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Comment by ccwilson10 | Hacker News Reader

It'll be interesting to see how the new "ride sharing" economy of scooters and bikes impacts their bottom line. The scooters are very popular in SF so far and Uber recently launched in Santa Monica. Seems like a more scalable way to get into cities and not rely on a driver infrastructure.

Anyone have any idea of the ROI of a scooter so far?

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Cost of a scooter is very conservatively $300 At $2 a ride, 10 rides a day, you earn that back in 2 weeks.

Retail cost of the scooters is ~$600. They're probably getting a discount but I doubt it's 50%. No idea about the actual ride volume. Not that this changes your numbers that much, but just adding some context.

I got a Xiaomi scooter for $305 directly from them as part of a 10 scooter order (including shipping costs). Bird and Lyft both use these exact scooters. I'm sure they are getting a better deal than I did, but the tariffs have since kicked in so $300 is probably right on the money.

the difference between wholesale and retail pricing is usually 50%, its called "keystone pricing".

I have done some pencil math about the unit economics of these scooters a few times but I have to guess at usage rates, attrition, permit fees, and labor costs. I want to write out my reasoning here so I can share my thinking.

I assume the cost of a scooter when factoring in shipping is around $300, but you have to add the cost of modifications (GPS, stickers, software) and shipping to the final destination so lets call it $400 because that's round but probably a little low. How long does it take to earn back that $400?

The ride-rate is about 5 times a day with lets say a $2.50 price tag on average https://qz.com/1325064/scooters-might-actually-have-good-uni...

There are costs to keeping the scooters active. Bird pays $5 a scooter minimum to charge them every night and I would estimate another $2 per scooter per day in permit fees based on Bird offering $1 a day.

That's (5 rides/day * $2.50/ride - $7/day) * x days = $400 or about a 73 days for a scooter to earn back it's cost. Anything on top of that pays overhead. 1% attrition per-day (a guess) would mean a 100 day life-span, so $150 profit on a $400 investment in under 3 months.

My model starts to indicate they'd lose money when the ride-rate drops, daily labor costs rise, or the attrition rises, but I basically guessed at all of those.

You can play with the variables but it is easy to see how the scooters can make money, or how they can fail.

I also think if the scooters really catch on, people will buy them like bikes and put pressure on the price of rides.

If the ride rate drops, it probably won't be that harmful, because less milage will occur per day. You won't get your return as fast, but you'll still get your return unless vandalism is a big part of the that cycle rate.

The scooters and bikes are a complete nuisance in my city. The companies littered almost every intersection with 4-8 scooters. I don't see the bikes as much anymore, other than stolen ones that every homeless person seems to have now. I have seen a total of 3 people riding the scooters ever. They are often tipped over into the sidewalk or into the bike lane or roadway. You can go into certain parts of town and it literally looks like all sidewalk space has been surrended to parking lots for these bikes and scooters.

This was my impression when I went to Santa Monica/Venice last December and I had to step over an unused Bird scooter every 3rd step. But recently I was in Atlanta and they are hugely popular there. Everyone from little kids to office workers with helmets on were using them. I wish they were in my city, seems like an awesome way to travel <10 blocks. I'll be going to LA and Atlanta both fairly soon and will def give the scooters a try.

ehh last december might have been too early, to be fair. These days I see people using the scooters almost every time I go outside

It's kind of hilarious to hear this kind of complaint when 10x or more space is taken up with car parking space.

Indeed. We got so used to cars that it feels "normal". However car kills tons of people (especially pedestrians within cities), take tons of space and are much more loud. But somehow, we are worried about those scooters.

Even in places like Santa Monica where you have the rich people complaining about nuisance they will still be popular because they're a reliable form of green transportation.

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