Electric scooters: Overgrown toys or the future of urban transport?

If you’ve been in downtown San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC recently, you’ve probably noticed an influx of scooters—electrified versions of the longtime children’s toy—on just about every street corner and sidewalk. Scooter startups have been flooding city streets with their internet-connected rides over the last year, marketing their fleets as a cheap and easy way to get around urban landscapes plagued by congestion and uneven public transit. The companies, which have collectively raised $255 million from venture capitalists, believe scooters are the next step toward a multimodal future of transportation, in which people but cobble together shared car rides, bikes, public transit, and, yes, scooters, to get around. But where there is disruption, expect disgruntlement: Pedestrians who haven’t hopped on the scooter bandwagon are piqued, and cities are scrambling to issue regulations that can restore some semblance of order to scooter-inundated sidewalks. 🐦 [Tweet this]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( Brought to you by [Quartz Obsession] Electric scooters May 09, 2018 Gaining speed --------------------------------------------------------------- If you’ve been in downtown San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Washington, DC recently, you’ve probably noticed an influx of scooters—electrified versions of the longtime children’s toy—on just about every street corner and sidewalk. Scooter startups have been flooding city streets with their internet-connected rides over the last year, marketing their fleets as a cheap and easy way to get around urban landscapes plagued by congestion and uneven public transit. The companies, which have collectively raised $255 million from venture capitalists, believe scooters are the next step toward a multimodal future of transportation, in which people but cobble together shared car rides, bikes, public transit, and, yes, scooters, to get around. But where there is disruption, expect disgruntlement: Pedestrians who haven’t hopped on the scooter bandwagon are piqued, and cities are scrambling to issue regulations that can restore some semblance of order to scooter-inundated sidewalks. 🐦 [Tweet this]( 🌐 [View this email on the web]( by the digits [$1:]( Cost per half-hour ride for most scooter services, plus several cents (usually around $0.15) per mile; some companies offer monthly subscription rates [66:]( Number of scooters San Francisco’s Public Works department impounded in one swoop in April in response to complaints [15 mph:]( Max speed of most shared electric scooters [1.5 miles:]( Average length of a Bird scooter trip Brought to you by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bias at the office is hard to perceive if you don’t experience it. --------------------------------------------------------------- But education and awareness can help to foster a more inclusive workplace. For starters, everyone should view a lack of gender diversity as an important issue, says this corporate technology director.[Here’s what he did to fight bias >]( major players Who's who in scooting --------------------------------------------------------------- Bird, based in Santa Monica, was founded in 2017 by Travis VanderZanden, a former chief operating officer at Lyft who left for Uber [under contentious circumstances](. Bird has raised $115 million from investors including New York-based Tusk Ventures. The service launched in September in Santa Monica, just outside Los Angeles, and promptly ran afoul of local regulations. (VanderZanden reportedly alerted Santa Monica’s mayor to the scooter deployment [via LinkedIn message]( LimeBike is a San Francisco-based dockless bike and scooter company. It started in July 2017 with 500 bicycles in Seattle and has since deployed 35,000 bikes and scooters across US cities and college campuses, as well as in Germany and Switzerland. Its three co-founders have backgrounds at Pepsi, Square, Facebook, and Tencent; it [signed on]( NFL star Marshawn Lynch as a sponsor. LimeBike [has raised]( $132 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz. [electric scooters guide to renting spin bird limebike] Spin, like LimeBike, is another San Francisco-based dockless bike and scooter company, which started in 2016. Its three co-founders, who worked at Lyft and Y Combinator, have raised about $8 million in VC funding. Spin’s [website]( says it’s in 18 US cities across California, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, and Florida, as well as college campuses. quotable “HEY DUMB F—- GET OFF THE SIDEWALK” — Text on the protest stickers that opponents have been affixing to scooters in San Francisco, [according to the Wall Street Journal](. Scooting into controversy --------------------------------------------------------------- The biggest gripe about scooters, like dockless bikes, is that people leave them everywhere, creating a mess and nuisance. Cities say the fault lies with the scooter companies, while companies blame their users, insisting that they have made clear in their apps where riders are to supposed to park (reasonable, out-of-the-way spots). The struggle echoes similar issues in China, where dockless-bike riders frequently [abandon their rides]( in crowded streets. Santa Monica filed a criminal complaint against Bird in December, alleging that the company began operations without city approval and failed to remove the vehicles from sidewalks. Bird [pleaded no contest]( in February and agreed to pay more than $300,000 in fines. San Francisco’s city attorney on April 16 sent [cease-and-desist orders]( to Bird, LimeBike, and Spin, demanding they halt their businesses while taking stronger steps to keep riders off sidewalks and their scooters away from obstructing roads and pathways. Under a new permit process, the city will soon limit the number of scooters to 1,250 and require companies to register them, [according to CNBC.]( [scooters in sf] Bird, for its part, has [complained that scooter regulation is an assault on democracy]( and is [working on legislation]( in the California State Assembly that would make it legal for people to ride scooters on sidewalks, and would only require minors to wear helmets. The two-pronged strategy is similar to tactics Uber used to legitimize its ride-hailing model. Uber rallied riders to its cause when cities attempted to ban its service or enact stringent regulations, while also [pushing legislation]( that made ride-hailing legal. Bird using a similar strategy with scooters isn’t surprising: Its CEO, and many other people at the company, used to work for Lyft and Uber. Spin Explainer How do the scooters work? --------------------------------------------------------------- Internet-connected scooters are managed through smartphone apps. For example, with Bird you open the app to see a map of nearby available scooters, select one, scan a QR code on the scooter, tap “unlock” in the app, and start your ride. Once you’ve scooted to your destination—Bird says most rides are less than 2 miles—you lock the scooter up again. Some companies track their scooters’ entire rides using built-in GPS trackers, while others use your phone’s GPS to keep tabs on scooter pickup and drop-off locations. Order, please! What are the rules? --------------------------------------------------------------- There are a lot of rules! Bird details them in its [rental agreement]( and [terms of service]( which riders are required to agree to before being able to use the app. Of course, it’s an open question whether users actually do read these agreements, which is why we’ve highlighted some of Bird’s most specific rules of the road: Riders must… - Be at least 18 years old - Have a [driver’s license]( though this is not stated explicitly in the rental agreement - Wear a helmet as required by law - Beware of weather conditions, “including, without limitation, rain, fog, snow, hail, ice, heat or electrical storms,” that may make it dangerous to operate a scooter - Park in a legal parking spot - Ride only in “metropolitan areas” Riders must not… - Carry any “briefcase, backpack, bag, or other item” if it impedes safe operating of the scooter - Drink and scoot - “Carry a second person or child on a vehicle” - Tamper with the locking mechanism on the scooter - Use the scooter “for racing, mountain vehicle riding, stunt or trick riding” - Operate the scooter “on unpaved roads, through water (beyond normal urban riding), or in any location that is prohibited, illegal and/or a nuisance to others” - Weigh more—including baggage!—than 200 pounds (90 kg) Watch this! The analog alternative --------------------------------------------------------------- On a completely different type of scooter note, [Great Big Story]( takes a look at an annual race unlike any other: Every April in Banaue, Philippines, riders race at speeds downhill on meticulously carved, handcrafted wooden scooters—with no brakes. Giphy Million-dollar question Why would grown adults ride scooters, ever? --------------------------------------------------------------- Some people see scooters as a useful addition to cities struggling to meet the transit needs of their residents. Scooters can fill gaps in first- and last-mile transit, such as getting to a subway or bus stop, or from a parking lot to an office. Scooters can also traverse pretty much every urban terrain and are light enough to be picked up and carried, which can’t be said of the typical bike in a bike-share program. Critics say electric scooters are essentially overgrown children’s toys, ridden solely by out-of-touch tech elites who carelessly dump the vehicles wherever they feel like after riding. They argue that scooters aren’t actually improving deficiencies in public transit, but rather making it easier for men in [Patagonia vests]( to get from their meeting at [Blue Bottle Coffee]( to their meeting at Peet’s Coffee. Are they safe? --------------------------------------------------------------- [Quartz discovered]( that Bird and Spin use rebranded versions of the Chinese company Xiaomi’s Mi Electric Scooter, and LimeBike uses a proprietary design that appears to be based on one copied by dozens of Asian companies. It’s not clear in every case whether the scooters have been through the sorts of rigorous tests that other motorized vehicles go through to be able to ride on US streets. There are images [on the web]( of scooters that have broken, presumably through regular wear-and-tear. As is often the case with tech trends, the scooter surge has outpaced potential regulation. Quartz asked all three companies what tests they’ve performed on their batteries—remember [exploding hoverboards]( only Spin confirmed that its scooters have been certified safe [by UL]( a lab for electronics safety standards. There are also concerns about rider safety. None of the scooter companies provide helmets for each ride (although Bird does [hand out]( free helmets to people who request them in the app). Reuters/Erin Siegal poll Do you scoot? 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