[syndicatedjelly]

How do you go bankrupt as a company renting powered scooters, which are possibly the cheapest possible mode of transportation just above a Craigslist bike? Incredible

[Syonyk]

You get high on your venture capital supply and then remain so disconnected from reality that you don't worry about profits, costs, use, repair, charging, or just about anything else, figuring you can "gig economy worker" your way out of it. Lose money on every transaction, but plan to make it up in volume once you take over the entire market for it. And then realize, rather late, that there are other people in the space, it's not a hard space to get into, and nobody actually really likes you in the first place for your model of "dump semi-loads of scooters first, ask permission never."

[r00fus]

Theft or other losses, cost of roving charging vans and personnel, etc.

[Ekaros]

Depends entirely on if enough people actually rent them. And do the rents cover cost and the charging and so on...

[dgreensp]

If we’re going to spend half a billion dollars for a company to hire a few hundred people and then fail, I wish it was for a better cause.

[ToucanLoucan]

Honestly alongside everything else (people hated them and their chargers, they got stolen constantly, etc. etc. etc.) the scooters themselves have collapsed in price, you can pick one up at Best Buy now for like $500. And yeah that's a lot but most of the people who were interested in renting them were a little upmarket anyway, so once they became affordable(ish) why would you rent one when you could own one?

[RandallBrown]

> why would you rent one when you could own one?

Because storing them and dealing with them is a massive pain. I use these scooters way more than I use my bike, and it's not because I don't want to pedal.

When I go out on a scooter I like the flexibility of leaving it at the first place I go. This prevents me from needing to leave my bike parked overnight if I decide to go somewhere else that isn't bike friendly. Not to mention that stealing scooters is really easy and bringing them inside most places isn't really an option.

[LeifCarrotson]

What I want to know is where I can (legally) pick up used Bird or Lime or Spin or Ofo or Skip scooters. Are they all going in the trash?

[ToucanLoucan]

Almost certainly. I've seen photos of the acres and acres of perfectly good ebikes being piled up. Makes me absolutely sick to see such utter waste.

[Syonyk]

Hey, at least you see the waste... think about how much ewaste is invisible. :(

[Keegs]

I had the same question a month ago when Revel ended its moped sharing program. What do you do with a fleet of several thousand electric mopeds? Apparently, send them all to recycling plants.

[syndicatedjelly]

They'll be yeeted into the nearest ocean habitat for endangered species

[johannes1234321]

The one you own serves a different purpose. The rental ones take one a bit of the way (from Subway station to office etc.) or one way (to the bar, get drunk, taxi/public transport home)

Doing that with your own one has downsides as you have to carry it along all the time.

[ToucanLoucan]

I mean sure, owning it obviously has a lot of cons. But it also has a lot of pros:

- You know when you pick it up that it's going to function well, because you maintain it

- You know it isn't going to have sticky handlebars because the last person to use it was eating a candy bar

- You know it'll be charged, assuming you keep your devices charged