Skip the app: $600 Bird e-scooters are now available at Target
Instead of searching on Bird's app for a shared electric scooter to rent, the Southern California-based company is now putting its scooters up for sale.
This weekend, Bird's Air e-scooters were made available to buy through its website and at Target stores in the U.S. for $599 (don't worry you can also order them online). Previously, you could only rent the shared e-scooters through the Bird app for a $1 unlock fee and then pay about 15 cents per minute for the duration of your ride.
The Bird Air, built by the company in-house, comes in two colors — jet black and sonic silver — and is updatable through the Bird app. So don't delete that just yet if you want to keep track of features like distance traveled and battery health, or if you want to connect your phone to the scooter through Bluetooth.
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Bird claims its portable, foldable Air has a top speed of 16 mph and can last for 16 miles of riding with regenerative breaking. We'd say you could use it to commute, but now during the pandemic, that means mostly staying at home.
This isn't the first time Bird has decided to sell its e-scooters directly to its users by partnering with Target. Last year, its Bird One model started selling for $1,299 (it's currently on sale for $999 on the Bird website, but listed as out of stock at Target) and included an "electric rose" pink shade.
The Bird Air will be available to buy outside the U.S. starting in November.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
