
Bird has officially raised a whopping $300M as the scooter wars heat up - johnomarkid
https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/bird-has-officially-raised-a-whopping-300m-as-the-scooter-wars-heat-up/
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randyrand
If every city had dedicated lanes and parking spots for scooters (like we do
for cars) - electric scooters would be an obviously amazing compliment to city
travel.

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gcb0
> scooters you’ll see pretty much all over the place in cities like Los
> Angeles.

have to laugh at this. The touristy areas are indeed packed with them. you
can't even see the floor on 3rd street promenade because it is now covered in
five companies' scooters. Maybe you see a couple in the silicon beach (which
is not around snapchat house, and neither on the beach anymore). but actual
places you'd call Los Angeles? none.

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wwweston
West LA east of the 405 is... definitely LA municipality. There's absolutely
lots of Bird scooters in Westwood. I think I've seen some in Hollywood.

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gnicholas
Yep, the Daily Bruin has written about their proliferation — and the
enforcement/arrests due to violations of helmet laws — on several occasions.

[https://dailybruin.com/2018/04/08/ucpd-to-crack-down-on-
elec...](https://dailybruin.com/2018/04/08/ucpd-to-crack-down-on-electric-
scooters-issue-citations-over-warnings/)

I can see how they'd be useful on the hills at UCLA!

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throwaway413
Except they don’t have nearly enough power to get up hills. You end up pushing
it up the hill with you, which is worse than walking!

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alottafunchata
please bring them back to sf

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bytematic
Madison, WI did the same thing a few months before sf. In Madison they were
everywhere.

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compsciphd
dockless bicycles have taken over San Jose. They are worse than scooters by
far.

The only advantage I can see bicycles having over the scooters is not being
"dead" due to battery issues, but plenty of other things can also take
bicycles out of commission. They also take up more more room and can't be
packed as close together.

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jiveturkey
do scooters require more juice for a short trip, or more current draw, than a
portable usb-c battery pack can provide?

if not, scooters should have external ports for BYO power.

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gamblor956
I think the Gen2 scooters will have solar panels on the standing pads to
slowly recharge during the day when not in use.

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alonmower
No chance. The batteries are 280 Watt hours, solar cells generate about 20
Watt hours per square foot, and the standing pads are probably no more than
half a square foot (being generous) so even if you could have an edge to edge
panel it would take 28 hours of direct sunlight to fully charge. Even if they
were perfectly positioned all day they wouldn’t get more than 7 hours of sun,
only 3-4 of those at peak power so it would take something like 6 days to
charge. That’s assuming they’re aimed in the right direction and not blocked.
Riding them covers the panel and gets them dirty which reduces efficiency and
adding the panel increases the cost and maintenance of the scooter
considerably.

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sushid
What if they were free to manually ride but used like 20% of the energy or so
to charge the battery until it was full?

Would something like that be feasible?

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uncoder0
20% sounds like it'd be a lot of drag. I don't know if regenerative breaking
would make sense in terms of cost and energy output but, that seems more
feasible than a constant drag of an alternator hooked up to a wheel.

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jiveturkey
dammit. i knew i should have gotten a job when they were just at $1bn cap ...

