pay
- 1 EUR for 30min of rental bike ( negligible yearly cost of 3 EUR/year)
- 2.80 EUR for public transport (1.40 for short trips)
So yeah, the scooter is electric, but are people really using them for > 10minute rides?
Apparently they do.
> The average ride duration was 15.5 minutes.
They both charge 10 sek (USD 1.1) to unlock, where VOI charges 0.165 and Lime charges 0.330 per minute.
Bus stops are everywhere and a single ticket costs $2.75 where a 24 hour ticket in the same city zone costs $5.50 (so you always get this if returning), in addition to 25% off any rider in addition to the first on the ticket.
Riding to work (5 min) and back from the grocery store to home (another 5) costs me $5.5 on a Lime, the same as the bus which allows me to ride anywhere for 24 hours, and $3.86 on a VOI.
For any distances longer than that I'd rather take the bus, since it's warm, comfortable and a notably safer ride.
But take into consideration, that non-electric bikes are not very practical commute option during the Israeli summer (for most people).
Public transport (Bus only) is quite ineffective because of congestion.
The most obvious strategy I see is that the VCs think they can pump these companies then dump them on the open markets and cash out before thousands of global, regional, and local competitors flood in and make their non defensible positions obvious.
Maybe the scooter rentals are propping up another of the vc's concerns?
> The pair hit on a number of topics, including the unit economics, safety and seasonality of the scooter business
> What we see on the unit economics of those, it’s like night and day
Well said.
You can carefully lift them to the side, but people's inability to think of others being manifested so clearly is making me lose faith in people.
For a tech-pole, it is quite a backward city.
> On safety: In the year or so that scooters hit the mainstream in the U.S., there were casualties. Moreover, many — kids included — realized just how easy it is to get away with scootering sans helmet, while others rode throughout the night. Bird, to keep children off scooters, at least, requires customers to provide a driver’s license when they sign up. Given the number of issues that have arisen as scooters become increasingly popular, improved safety measures are bound to be in the news in the year ahead.
Apparently it's for a reason colinear to needing licenses to drive cars, ie, to limit irresponsible scooterers and minors who tend to disregard rules and be the most brash riders.
It just so happens it's also conveniently a great way to keep poor people and homeless people from making use of this even if they had the money for a ride, but then again maybe that's for their own good.
The biggest challenge I see of existing well-executed public transit/cities is last mile coverage for handicapped/disabled folks and sufficient infrastructure for them in stations without having to resort to uber/lyft for <1mile transit. If Bird/scooter industry expanded into solving these problems I would greatly celebrate. I get frustrated seeing Bird celebrated as the next coming of the steam engine, when it barely moves the needle for regular transit, without remotely addressing the biggest long-standing issues of the space.
We've already started to have drunks on scooters, elderly people feeling exposed to random vehicle hits, no-helmet fine issues, public nuisance, juicers hiding scooters to game the demand pricing/charging..
What we needed was integrated public transport on a non-profit basis. Lower cost fares, better integration. We got half of it. A really good high circumference e-ticket integrated fare scheme, but not cheap and with some serious computer-systems weaknesses. The transport planners are obsessed with reducing public cost, not with increasing public utility.
As it is right now it's a mobility issue for the disabled. I come from a country with no sidewalks with the disabled forever left to the mercy of their caretakers. I was simply amazed by the level of planning to accommodate them in the US. But now these scooters are blocking the sidewalks everywhere. What are the disabled going to do? Get up and move the scooter?
> scofflaw
> taking to the cleaners
> juicers
I normally would just go look it up, but this is a high density of jargon/colloquialisms. Or maybe it's not and I just never heard them, but I'm just offering my data point here.
Where I see the niche is medium distances were the metro is not a fast solution but if scooters are ubiquitously available for these situations, I see value in them.
And yeah, Tourists seem to love them.
I hope you are right. The littering / parking isn't the biggest problem or nuisance. It's the fact that the riders of these "e-scooters" almost always ride on the sidewalks / footpaths and cause safety hazard to pedestrians. Forget the fact that it's illegal[1] in most states to ride a motorized vehicle (other than disability vehicles) on the sidewalks, almost all of these lyme, scoot, bird riders ignore it and routinely cause collisions in San Francisco.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/scooters
> A motorized scooter may be operated on a bicycle path, trail or bikeway, but not on a sidewalk.
Related: Reminder: It Is Illegal to Ride Scooters On City Sidewalks => https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters-sidewalks-i...
It's more dangerous to ride them on streets, even on bike paths. Who cares if it's illegal? I'd rather ride on the sidewalk then get hit by a car trying to pass me at 45 mph.
I use the scooter because its faster than the bus for about the same price ~$3. And super fun.
https://www.eu-startups.com/2018/12/dott-raises-funding/
Amsterdam-based e-scooter startup dott raises €20 million to expand across European cities
Because streets were designed as car lanes, and bikes/scooters are niche transportation technologies [1] when compared to cars?
[1] Bikes and scooters are really only useful for short-distance individual transport. They do not handle long distances, groups, and cargo very well.
