- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Title says most of it. Spin electric scooters exited the Seattle market and abandoned their scooters all over the city and apparently they have a pi 4 in them!
Title says most of it. Spin electric scooters exited the Seattle market and abandoned their scooters all over the city and apparently they have a pi 4 in them!
So are rentals scooters still popular in US cities or has that trend subsided? Last I heard people were getting fed up finding them everywhere, problems with vandals, etc.
In my European city they’re still popular but imho it’s a grift to get money from investors with large pockets. I see brands popping out and go out of the market in 6 months. They just need to lose just the right amount of money in order to have the longest list of supported cities at the moment of raising capital. It’s an application that’s too expensive for every day use (1 euro unlock fee + 20 cents a minute in a city with a subway and extensive bus network???) but at the same time that ridiculous amount of money is clearly not enough to be sustainable. And they all use dark patterns. App forces you to register with email and sms verification just to see prices and you need to recharge credit that you might be never be able to use. Most they auto charge the credit card for 10 euro as soon as the credit goes under 5 euro.
Maybe the real money making activity is unusable credit in user accounts?
Not living in a city with these scooters but in a country that has 10+ different virtual wallets services. I can tell you 101% it’s all about the credit sit in the customers’ accounts that obviously easy but not straightforward to pull out and stay there a long long time.
It was never about the “convenience” for anyone. It’s the same scheme of holding people’s credit.
You can make more money with a flop than with a hit??
I hope to see the prison yard scooter industry taking investors soon.
Denver still has a ton of them. They’re still a huge logistics problem, but the city seems to be putting “protected” lanes in to help with scooters and bikes. Time will tell.
My city still has them. They’re pretty widely used, but I think we’re a good scenario for them. Our sidewalks aren’t cramped, we’re a very spread out city, and our public transit isn’t stellar.
They didn’t last where I live, but my mother lives in a town about an hour away (Bloomington, Indiana) which still has them, and they appear to be popular.