Scooter Invasion —Exciting New Ways Of Urban Transportation
Ride-sharing services cut down a lot of time in our commutes. It is fast and easy to find them and we get wherever we need to go. But we still have to wait for them. For example when we arrive at the train station and have one more mile to cover.
Every new service that can cut down another minute for us, has a chance to win. There are several of them that recently launched and raised significant amounts of money. I am talking about scooter rental services. The two shining stars on the West Coast are Bird and Limebike. Together they have recently raised $200 million in funding and gotten a lot of PR.
They cover your last mile. May it be the commute to work, a shopping tour through the city or when you are on your way to the beach. The last scenario was when I got to test it in LA.
Finding my first Bird
Last weekend, we went to Santa Monica. The plan was to rent bikes and ride down to Venice Beach. It is a beautiful, scenic ride along muscle beach, skate parks, basketball courts and of course, the ocean. There is lots to see, you feel like you’re in a movie and the weather is always beautiful.
But this time it was different. We noticed a lot of people riding electric scooters when we arrived at the boardwalk. And they all looked like they had a great time doing it. I hadn’t heard about the service but they all had the name “Bird” on them. We got curious and had to find out more.
The service launched in September 2017 and had already transformed Santa Monica. They were all over the place.
The website with instructions to get the app was easy to find. Downloading the app took some time. It is an 84MB download for iOS. On app launch, you will see a map that helps you find available scooters nearby. The app showed a map but on it we didn’t see any Birds around us. Yet, we spotted a lot of them parked. Must be a bug in the app.
When you walk up to the scooter you see a QR code. Scanning the code within the app shows you the status of the scooter.
While it was easy to find parked scooters, it wasn’t easy to find one that was usable. Some of them were locked by people that parked them there for later use and others were out of juice. The four of us had to walk around a bit. After 5 minutes, we found two available scooters. Charged 38% and 56%. Big success — not sure if we will make it all the way to Venice and back. We’ll get to that later.
Signing up and getting started
Adding credit card details was a breeze. (Big plus for OCR — image recognition to scan credit card number — no need to type it in) and off we went.
Two of my friends were visiting from Germany. They didn’t have a data plan in the US so they couldn’t get the app to unlock scooters. I wish I could have booked another scooter for them on my account. We had to get two additional bikes.
The instructions to start riding were simple and easy to understand. Even though it told us to wear a helmet, we didn’t see anyone along the beach doing that.
The ride
Riding the bird is a lot of fun. Not too slow to be boring and fast enough to be fun. There are no bumps or potholes in the beach walkway. But the wheels should be able to take small indentions in sidewalks.
Three kicks to get the scooter going and off we went. All the way down to Venice. With a short break at the skatepark in-between.
The cool thing about the scooters is that you can just park and leave them anywhere you want. I am not talking about the middle of the road or your own garage. As you walk away they auto-lock but stay reserved for you. With the bike, however, you always have to either lock it or keep an eye on it.
The one caveat
I am talking about battery life. For both the scooter and the phone you need battery. Yeah, it happened… Hey, there is lots to see, take photos and videos. Batteries can die.
When we arrived at the basketball court my friend’s phone had run out of battery. Now she wasn’t able to unlock her parked scooter anymore and we had to pair her up on one of the bikes.
It would have been great to unlock her scooter from my phone. But I can see the security issues with that. We didn’t try to log out and log in to her account. I assume you can only keep the scooter unlocked with a signed in account.
After an hour of riding my scooter was down to ~25% and I thought I could make it all the way back. But that didn’t work out. Two-thirds of the way, my scooter gave up. And even though I saw a lot of parked birds around me, they all were out of battery. This is when you realize how independent you are on a bike. No phone or battery needed to get you home.
I see another issue with that. The other scooters were parked all over the place. People left them in the middle of the sidewalk. I can see how cities would want to regulate that or at ask the company to encourage parking in special areas. But I also think cities and regions should encourage sustainable transportation like this. I am sure they will work it out.
Pricing and summary
Renting bikes at the beach comes down to $7 per hour and $20 for the whole day. Bird costs $1 per ride and $0.15 per minute. I paid $15.40 for the scooter for 1:36hrs. We rode 4.8 miles. If you want to ride all day up and down the beach, you will come cheaper with a bike. If it is for a couple hours, it is worth the ‘fun’ premium.
All in all, I would definitely use it again. I am super excited that they launched here in San Francisco now. It will be interesting to see if they can take the hills. But a ride along the waterfront is a must try.
There might be things to settle with cities and probably some limitations for the services. I hope they can work it out. Scaling the service should be possible with the amounts of funding that Bird and Limebike received. I can’t wait for my next ride in another city.
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