Rental E- scooters less profitable than imagined

[Deleted member 4210]

Wow. This business model is doomed to fail. Bird claims their scooters that people rent in cities, need to be operational and earning money for 180 days just to break even. Cities collecting data, such as Louisville, are getting 29 days before escooters having to be replaced. Some areas report as high as 116 days. Repairs, theft, failing batteries, and more lead to short lives.

Nothing close to breaking even.

The business model is much worse than I ever imagined, and I thought it was doomed from day 1. Principally bc the share concept based on 1099 gig workers to keep it afloat would end up very expensive to make work, with such fragile equipment, prone to crashes by inexperienced users, that gets constantly abused by even experienced users. Second, bc far too many people are getting serious injuries and these things are operating in areas that are just too Congested by people, cars, many hazards , and obstacles, with literally no protection, for even the smallest of crashes. The wheels are too tiny, so even things as small as pebbles can become hazardous.

It seems to me to be the penultimate of a throw away society, h*** bent on nothing but speed and 'convenience'.

 

[ArmyHokie]

It will be interesting to see how this immature business model evolves. Other transportation-sharing ventures with cars and bikes also struggle with profitability, yet venture capitalists and investors appear to see a long term opportunity. Bird claims its new scooter will last 10 months. Seems like a sector that could benefit from some consolidation.

 

[Deleted member 4210]

Businesses that exist solely as a function of the existence of the Internet, have a hard time staying profitable at all. That's bc everyone who wants to do that same business, can, also using the Internet. Amazon is a perfect example, and Bezos himself acknowledges it. If not for their prime memberships, they would have zero profits. It gets worse though, as that has been eroding, so they have been forced to diversify into cloud computing, hosting massive servers, and doing government work, where again they are highly subsidized in a wholly rigged market.

And now amazon is going after another rigged and monopolistic market called prescription drugs. If it doesn't it would be dead like Sears has been dying.

And now Amazon is spending billions buying up real estate to get into brick and mortor. Funny that. They kill competition at brick and mortars by below cost pricing, only to come back and exist as a brick and mortar with a monopolistic advantage.

Rad Power will be forced to eventually do something similar as it won't be profitable solely selling on line. Selling on line has several significant limitations and huge costs that no one talks about, along with no inherent allegiance or loyalty building practices. Prime membership is a weak way to establish some 'loyalty ' but amazon has to keep giving away more and more 'benefits' to keep those memberships.

So Bird and others like them have some nexnet to insurmountable obstacles. The number one will simply be ownership. And whaddaya know they are starting to sell their own scooters. my take: they're DOA.

 

[harryS]

Interesting article about how a decision to make it easier to dock a rental bike in Chicago resulted in over 8% of Chicago's Divvy fleet being stolen last year. The rental program reportedly made money in 2017, but with over $600K of bikes missing last year....who knows.

https://m.chicagoreader.com/chicago...ecurity-hardware-removed/Content?oid=58659144