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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

I don't get it. If scooters are so great, then why doesn't everyone just buy their own? Seem much simpler than checking them in and out of special built bike racks.

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Convenience of course. Coffee is easy and cheap to make, but millions of people pay for coffee every day. Lunch is easy to make, but again, millions of people outsource that to someone who specializes in making lunch. Not owning something is one less thing to worry about--no securing it, no charging it, no maintaining it, no buying it. Sign me up.

Then I have to deal with theft in the same way I would with a personal bike. And it's nice that these don't have docks. Tired of them on the sidewalk? You could mark off a parking spot every block or so and have room for a ton of scooters to park at the cost of just one car parking spot.

Making it communal is a potential opportunity to sidestep all that. (Though some places have still seen people screwing with the system.)

Most scooters don't have docks. It takes you 10 seconds to unlock it, and you just get off and walk away anywhere when you're done.

Renting means you don't have to bring it into a restaurant, figure out what to do with it when you're drunk, walk when you left it at the office the night before, etc.

You just leave them in the streets when you're done riding? How can you prevent theft?

They "lock" automatically, and beep when you try to move them. They're also GPS tagged.

I imagine the theory is that the parts aren't worth enough to really be stolen (and unless you modify them, they can't be used without the app). And of course, theft is worked into their business model.

1. Convenience/Security: You don't have to deal with locking it up somewhere or carrying it into an office. You don't need to worry about it getting stolen.

2. Charging: You don't have to charge it/worry about it running out of power.

Same as cars and Uber. You dont need to take care of them, you don't need to take them with you when you travel. Renting a high end scooter a couple of times might make more sense than buying a cheap one.

A car is a >=$500/month headache. The "high end" scooters cost $300-500 and are small enough to fit in your closet. Anyone who plans on using one regularly will be better off buying one.

Lyft/Uber cars are reliable and guaranteed to come to your door in 5-10 minutes. With these scooters you have to hope that there's one around and walk a few blocks to pick it up.

I use Citibike for much the same reason that I'd be interested in rental scooters: You can just leave them parked outside and they're not your problem. If you own it, then you need to worry about it potentially getting stolen, plus you have to take it with you even if you end up using a different mode of transportation after that, like sharing a cab with friends, hopping on the subway, whatever.

You might be with a group of people. There are places that won't let me bring the scooter in, etc etc.

So they're competing with Uber/Lyft for the short random trips that you might occasionally take at almost the same price.

In NYC people use citi bikes for their daily commute because most of us don't have space for a bike and locking one on the street is a bad idea. I see people with regular scooters, skateboards and boosted boards at coffee shops and on the subway all the time so an electric scooter shouldn't be that big of an issue.

> So they're competing with Uber/Lyft for the short random trips that you might occasionally take at almost the same price.

Random trips create more random trips, they complement each other. When everybody is tied to their personal vehicle, the return leg will always be on the same mode. One-way friendly TaaS makes all other forms of one-way friendly transportation now attractive, relative to personal vehicle use.

It's for anyone who needs to go somewhere 0.7 miles away but doesn't want to walk or get an Uber.

It's not whether it would be an issue or not, it's whether I want to carry it around.

In my experience in San Francisco (before all the scooters were taken off the streets last weekend), going ~3 miles on a scooter was much easier, more practical, and more fun than I expected. (And affordable.) I agree that 0.7m is right on the edge of whether it's worth walking versus grabbing a scooter. But 3 miles is a nice sweet spot. ~20 minutes on the scooter. ~25 minutes on the bus. ~50 minutes walking. Scooter and bus are about the same cost. And our hills make part of almost any 3 mile walk a pretty strenuous activity.

I don't doubt that there are edge cases where these are convenient. I'm really just questioning the business model.

Right now these services are a novelty so a lot of people use them but they don't really pass the toothbrush test. Their top users will do the math at some point and end up buying a scooter to use for their daily commute.

That seems very likely.

The bike hire system in Copenhagen is underused -- most of the business is from tourists rather than locals, since most locals own a bicycle, or quickly buy one.

If the scooters become popular, the risk of theft will drop significantly, and then there's not much reason not to own one.

You could say the same for Starbuck's daily customers. At 2 dollars a day (the cheapest option), they should all be making coffee from home.

Don't underestimate the power of convenience.

Honest question. What is this demographic which will ride a scooter but don’t want to walk less than a mile. Just seems weird to me personally. I wouldn’t think twice about walking that far given infrastructure that supports scooters.

>Honest question. What is this demographic which will ride a scooter but don’t want to walk less than a mile.

Professionals that don't want to arrive at work all sweaty because it's a hot day.

People who need to be somewhere in 5-10 minutes and don't want to jog.

People who generally value their time more than the cost of the ride.

> Anyone who plans on using one regularly will be better off buying one.

This, if you are using a scooter more than once a day renting for $1.75 a ride simply does not make any financial sense.

As a counterpoint, I live SF and do not have room to spare in my closets or anywhere else in my apartment for a scooter. Urban living...

You're paying for the service of being able to leave your scooter in public somewhere and have someone else collect and recharge it. That's the service: these companies are selling the time of economically marginal collector/recharger folks.

After trying a Bird scooter once and really enjoying the experience, I came to a similar conclusion. I bought the same model electric scooter that Bird uses for around ~$500 and I've been commuting to work with it for the past couple of weeks. I love it. It's such a fun way to get around. I imagine there are others like me, who might have become regular Bird customers if owning the scooter wasn't this affordable.

If you think buying a m365 for $500 is attractive, wait till Xaiomi will sell you one for $300, the actual price, when bird isn't pushing up Long Beach port imported scooters with its vc money!

Honestly, I feel lucky to have bought one for $500 as they went out of stock the very next day and have remained out of stock for nearly a month.

There will be plenty available once this demand shock wears off but yeah you got lucky during this crunch.

If you use it to commute the same route every day then it makes sense to have your own, but if you’re using them for occasional trips around town then maybe not.

Now, if someone made a motorized version of those shoes with wheels in the heels...

They're dockless.

This is really bad logic. This is the same thing as saying, "If cars are really that great, then why doesn't everyone buy their own? Seems much simpler than using Lyft"

Almost everyone does, though.

>Almost everyone does, though.

Not in London (or, indeed, much of the UK). Not in Manhattan. Not any city where parking can take 20 minutes to find and costs $30+ a day.

Most people where I live (Manhattan) do not own their own car. We don't all live in the suburbs. And the scooter rentals are clearly targeting cities, not suburbs.

17 million cars a year are still sold in the US, so clearly ridesharing isn’t preferred that much more over vehicle ownership (perhaps if you’re in a city and without kids).

Having two kids, I couldn’t imagine dragging two car seats with us Lyft to Lyft. Rather just own the car.

No ridesharing either if no one buys cars.

You are being downvoted bc the analogy is bad. Owning a m365 scooter provides 95% of the lime experience. Owning a car provides, like 10% to 50% of the Lyft experience, depending on many personal/geo variables.

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