No one in my city thought this business model would work. The only reason it raised so much money is because VCs are idiots who don't understand how society works outside of California.
My impression is that my fellow Americans are way too pessimistic about city improvements, and also that Bird did the world’s worst job of getting cities to meet them halfway.
Edit because I just thought of something else - if they were truly savvy, they would have made an industry consortium to lobby for shared infrastructure, to split the shared costs and increase their chances of getting favorable laws passed.
I don't think weather is the problem here.
Near Ithaca, NY we have a lot of rain and (usually) snow in the winter. I think a hardy person could commute on a bicycle much more than 80% of the time.
It rains a lot in the Netherlands and people ride bikes a lot anyway; I think it is not so cold, I hear it is unusual that it freezes enough for people to skate on their canals these days.
In the U.S. the moment it snows the governments will send out a bunch of people and equipment to clear out the roads. In Northern European countries they will do the same for the bike lanes as well.
The VC money forced Bird and others to unprofitably expand, which is why all those countries had scooter rentals.
There are plenty of well-off places with mild climate where using a scooter all year around is feasible.
But do micro mobility companies have the scaling potential/dynamic of a Google or Facebook (which would justify the way they raise money)?