Boosted Boards founders launch heavy-duty scooter renter Skip | Hacker News Reader

Boosted Boards founders launch heavy-duty scooter renter Skip

techcrunch.com

65 pointswaqasaday46 comments

Instead of the 'park it anywhere and inconvenience everyone else model' of deployment, the dockless scooter companies should advocate for dockless scooter dedicated parking spots/landing zones around the city.

The dockless scooter companies should negotiate (and pay a daily fee to) the cities to convert say every 100th car parking spot into a dedicated spot to park your scooter/bike.

I think this would be fair as one existing car parking spot could serve 10-20 dockeless scooters/bikes [1]. And it would require no effort other than repainting the parking spots and the city revenue (i.e $20 per day per spot) would be about the same if not slightly more.

[1] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/06/bike-share-do...

[additional edit] Or alternatively, the city could just mark/paint out dedicated spots on the existing sidewalk that are currently underutilized (i.e. out of the way of existing pedestrian traffic) and that ends up leading to more city revenue in addition to car parking.

I agree in theory but loss aversion: https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/... indicates that most people won't want to convert one car parking spot into 10 bike parking spots or 20 scooter parking spots until after people have realized how convenient and fast alternatives are.

That, combined with status-quo bias and city bureaucracy, is a major problem. In the meantime, vast numbers of large dockless vehicles continue to be a problem in the U.S.: https://slate.com/business/2018/04/astounding-photos-capture...

'Most people won't want to convert one car parking spot'

>> I guess then it comes down to who decides the parking spot allocation rules. Politicians/city managers who are accountable to city residents? I'd imagine a lot of car drivers are people coming in from the suburbs outside the city who do not have voting rights, whereas bike/scooter riders are more likely to be local and could vote in the city elections.

>> Or alternatively, the city could just mark/paint out dedicated spots on the existing sidewalk that are currently underutilized (i.e. out of the way of existing pedestrian traffic) and that ends up with more city revenue. Plus with dedicated spots, the scooter charging team then can further optimizing the daily charging routes.

Are these things really much of an inconvenience to you? The vast majority of the ones I've seen are parked in reasonable locations.

This could be further improved by better education of users, requiring the user take a photo of their parking job, easily allowing other people to submit complaints, and warning then banning repeat offenders.

It doesn't bother me specifically, but I've only seen it in the context of a wide boulevard (i.e. along the Embaracadero in SF). Its more to address the potential complaints and potential issues in say the Mission.

There's also the tangential benefit of there being an increasing likelihood, I'll have access to a scooter if they are all clustered in the same spot.

It's a much easier fleet management on the backend as well, maybe some machine learning prediction of where more scooters are needed throughout the day could be applied.

It irritates people to have brightly colored bike-shaped ads strewn about residential, non-commercial neighborhoods.

And this is different from brightly colored car-shaped ads how?

They're novel. They are in unexpected places such as sidewalks, rather thank locked up like basically any privately owned bicycle. Depending on the neighborhood, there may be no car-shaped ads at all.

Self-driving scooters/segways dock themselves.

That turns it into an effectively docked scooter. It’s been tried and isn’t terrible, but not as beloved as true dockless.

I think it solves the major issues with docked scooters/bikes which is the infrastructure cost of installing the large docking stations which increases the rollout costs. This artificially creates a monopoly on bike sharing in a given city. It also limits the number of stations that can cost effectively exist.

Two big problems with docked remain with “pseudodocked” — 1) need to get approval to eliminate a parking space and 2) users have to walk a bit at the start and/or end of the journey.

I think you dramatically underestimate how difficult that would be. What incentive does the city have to sit down with them and take them seriously? Inevitably some people will complain about the scooters, even if they're in the road and not on the sidewalk. The problem is you can't have both sides of the argument represented before people even know about the scooters and have been able to see whether or not they're useful. Permissionless innovation makes possible all kinds of improvements that would never gain enough momentum to get off the ground otherwise.

(Also, to push back on your argument about the fee part - most of the city has free street parking. Why should scooter companies pay to let people park scooters there when cars weren't paying previously? In the ideal scenario you're proposing, we should just get rid of some street parking to make room for other uses. Let's start cutting down on the massive amount of money we spend subsidizing car ownership.)

Agreed, following the SV mantra of work under the radar to prove the business model until the cities legislate a la Uber/Airbnb, this makes sense (and seems to be the path chosen). The paid dedicated scooter parking zones would be the fallback option if the city puts forth a plan to outright ban dockless scooters or the scooter companies want to start playing nicely proactively.

"In the ideal scenario you're proposing, we should just get rid of some street parking to make room for other uses. Let's start cutting down on the massive amount of money we spend subsidizing car ownership."

>> Yup agree - maybe start putting car parking meters up where there is free car parking and use that money to repaint some of the spots for dockless bikes/scooter parking zones!

Everyone is telling you "this is a dumb idea that will never work", but that is effectively what we are doing her every in Isla Vista, CA. The County Public Works department has decided on some red curbed locations that they are willing to convert into dockless bike storage regions, the nearby University is making all of their existing bike rack areas be viable options, and everyone is trying to coordinate with the local Recreation & Park District to get some locations inside of parks.

As a long time Boosted Board fan, and someone who's underwhelmed by the current crop of rental scooters, I'm interested to try this.

I'm also somewhat surprised Boosted Boards themselves haven't released other light electric vehicles like scooters and bicycles. I'd guess the market for non-skateboard electric vehicles is much larger, and a lot of the expertise they have should transfer.

I think a lightweight (~15 lbs) commuter scooter with ~5 mile range, ~16 MPH top speed, maybe an integrated charger and shoulder sling, and Boosted Board's design and quality would kill it.

I remember Boosted's mission from the beginning being something like "improving last-mile personal transportation." My hunch is that the electric skateboard market is bigger than they expected so the company just keeps growing with one product category.

All the ethics and controversy of ScooterGate aside, this is a good move for those who like these scooters.

I've ridden them in SF a few times and they are extremely underpowered. When you hit the slightest incline they go <10mph. I have consistently wondered why they can't be as fast as Boosted Boards, which seem to fly up any hill in San Francisco. So ... case closed I guess.

we have not reached peak scooter yet. and that’s a good thing. i say bring them all on, they have really solved a good balance of personal but light transportation

I have moved from Paris to San Francisco relatively recently.

The transportation system is pretty poor here compared to Paris.

I don't want to own a car. Driving has always been a chore to me and inferior to all the other modes of transportation where I don't have to focus on the road.

I am lucky enough to live 20 minutes by foot from my workplace.

I bought a boosted board, it is great when I want to commute a little bit quicker or need to go to the other side of the city.

pros : way faster than walking, can be hooked on my bag. cons : not very stable, you have to share the road with cars on many streets.

A scooter sounds interesting. With bigger wheels, it should be more stable, and it should still be possible to carry it.

Is there really that much money to be made from rent-able scooters? I imagine a business can be made out of it but this level of competition seems amazing to me. There is no differentiation from the products.

This post on Bird's unit economics is pretty good. https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/10/how-to-understand-the-fina...

Interestingly since charging the electric scooter is such an additional complication w.r.t. unit economics, it'd be great to see them just make them kick scooters (i.e. foot powered with no motor like the OG Razor scooter) with the only electronics being the GPS/cellphone locator unit?

You then mitigate the speed/helmet concerns somewhat as well.

Given the terrain, these would flow downward to collect like pools of water at the lowest points in San Francisco :)

Then you’re basically renting a 3lb $50 commodity- anyone who wants one could gave one with them at any time. There’s no real market for mass rentals of that type of thing - cheap and portable.

companies like http://immotor.com/ are trying to solve that with swappable batteries that the user owns rather than the rental service.

interesting idea, but i haven't really thought through it to figure out if it makes more sense or not.

You make money from VCs, IPO if you are lucky, then quickly move on before company collapses. Just look at China.

I would love to actually just buy one of the scooters; I'm looking at getting something robust that can handle gravel, water, dirt, etc in questionable Stockholm weather.

Awesome. I love they designed the scooter to facilitate a service model right from the get-go.

Personally, I'm bearish on the light electric vehicle sharing model due to skepticism on the unit economics.

Skip will also be a great piece of evidence for large automakers thinking of running their own ride-sharing services on their own automobiles.

Electric scooters are interesting but this is a straight up advertisement.

Looking forward to Casey Neistat's upcoming review of this.

All it takes is one accident or false move and you will have years of pain (and potentially medical procedures and/or drugs) if not death.

Yup, probably safest to just stay inside.

Everyone I know (including myself) who has ridden a dockless rentable electric scooter has found it the inferior personal transit option in SF. What exactly is making these founders think this is a worthwhile option?

The bikeshares, the electric bikes, even boosted boards are all great. A personal non-electric scooter is great. They have designated places to go, or you bring them inside with you.

The public nuisance (lack of sensible parking), the safety concerns/lack of rules (ride on sidewalk or street, helmet or no, etc), the 10mph cap (slower than a manual scooter), and mediocre economics make it seem worse than everything. What are the pros that people care about?

Welp let me be your first counterexample. I work downtown and I LOVE the dockless scooters. I usually walk or take Muni, but I've found myself using these pretty frequently to go all or part of the way. I've also found them super fun to use with friends, when going to get lunch at a place that's a little farther away than walking distance etc.

I'm not sure why bikes never appealed to me, I like biking but it feels less casual. I just feel like I can grab a scooter and go.

I disagree about the public nuisance as well, of all the things that challenge San Francisco I think electric scooters on the streets are the least of our worries. The public safety concern I agree with you to an extent about, but I see people biking without helmets and boosted boarding without helmets regularly as well. Riding on sidewalks is annoying, police just need to start issuing more tickets.

I like them. Bicycles are too sweaty. I don't ride on sidewalks for more than half a block because (A) I'm not an asshole and (B) my entire commute has bike lanes. Even if I am forced onto the sidewalk I either ride walking speed or walk the scooter. They aren't capped at 10, they are capped at 15mph. It's faster and cheaper than a Lyft for my daily commute (Tenderloin to lower SOMA). I park them out of the way so that nobody can trip on them (my work has a nice spot right outside where they can live). You're correct - I should probably wear a helmet.

In all reality, I'm probably going to end up buying one for myself as it will be cheaper within a year, but it will come at the cost of having to carry it indoors (or lock it some place?) when I go somewhere other than work.

Everyone I know who has ridden a dockless rentable electric scooter has absolutely loved them. I've used them to commute to/from work (what would normally be a 20 minute walk turns into <10 minutes if I'm in a rush), quickly return home from ~3 miles away after running into Golden Gate Park (too sweaty for a Lyft), and running errands to destinations a bit out of walking distance during rush hour when public transit/Lyft would be painfully slow. The added benefit is that the scootering was more fun and less or comparably expensive to the alternatives.

Scooters have advantages over bikes as well for this type of usage. It is far easier to switch to pedestrian mode (i.e. walking next to the scooter) when you need to navigate a crowded cross walk or slow down suddenly and get up on the sidewalk when an aggressive taxi/Lyft/bus stops short in front of you or turns across you. Your center of gravity is lower than on a bike lessening the impact from falls in some cases.

The parking debate seems pretty bimodal and has been debated seemingly endlessly already...

The safety concerns complaint is interesting. Lots of bikers already ride without helmets but no one seems to care/complain about them too much. Lots of complaints about safety riding on the sidewalks, but I haven't seen much hard evidence that collisions are actually happening en masse.

A 10-15 mph cap in SF seems totaly fine for what is meant to be a casual, relatively short distance means of travel.

How are you concluding that the economics are mediocre?

> Your center of gravity is lower than on a bike

I do t believe this is/should be true. On a bike you are lower than you would be standing up - on a scooter you’re several inches taller than when standing up.

These seem like decent points. My reaction to them is mostly from riding my own manual scooter prior to the electric ones became prevalent in SF, and finding the electric share experience inferior in every way, as opposed to bikeshares being superior to owning my own bike.

Re: economics - My scooter is cheap (second hand for $10, new for $~40), and I wouldn't mind even if I lost it -- which is unlikely given I can just bring it into wherever I'm stopping instead of locking it outside -- so even though $1-2 per ride is cheap for transit, merely 5-20 rides later it's past the economics of scooter ownership, with few of the advantages of using a share program.

- owning a personal kick scooter and keeping it in my apartment really doesn't take up much space (I just leave mine on top of a shoerack next to the door once collapsed)

- it requires 0 maintenance

- I average over 10mph by being able to go significantly faster on even a slight downhill on a bike lane. (I hear some scooters go up to 15, that's much more decent)

On the other bikeshares provide me all those pros. [edit: formatting]

Another counter-point. I and everyone I've talked to love the idea. I mostly commute by my own bike, and generally prefer walking for most errands or short trips. The scooters are an easy (and fun!) way to make short trips more practical especially when I don't want to deal with trying to secure a bike in SF.

Of course there are serious issues to be worked out and there will be growing pains. I'm particularly concerned about the number of riders (scooters and e-bikes alike) without helmets, as well as the influx of people who are finally realizing that they don't have to take a car everywhere they want to go learning to navigate a crowded urban area (and a bike lane/sidewalk!) for the first time.

Electric scooters/skateboards and e-bikes are a menace to society. I'm a NYC cyclist whose travels went from terrifying to death-defying ever since e-bikes became commonplace here. These things travel at a flat 20mph in total silence. Such speed is beyond what most plain old cyclists can achieve by simply pedaling. On a daily basis I'm forced to dodge when a e-bike/board/scooter rider recklessly passes me with not an inch to spare. These people treat common courtesy and traffic laws as loose guidelines meant for someone else.

There are good reasons why personal electric vehicles are illegal in New York: they're unsafe for everyone involved without proper licensing of operators and safety inspection of vehicles. Drivers of motor vehicles are obligated to carry insurance and are held accountable for their offenses under the law, but operators of e-bikes/boards/scooters will kill or maim another person just as well as a car will, but will face no consequences except for maybe, possibly a civil lawsuit... assuming they're ever caught.

Now yet another hyped up startup is making an attempt to profit at the expense of my and my family's safety. I will not allow this, and will continue my citizen's campaign against illegal vehicles in my city. No quarter will be given until they're all gone. I consider e-bikes/boards/scooters a physical assault against my personal safety, and respond just like I would respond to any physical assault.

> respond just like I would respond to any physical assault.

Do tell.

I raise my arms in an X-formation to absorb the blow. Then I take off my sunglasses, look them dead in the eye, and coolly give them a piece of my mind, terminated with a small wink to let them know I'm not going to escalate any further if they don't want to. But, heh, usually they comply like puddy in my hands due to my tall muscular 5'10 build. Not usually a problem. ;)

> but operators of e-bikes/boards/scooters will kill or maim another person just as well as a car will

If you can't tell the difference between a Bird scooter and an SUV you're not going to get a lot of buy in to your resistance movement. Also, there are plenty of asshole cyclists without battery assists, but somehow society marches forward without requiring everyone with a bike to hold insurance.

I agree. Rude bicyclists are the problem. It doesn't matter if it is going 5mph or 20mph, getting hit is going to hurt.

And honestly I've never been almost hit by an e-bike, but I have definitely almost been hit by a bike going the wrong way or not obeying traffic sign(al)s.

Let's just admit it: commuting in NYC, regardless of your mode, is absurdly dangerous and none of us obey traffic sign(al)s anyway so watch out.

This sounds a lot like a horse and buggy driver complaining about cars when they were first introduced.

Sorry, but light electric vehicles are incredibly practical, efficient, and eco-friendly. They're not going anywhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com