Pay-by-the-ride scooters only last a month, according to Louisville public data

Wait - are you talking about the weight of the scooter, or the max load the scooter can carry?

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They’re losing money on every scooter, but they plan to make it up in volume :grin:

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Remember SmartCartes at airports? You pay a dollar to rent them, and if you return them to a docking station, you get back a quarter. Could this be a viable model to corral scooters into parking areas and out of places where they are a nuisance?

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I think I’d qualify that as an entirely different business model. I’m also not sure it would get there. The analysis I read suggested that they are losing money on each ride and hardly paying their employees (some drivers are straight up losing money but don’t understand vehicle deprecation well enough to realize it). Plus they have all kinds of liabilities that they have been dodging but are now coming forward (e.g. class action lawsuit because of driver assaults on passengers, arbitration clause struck down by Ontario court).

Buses are a lot cheaper than taxis, but they don’t come when you want them, they are typically subsidized by the public, and they hold far more passengers. Even on that model I’m not convinced they would make a profit.

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except that SmartCartes are fux0ringly annoying

do you think maybe they just a replacement for non-existent public transportation? are they “solving” a problem that more easily walkable, busable, bikable cities don’t have?

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What do you find annoying about them (asking because maybe it should be a pitfall to avoid. I’ve never found them a particular nuisance myself.)

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I do think public transportation is a disaster in many markets, and i want people to have access to easy transport though these scooters are really not it.

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It’s largely specific to SmartCartes, so probably doesn’t translate to scooters, but here we go …

  • I basically never carry cash. EFTPOS is a thing now, and has been for 20 or 30 years.
  • I NEVER carry coins. They’re just a heavy, noisy PITA.
  • I NEVER EVER carry coins in random foreign currencies for random foreign countries where I need to use a trundler right after stepping off a plane (and before I get a chance to exchange some currency and then buy some random totchke solely in order to get a few coins)
  • I fucking HATE getting nickel and dimed for basic services which are intrinsic to the thing you’re providing. I will have a bad impression of your company, no matter how good the rest of the experience was.
  • Wheeled suitcases FTW.
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Not really. They tend to be clustered at the places in cities with the best multimodal transportation options. The same density of people that they need to even pretend to have a viable business model tends to come with the best transportation options.

I live in the middle of where these scooters are primarily used in Louisville, and I’ve noticed that they don’t get used at all when the weather is terrible. So there are entire days where these companies are making little to nothing.

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i guess why i asked is that ive been to austin, and travelled carless. it was a bit ago, but i remember things being way spread out, and even the “frequent” buses might mean waiting a half hour or more in the blistering sun

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Some routes its 15 mins but not uncommon to wait 30-35 mins for a bus to show up (used to take the bus a lot in Austin). Public transportation here is not awful but its not great, just better than other cities i’ve lived at. If i did have to move across town without my car i’d rather get a rideshare, and if i was going across multiple blocks i would much rather walk than chance it on an electric scooter… i just don’t trust the things (or the austin drivers).

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The core business of Uber is actually quite profitable. The tech needs of the company, as well as the humans that make this part possible, are minuscule compared to the profits they bring in. The vast majority of money going out of the company is based around making drivers obsolete as they know they already have a multibillion-dollar business as it stands, but in anywhere between 5 and 20 years from now, the company may be redundant themselves if they don’t find self-driving technology.

So the core business is STILL profitable – especially as they’ve shifted from drivers that take 70% of the profit to those who are happy with 30% (the new surge feature rolling out across the states is flipping this worse than the upfront fares ever did). If they stuck to simply being a taxi company, they could have several billion in the bank and just close up shop when the robots take over.

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350lb is the carrying capacity of the scooter. (Bearings frame and axles can handle the weight of a 350 lb person on them)

My wife has back issues and exercise on bikes and elliptical machines help her manage what would otherwise be chronic pain.

I cannot use any of her equipment because the more affordable stuff is only rated for 250 lb. Anything gym rated (350lb or more) is 600$ more

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For whatever it’s worth, scooter and bike shares have almost completely solved the shortcomings of public transit here in San Francisco for me. And for lots of people I know. I’m not saying that means it’s a done deal, but it’s significant that these work so well for so many people, and that gets lost in a lot of discussions about them. And I don’t think any public (or semi public) transportation strategy will ever work for everyone.

At some point I think it largely comes down to resistance to change:

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business model is “milk the venture capital” as much as possible and pay “founders” as much salary as possible before everything crashes and burns

still hoping to come across one of these abandoned some day so I can try the reprogramming kit - what’s the legal implications of “finders keepers” if it’s out on the street somewhere? probably varies by city/state?

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Oh, if only there was another option. Maybe a larger vehicle that that could carry many passengers and would stop every block to let people on or off. It could travel regular routes around the city so people would know which one to hop onto. Hmmmm…

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I don’t think that’s true. I’ve Hubert Horan’s seventeen part series on Uber’s finances and I’m convinced they are just plain losing money and will never make money. I googled some 2018 numbers, they are still losing $1B a quarter and only spending $100M on research, so it’s not really fair to say that’s the vast majority of they money or that it accounts for their losses. Their growth is slowing and their costs are not slowing. I’m not sure where your numbers are coming from but I can’t find anything that suggests they are on a path to profitability or that their losses are accounted for by investment in driverless cars.

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