Bird isn’t WeWork. Yes, they’re unviable on a unit basis now. But that’s a hardware problem. They’ve grabbed market share; now they must build margins through R&D. The traditional model is R&D first market capture second, but there isn’t a fundamental reason not to go the other way when the R&D is reasonably feasible.
If I start seeing them around enough I might go to the trouble, but that requires a fair amount of density to start working.
If some new company with deep enough pockets starts promising No Unlock Fee and $0.15/min, they could quickly capture a lot of Bird, Lime, etc's market share. They'd be burning cash at an unsustainable rate, but there is no moat between these businesses at the moment.
I think it's a social engineering problem. If the scooters didn't get routinely destroyed by people 1. smashing them into curbs because it's fun or 2 tossing them in the river because they're obnoxious / blocking the sidewalk, I believe they'd be already be profitable, or at least close.
People hate the scooters. People who ride the scooters hate the scooters. Hell, I like the scooters, and I hate the scooters. :-)
I would also like to see them ticketing the riders for reckless driving/endangering of the people. I almost had an accident 2 weeks ago because some stupid riders decided to race on the street. I also see some of them riding in the sidewalks zipping through pedestrians and many times hitting their bags.
And you’ll see that most scooter riders on sidewalks are going max speed. It has made walking in cities with these things a lot more annoying, and it was already bad enough with cars but at least cars are separated from walkers.
Strong operations will allow bird to continue to cut costs.
(I'm hoping) There's still room to innovate on winterized, electric, single person products.
They mostly replace walking, which people do year-round, throughout the day, and well into the late night. At least this is true in my neighborhood.