Uber is destroying thousands of electric bikes and scooters following Jump sale
bbc.com
bbc.com
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/Vtmg6k-JNp0wpEtDo_RvOcoT...
Its akin to removing repairability from products designed to be inseparable from eternal profit-taking. What the much-touted 'free market' they talk up really wants is product that lasts and/or can be fixed or repurposed. I've never heard anyone say 'I love to buy crap' or 'I'm okay with buying a new one frequently'. What they mean by 'free' - of regulation - is unsustainable.
Other people aren't - they don't form an emotional bond with a used electric motor or an empty drink bottle. They just use whatever's available and focus on other aspects of their life besides material objects. I think this is more normal for young people who grew up with plentiful cheap products and all these renting and sharing services. For them, the value is in the use, not the possession.
People react emotionally to waste not because of emotional attachments to things but because wasting feels shameful to people who worry about having enough. I wonder how many poor people could have been helped by a free electric bike. Unfortunately this would potentially compete with ubers services.
I agree with the shameful thing. But a lot of older people do have enough yet they carry the emotional baggage of their poor younger selves. I know people who save old broken appliances with the aim of repairing or selling them oneday but eventually realized nobody wants a box of old electrical plugs or a broken washing machine from the 1970's when even the poorest people are given free money to buy a washing machine by social welfare and used electrical cables are practically free.
They are often poor because although they do a substantial degree of useful work society doesn't value the work they do very much because there is more than enough people available to do it instead of starving. This is how economics works. Let me reiterate, most poor people in America work! Your particular myopic world view is common enough it has a name. The just world hypothesis. I'm sorry you can't see the people around you very clearly. I'm poor. Nobody has ever offered me money to buy a washing machine. I don't do drugs. I don't like McDonald's. I don't get drunk. I have a job but my wife cant due to medical issues and receives no help of any kind because of it. Most of my money goes to buy food, shelter and medical care. If you walked by me you wouldn't notice that I looked especially poor. I dress decently but virtually my entire wardrobe is courtesy of better class thrift stores where I paid aprox $2 per item. Last year I probably spent about 30% of my earnings on medical insurance + care alone.
VCs are willing to take risks, with some justification: people can only innovate if they're given permission to fail.
Metal is quite recyclable and the paths for doing so are extremely well-trod.
They’ll melt the scrap, fear not.
Covid-19 has made me forget that IMO we have about 20 years of comfortable life on this planet. Yeah yeah the human race will go on, but you and I will probably die of heat exhaustion some time in 204x...
But building these bikes didn't magically skip the making part.
> "We explored donating the remaining, older-model bikes," Uber said in a statement.
> "But given many significant issues - including maintenance, liability, safety concerns, and a lack of consumer-grade charging equipment - we decided the best approach was to responsibly recycle them."
Translation: selling the bikes would remove those buyers from our pool of potential renters.
All it takes is one person who does something stupid and burns down their house with a used scooter to negate any benefit from selling them. Not because that person would automatically win, but because Uber would have to defend.
Plus, if this was a concern how on earth is the used car market able to survive? I just don't think liability factors in here at all. My guess is that scrapping them is easier and nets about the same amount of money as selling them. Selling that many scooters off piecemeal would take quite a bit of time & effort, plus costs to store them in the meanwhile.
They actually tried to sell them off after the company folded, but no takers. None!
Donating 150 bicycles to a school, and due to bad maintenance 10 children have an accident. The bad publicity would be huge. "You donated killer bicycles to our children". Not an easy front page to recover from. Plus the lawsuits etc. The cost of scrapping is worth absorbing much more than risking the above scenario.
Selling: they don't want people to ride their own electric bicycles, they want people to rent for their rides. Selling e.g. 10k bicycles to 10k people, converts potential renters to no-renting-anymore-coz-I-got-my-sweet-ride, whoever bought the business will definitely have 10k less potential customers.
Selling them will also mean that they need to give "some" guarantees about spare parts, maintenance shops, etc.. In Europe when you buy something you automatically have (per EU law) 2 years guarantee. They want to drop that business, not be prisoners of such a deal for the next 2 years. When they sell to a business, the new owner takes up these responsibilities.
Edit: I understand in the USA the guarantee period is 1y. Still a long time, when you want to get rid of something "now" to have to stick with it for one more year. It makes for a bad breakup.
Edit2: typos
On one hand, how would it benefit their/Lime's business to have loads of people owning electric scooters and bikes? On the other hand, there really are logistical and liability issues involved with distributing old gear in varying states of repair.
It's a shame they don't do something like gov/edu institutions and auction off the stuff as-is. At least then someone could theoretically buy it up to do something with it.
It stimulates demand for cycling/scooting infrastructure. A few owners of scooters aren't competing with renters.
> auction off the stuff as-is
That's pretty close to what recycling does, for items that can't be practically used due to design issues. The metals and batteries are resold as scrap.
Here I was, a broke electronics student, trying to procure electronics equipment, in an electronics department, with lunch money I was willing to part with, but unable to do so because someone needed to melt that thing down and make a horse shoe or some fork.
Their red tape is only your problem if you can't self-help. It's not your job to enforce their agreements with third parties who aren't you. It's also not your job to inform them of existing agreements with third parties which you are privy to.
The underlying context is that I was practically a persona non grata. Teachers would happily leave the class to me during labs but hated the fact I barely attended. I'm talking not even grading your exam sheet, or putting an arbitrary grade, and not displaying it until the recourse deadline has passed because "screw you" and I'm talking putting "0" on all your grades because you missed one exam. Nobody will take the side of a student who'll be there for a limited time against a colleague they've worked with for 20+ years. Even if the behavior is unjust, the rationale for them is that you'll live and learn and forget about it and leave, but they're staying and have to work with the other person.
Sure, the obvious step is to go manoeuver or call out these practices, invovle lawyers, and the media, and what not. Which brings me to my first paragraph. What is obvious and possible somewhere isn't somewhere else, or is but the stakes are too high. If I wanted to manoeuver in a cesspool, I would have become a politician. If I wanted to go to war, I would have become a martyr. The former is frowned upon, the latter is admired in other people from a distance.
I was luckier one time: I remember buying an oscilloscope for around 400NOK (about $40) back somewhere in 2002-2003.
Other times I was more persistent. Once I tried to get some PC parts so I said I could disassemble it and only take the exact parts at which point the bloke told me he'd rather want me to take the whole thing as lo g as I was quick so nobody saw it :-)
I bought a pair of nice Roland studio-level reference monitor speakers from a pawn shop like that once. They cost me 90 dollars, they retailed for something like 1750.
When I paid the person behind the counter told me that many people had tried to get these to work and brought them back because they couldn't figure out the cable to use -- and due to that difficulty they had marked them down from 200 to 90.
It was an XLR plug. They worked beautifully.
Now on the other hand I had some old Bang and Olufsen speakers that used proprietary everything. Even the audio input was some kind of balanced 24V signaling 5-pin DIN connectors. Basically you could not plug into anything except another B&O.
A 48-port switch (Netgear FS750T or something very similar), as well as a couple of 16-port versions and a hub that had somehow still been in use, was probably overkill for home use, but I wasn't complaining.
That's not an argument for not making them available. But it does substantially decrease the value. It's possible it pushes the value below what they'd get from recycling. If that's the case, it's easy to see why they'd recycle them instead of spending more time/money to try to sell a non-servicable and non-chargeable used bike.
I see these as different use cases. I own an eBike which I use for commuting. I also use Lime bikes (before they shut down) to get around the city. The key difference is storage. If I take MY bike, I have to very securely lock it up, carry a heavy lock and chain around, and worry about whether my destination has storage. As such, it only gets me between work, home, and occasionally the store.
On the other hand, I use Lime bikes to get across the city anywhere. If I'm going to a brewery or a concert or whatever, I just get close to my destination, find an out of the way, and get off the bike. It's significantly easier.
We have another dockless ebike entrant in town called Helbiz and they're pretty nice, plus have an unlimited subscription option -- hoping they get traction and stick around - I have already noticed some of the bikes being seemingly vandalized on purpose(pedals ripped off and strapped in the basket) which is sad.
It feels that the timing could be right with very limited Metro and Bus service(and widespread virus related public transit anxiety).
edit: I could also see this business model as being self cannibalizing -- I'd never ridden an ebike pre JUMP and now would consider buying one myself for 1-2k. How many people who really enjoy the JUMP experience would similarly leave the platform for a nicer model, long run cheaper experience. Introduces other tradeoffs like security, having to take the bike home(so you can't really ride it out if you're going to be drinking), etc.
Jump switched over to a new model within the last year or two. Their older bikes - while yes, built like tanks - also aged like tanks (after battle). They were BEAT UP. The frames were mangled & scratched, the drivetrains were barely functional, and the brakes barely worked.
My general strategy for riding a Jump was to find the closest bike with the highest serial # (assuming it would be a newer one), because getting an old one was just not fun.
Anyway, this is all to say: While yes, almost everything can technically be repurposed, I wouldn't want to spend much time on an older Jump bike either first or second hand.
For others, they may think it is fun to take three beat-up old bikes and turn them into one good one and a pile of recyclable parts.
One man's trash is another's treasure...
(& Yes, Uber has no excuse for this kind of nonsense. That is exactly what As-Is-Where-Is-Not-Fit-For-Any-Specific-Purpose warranty & law is all about. Repurpose before recycle...)
> But given many significant issues - including maintenance, liability, safety concerns, and a lack of consumer-grade charging equipment - we decided the best approach was to responsibly recycle them.
Unfortunately seems to most responsible way to handle these bikes. I see the charging issue being a major problem. Trek just switched their rentable bikes to electric in my city, I wonder if they face the same fate.
And settle down everyone, they are being recycled, not dumped in a hole.
Recycling is only slightly better than throwing away.
There is no conceivable reason these could not have been re-sued.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - is in that order for a good reason.
These seem like fairly conceivable reasons to me: maintenance, liability, safety concerns, and a lack of consumer-grade charging equipment
EDIT: @downvoter, can you tell me how our business climate doesn't suck this way?
Upvoter.
In this case one assumes the battery itself isn't odd, but it uses a different type of cable or similar (Don't know what the capacity is but I assume it would be high enough to need serial and sense lines on the charging cable)
This also seems like a situation where the maker community could easily open source replicate whatever the custom connector to the bike requires.
Having worked with high amp LiPo cells I have developed a unique appreciation of both their peak current output and their ability to strike fear into the everyone around them if you accidentally short them or start to see them ballooning/bulging.
My only run in with said fire was thankfully fairly minor, I spotted the pack looking a little buldged and summarily ripped it off the charger and dipped it into a 44 gallon drum. After about 60-90s it started smoking and caught on fire.
Don't fuck around with LiPos.
Fast LiPol chargers for series cells are not simple.
The best (read fastest) ones monitor the state of the individual cells in the stack and will shut down the primary charge and charge an individual cell if it gets imbalanced.
But it may be very expensive to design and manufacture a new charger, and they certainly don't want to sell the bikes to a bunch of techies who will stick random wires on them until 990 of them are happy and 10 generate news articles because they set their houses on fire with their hack.
https://therideshareguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/7b019...
>Uber said it had decided to destroy thousands of its older-model vehicles due to maintenance, liability and safety concerns.
(At risk of sounding mean or bitter, I was originally planning to post that quote as a top-level comment, but I was like, "come on, that's so short and unhelpful and high in the article, that anyone wondering it would just click the link, right?")
The reality is that it's a PR nightmare. One of them fails and all those advocating donations just instantly fall silent. It's like they were never there. And there'll be a massive furore over how these are being dumped on innocent people who were not properly informed, etc. etc.
Oh, I'm not saying you'll be part of the mob. Just that you'll walk away. That's why no one listens to the advocates who have no skin in the game. They are fair weather friends.
And then there'll be the lawsuits. And you either win those painfully or you settle (and everyone assumes you did because you're guilty).
These stories of overly litigious malcontents ruining the do-gooders of the world, it's just that, a story.
Donating these electric bikes would have be fine. Uber destroyed them for the same reason that textbook manufacturers and high end fashion destroys their product instead of donating them, because the slightest imagined possibility of a risk to their ego, brand, or margins are more important than a clear and tangible benefit to society. Everything we've heard about uber tells us this is exactly what they'd do, they're assholes.
Look at the companies ex-uber people did, they're all asshole companies like Bird or that ex-uber guy that google successfully sued for $179 million for stealing their ip. I've met with uber at work, they strung us along, telling us literally anything, trying to get all the intel they can, but then got pissed off and start yelling at us when we asked for legal paperwork prior to disclosure of business IP. I've seen people played that way before and I always look out for these kind of spy ruses -- last company that I saw do it was GoDaddy.
Of course they'll crush the bikes and no, it has nothing to do with fear of lawsuits, they're just jerks like that.
It amazes me how prevalent this myth is.
(See my comment elsewhere in this thread for citations)
But they're wrong, people that own bikes aren't the same people that want to use a bike ad-hoc.
What would fix it is to let them deduct the value of the donated food/whatever instead of its cost, because then the deduction would be bigger from donating something than throwing it away.
The result would be a huge reduction in taxes on businesses, because then everybody would do it and get a ton of tax deductions, but it could be well worth it for the enormous reduction in waste and increase in charitable donations.
And it might not even cost that much in tax revenue, because it would be an alternative to a lot of the shell games corporations already play to reduce their tax burden, but in this case it would actually be helping somebody.
That's because according to the tax code, businesses can claim depreciation of all capital property. They can't claim their cost of the donated property because they are already claiming the depreciation.
> What would fix it is to let them deduct the value of the donated food/whatever instead of its cost
The IRS already bases deductions for donations on Fair-market-value (FMV) of the donation. They have an entire guide for assessing FMV for the purposes of donation:
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p561 [1]
The guide explicitly addresses the question of cost vs value and how time between the initial purchase and sale might affect the value.
This is even easier for businesses, since for things like bikes that strictly decrease in value, the donation value is probably just the purchased price - accrued depreciation (which itself was modeled using methods similar to FMV).
Food isn't "capital property" in general, so it's a different deduction, but in the end it comes out much the same. Which is what I said. The price they paid for it is already a deduction, so there is generally no further deduction from donating it vs. throwing it away and writing it off.
> This is even easier for businesses, since for things like bikes that strictly decrease in value, the donation value is probably just the purchased price - accrued depreciation (which itself was modeled using methods similar to FMV).
But that's the problem. They buy something, use it (or intend to use it but don't), and then throw it away. One way or another that allows them to write off the entire cost.
Which means there isn't any additional deduction available for donating it to a charity instead of wasting it at the end, so there is nothing there to offset their cost/risk of making a donation instead of throwing it in a dumpster, and that causes tons more stuff to end up in the dumpster.
It's easier to just not donate.
You claimed "There is a super high risk of getting sued if you give away food and someone gets sick". Now if you want to continue this claim, you need to provide citations. Who, exactly says that such "high risk" exists?
Their insurers and lawyers all advised against donating unused food because of the risk of a lawsuit that wasn't covered by insurance.
So people can post all the "facts" they want to but the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
Very. I resorted to creating a cycle count in the walk in after every shift (off the clock) and giving it away pre-packaged 'meal prep' to employees, as most were just college kids, as so much high quality Salmon, chicken breast and other proteins that otherwise just ended up wasted.
Its ironic because this restaurant got a James Beard Award for sustainability and low waste practices.
In other places I just made family meal with the 'scraps' leftover for BOH/FOH family meals as we normally got off at ~2am and choices for food sucked. Its just something I had adapted to after my apprenticeship in Biodynamic Ag, and wished I saw more of it in the Industry.
I'm not sure what to make of the bike thing, as the Lime scooters I rode were already pretty beat up and I used them not long after the deployed. I can't imagine what it must of have been for these bikes, the Google bikes around the Boulder campus look decent from afar (they're non EV, I think), but I never rode one so can't speak to its life-time.
Waste in all transportation looks like this, I wish I could show the amount of recall parts I threw out on a daily basis at BMW but I signed an NDA. Its often cheaper to just discard the parts as-is at a minor loss than it is to pay for a much bigger loss for shipping back to a factory and then pay staff to sort through it and only to do the same at their local facility.
I'm talking about pallet loads of differentials, driveshafts, and engine blocks as well as crate loads of ECUs etc... Although to be fair we did sell those for metal for their junk PM prices if/when I had down time.
I actually re-learned how to solder, barely only ok at it now, because I was taking wiring harnesses and LED taillights home and tearing them apart and putting them back together.
This is how a lot of VWs sat for a little over 2 years after the buyback [1]. Some made it back into the market, many didn't and I was just glad I wasn't in the Industry by then as it made me physically ill to see the waste a SOFTWARE issue ended up costing in an Environmental level.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/business/volkswagen-diese...
I referenced a legal organization which specializes in the area. The other citation quoted two additional lawyers plus organizations which do this regularly. If you want to dispute what they said, provide your own rebuttal with citations. Don't be childish by suggesting I've made misrepresentations.
> the crux of the matter is that most restaurants are very risk averse and donating food is a risk.
The risk is so infinitesimally small that's it has never happened in the 25 or so years since the relevant legislation was introduced! I mean, if you want to describe that as "super high risk" like you did, I don't know what to tell you. I really don't.
> I worked with restaurants in a previous business. We tried to get them to donate food. Not a single one would because they were afraid of even the chance of being sued, because their liability insurance would not cover donations. Their insurers and lawyers all advised against donating unused food because of the risk of a lawsuit that wasn't covered by insurance.
Based on your cavalier attitude in spreading false information around the topic (while millions of Americans starve) I find it really, really hard to believe that this is something you would champion. Like, impossibly hard. Never mind that I'd expect someone intelligent like yourself to know what the law actually says if you were lobbying donations.
I'm frankly, very surprised you're so cavalier in spreading this misinformation. Stop spreading this lie and maybe less people will go hungry.
Frankly, I expected better from such a prominent HN'er.
Food waste is a terrible problem in this country. It is driven by a poor regulatory and legal environment that introduces unnecessary risk for restaurant owners to donate their food.
With the way things are now, it is too risky for a restaurant to donate. They haven’t been sued because they don’t typically do it.
I think major changes need to be made.
I think restaurants should be required to donate all extra viable food.
I think insurance should be required to cover those donations so they absorb the liability and therefore enforce safety.
But the way things stand now, you can’t in good conscience tell a restaurant to donate food without an intermediary organization in the area, and even then it’s risky.
No it isn't. It's perceived as too risky but that perception is demonstrably false. I've provided solid proof of this and you've provided nothing.
>They haven’t been sued because they don’t typically do it.
You can keep repeating the same things over and over all you want. But until you back it up with supporting citations it appears you're just making things up. Statistically speaking, if X00,000 restaurants and stores are doing it today without being sued, it's pretty safe to say it will be similar for X,000,000.
>But the way things stand now, you can’t in good conscience tell a restaurant to donate food without an intermediary organization in the area, and even then it’s risky.
Show me anything (tweet, blog post, whatever) from an actual lawyer or legal organization supporting this opinion and I'll donate $25 to the Food Bank of your choice (I'm serious).
I've provided legal support for my side of the argument already. It's your turn.
The thing that's so infuriating here is that that you're exasperating the problem you claim to want to solve. People scan threads and see this myth repeated so it reinforces their misconception about the matter.
Not only are you not helping, you're actively making it worse. Shame on you.
Here is an organization that collects excess food from restaurants, etc, and uses it to provide 20K meals a week to hungry people (in supposedly over-regulated San Francisco no less):
If restaurants are throwing away food, it's because they don't care about the waste because there is no financial loss to them - and there are no local organizations like Food Runners to facilitate the donation.
"(2) LIABILITY OF NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION.—A nonprofit organization shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability arising from the nature, age, packaging, or condition of apparently wholesome food or an apparently fit grocery product that the nonprofit organization received as a donation in good faith from a person or gleaner for ultimate distribution to needy individuals."
The protections for nonprofits doing this sort of work are pretty extensive, in part because many such organizations in the US are religiously affiliated nonprofits.
Regarding the food distribution nonprofits:
> They assume the liability
> Right exactly. They are not liable
I'm not sure how to reconcile those comments of yours, but regardless, I think we agree that donations of food to non-profits for distribution to the needy incurs no liability for any of the parties involved, and haven't since 1996. It is a persistent myth that liability is a major disincentive to food donation, motivated by who-knows-what.
The USDA has even clearer guidance on this subject here:
https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/usda-good...
And there are no lack of organizations to facilitate these donations with no liability:
"There is no available public record of anyone in the United States being sued...because of harms related to donated food." [1]
[0] https://www.publichealthlawcenter.org/sites/default/files/re...
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/restaurants-that-dont-do...
The article I cited says one organization alone "has 650 cafes nationwide and donated more than 286,000 pounds of food last year." It also mentions several other organizations who do similar work.
The root problem is people spreading this misinformation. Please don't.
Getting support and refunds from Lime was exceptionally painful. Uber also supported bike drop off in the East, where as Lime would silently fine you.
The e-rental industry is a glaring example of this in action, where "investors" are buying fleets of easily-affordable consumer goods, hoping to put enough on the sidewalk that people will trip over them and their credit cards will fall in. I know everyone in Silly Valley has been benefiting from this deluge of make-work, but eventually we're going to have to reconcile our goal of technology making us more productive with this regressive policy of "full employment". And sorry, I doubt the answer is obtuse "basic income".
Lebron James gives bikes away as charity to help kids have a sense of freedom and mobility. I dont see how there isnt a better solution here https://www.bicycling.com/news/a22613790/a-bike-saved-lebron...
This is such a colossal waste of energy. I can't believe that offering these without warranty and a stipulation that they be debranded before use wouldn't have got Uber more cash, and the planet a better outcome.
The scooters and bikes could have been donated to local governments who could then figure out how to support them, and used them for programs to help disadvantaged citizens get around easier. But that wouldn't really help Uber's bottom line I guess, and might involve extra work.
> Lime's chief executive Wayne Ting has said he prefers the design of Uber's bikes and will deploy more of them in the future.
> However, there were also "tens of thousands" of older-model bikes that Lime did not inherit as part of the deal.
Reminds me of that article about the ship transporting new Toyotas that tipped over. Half of the cars didn't even get wet, but they pulled all the cars off the ship and destroyed them. It wasn't worth the hassle of inspecting and repairing and still being at risk for liability.
This is/was something traditionally handled with a document signed by the buyer stating the sale is as-is. Tons of broken stuff gets sold all the time.
For one example: Where I'm at, if you sell some things "as-is" and don't disclose all known defects, you can be held liable for those defects regardless of your "as-is" agreement.
Nothing would ruin your brand more than having thousands of new cars breaking down.
Those bikes have been depreciated to a specific value and selling or giving them away might contradict that.
I'm sure Uber tried to sell the whole passle off to companies who do this kind of liquidation thing. The fact that Uber had to destroy them tells me that either A) Uber is making a lot more money by pulling the batteries and motors and selling those while cruching the rest or B) nobody wanted to touch them and Uber got stuck doing this themselves.
I suspect Uber got stuck. LiPol batteries are a liability and probably nobody wanted to deal with them.
Uber no longer owns the bikes. Lime does. The title should read "Lime is destroying thousands of electric Jump bikes and scooters after buying them from Uber"
Other important details:
- these bikes and scooters intentionally use custom parts to deter theft and make it so it isn't viable to strip them for parts. It will be impossible for the purchaser of a used bike to buy replacement parts or charging equipment.
- the software used on these bikes is now owned by Lime
- there is a liability and regulatory issues with selling devices with rechargable batteries. None of the battery parts involved in the bikes are certified for legal sale.
> However, there were also "tens of thousands" of older-model bikes that Lime did not inherit as part of the deal.
and it's these.
> "tens of thousands" of older-model bikes that Lime did not inherit as part of the deal.
> Uber said in a statement. [...] "[...] we decided the best approach was to responsibly recycle them."
These things would rock Kathmandu.
Too many cars on the road, that's a city/government issue. They should improve and increase public transit options.
Scooters detract from public transit and from resources used to keep the city clean and/or enforcement from the problems they create.
Pollution, traffic, accidents.
Scooters do produce pollution (someone has to dive more than the distance of the scooter traveled to recharge, plus the environmental cost of the batteries, and the shorter lifespan), traffic and accidents as well.
This can be improved with lighter cars, lower speeds, and pedestrian safety standards, but it can also be improved by fewer VMTs by getting more road users on intrinsically-safer vehicles.