I still can't get over this one. I printed it and taped to the wall in my office. I'll ask folks to guess what it is. First guess is almost always some type of plant:
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/Vtmg6k-JNp0wpEtDo_RvOcoT...
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.
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
> "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!