Bird One - $1299 | Hacker News Reader

Bird One - $1299

shop.bird.co

19 pointsmariusz33128 comments

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19859632

I think electric unicycles are superior to electric scooters in most of the ways. If you're thinking about buying an electric scooter I'd recommend you to consider a one-wheeler instead. Once you learn how to ride, which takes about a week, it's much more comfortable and mobile than a scooter. You can take your wheel with you to a mall or a cinema and be on the go whenever.

I agree but the issue with EUCs is the learning curve and the risk of injury during learning. I beat myself up a bit learning to ride mine, but it was worth it -- way better than a scooter.

How do they compare with regards to injury rate? I like having a handlebar.

If you're learning with no guidance or your wheel is buggy you may fall down a couple of times but it's mostly very mild since you just jump off. Some injuries can happen if you get cocky and not careful but I've fallen down 3 times already (1.5 years experience) and the worst I got was slightly damaged skin on my hands.

I'm more worried about in the event of a vehicle collision. I had an EcoReco scooter for a time. A vehicle turned in front of me, I ran into it. It would have been much worse for me if the handlebar had not collided with the car first.

> or your wheel is buggy you may fall down a couple of times but it's mostly very mild since you just jump off.

I've been cycling in London and I have to do unexpected hard breaks daily; pedestrians walk of the pavement without looking around, fellow cyclist makes unexpected move, etc. If the vehicle can't hard break and you just jump off, how can you avoid to hurt others?

Would it be easier to learn if you already know how to ride a pedal unicycle?

I don't know. Probably -> riding pedal unicycle seems crazy difficult compared.

Successful pivoting from service to products isn't common. I'm guessing their financials on the rental model aren't panning out.

This is an attempt to Tesla/iPhone the scooter market. Let's see what the consumer appetite is. I'm guessing the Bird brand is already tarnished with adjectives like "cheap" and "broken" so this may be an uphill battle.

If they stocked n-thousand of these scooters, why not see how many people are willing to buy them (at 600% markup)? They already have whatever economies of scale for stocking the scooters for their rental business.

Yeah why not? Just charge a price and see what happens. Willingness to pay is based on value perception and that's a hard thing to gauge.

I'm not seeing a rosy path to victory though.

I bought a Xiaomi Mi scooter on Amazon last year for $499. This is the same scooter Bird started with.

So far it’s been great. There’s a “Mi Home” app that shows you remaining charge and an estimate of miles left, plus total miles driven. It’s also got a charge indicator on the scooter itself.

The owned scooters go a bit faster than the rental ones, and the battery lasts about 15 miles total.

So far it’s been useful to eliminate short drives or Lyfts (coming back from dropping off the car to get new tires is one example; going to local restaurants is another.) It folds up easily and can lock to a bike rack or stow under a table at a restaurant.

We’ve put 110 miles on it so far, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but considering most of our trips on it are far less than a mile, it’s been worth the money.

At $1299, though, I can’t see why this Bird scooter would be worth so much more than the Xiaomi. This landing page doesn’t help; it seems to assume the people reading don’t know about $500 scooters. Perhaps that is their target market, but in that case, I don’t think this will sell that well.

Part of me thought this is parody.

It's a practical joke and the punchline hits when you find yourself $1299 and tax lighter struggling to maintain 10mph with buses and rideshare cars whizzing past you and the curb.

Won't people steal this?

The rule is anything with 2 wheels will get stolen.

20 free rides maxed at $5 per ride. They raised prices recently to around 0.25$ a minute.

Terrible incentive. Why be so cheap? Should be incentivizing purchase of a $1200 scooter with way more free rides.

I'm guessing their investors had them over hot coals and this was a negotiated number.

Is this going to be $800 better than the cheapo Aliexpress scooters?

nope

Please choose an informative title.

With all costs factored in, I wonder how many hours you would have to save on rented birds to start saving money?

Weird move for a rental company imo.

> The owner of this website (shop.bird.co) has banned the country or region your IP address is in (KR) from accessing this website.

Wonderful.

Are there specs anywhere? Some of my questions:

- Range on a charge

- Max hill slope with 150lb person

- Ground clearance

All 3 are going to be far worse than a 2-stroke powered scooter that costs 1/6 the price.

Marketing copy for scooter company selling a scooter: "This isn't a scooter"

Insert eye-roll here. Honestly this is so bad it feels like an April fools joke or something.

rather get a onewheel instead

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