Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
Sounds like "popularity" is being measured by the number of scooters being dumped on the city by the start-ups. "A few people riding" doesn't sound like an explosion of popularity to me.
Hard to say. For any business, one would expect to have a certain amount of inventory on the shelf. The same would be true with a scooter business. Have to have enough sitting out on the sidewalks that one will be available for those who want one (or two or three), without having to hunt around town to find them.
Also, they have to be prepared for peak usage (commutes, weekends, lunchbreaks, etc).
The model likely is somewhat like scattering 1000 e-scooters around town. But, expecting 100 to be in use at any one time. Say 1 hour rentals, so for 6 hours a day, half hour rentals, those 100 scooters account for 1200 rentals... or using essentially the entire fleet.
Let's see... $1 + $0.15 per minute. Say it averages about $5 per rental. That comes up to about $6000 a day for those 1200 rentals.
Now, say the e-scooters cost $500 each. So, 1000 of them would be $500,000
'150 rental days a year... that would pay off the capital in about a half a year.
Plus, labor, charging, maintenance, and expenses.
A good number of them likely will be collected and stored over the winter (reducing wear related to weather), and should be pretty compact to store.
Ahhh... Bird Hunting.
https://therideshareguy.com/i-signed...at-its-like-2/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...siness/560747/
So, about $5 to recharge each Bird.
That could certainly add up in both revenue for the chargers, and expenses for the company.
I'm seeing charges might be good for 20 or 30 miles. What speed? At 7 MPH, that would be about 3 hours of continuous use to drain the battery.
They probably release scooters to be charged at say below 75% charge??? Anyway, contracting the charging sounds like a major expense depending on how much ride time between charges.