Shared scooters barely last a month, report says. But that could change.
It's tough out there for an e-scooter.
The battery-powered vehicles used by most scooter-sharing companies weren't intended for such heavy use. The first generation of shared scooters were mainly from Xioami, and not made with the type of usage scooter rental companies like Bird put the vehicle through.
Alison Griswold in her Overshare newsletter about the sharing economy crunched the numbers this week from Louisville, Kentucky's scooter-share program. It's based mostly on Bird rides and found between August and December the average lifespan of a scooter there was 28 days.
As the scooter companies grow and stick around, they've learned quickly that the vehicles need to be more durable. A month turnover does not make for a lasting business model as Griswold goes into. Nor does it sound very green, especially for companies like Bird that tout the millions of pounds of carbon emissions its scooters eliminate.
Most of the e-scooter companies I reached out to didn't want to release specific numbers about scooter lifespans or cycles. Bird wouldn't comment directly on the 28-days finding. But the companies did emphasize their new models are designed with heavy usage in mind.
Lime last year introduced its Gen. 3 scooter with a wider base and wheels and the company expects it to last longer than previous scooter models as it comes into more markets this year. At the end of last year Lime was struggling with combusting scooters, and more recently a braking bug.
Segway-Ninebot's Model Max was introduced at CES in January as the new fleet scooter for companies like Bird and Lyft. A fact sheet about the new model plainly states, "From their learnings being at the center of the growing scooter-sharing market, Segway-Ninebot found that there tends to be a lot of wear and tear on shared scooters, which results in costly product maintenance, as well as short product life span." Without any specific numbers, the newer product claims to "last longer" with a more robust design.
Goat, the Austin-based scooter company that lets you operate your own scooter business, put out this week that it would be offering the new Segway scooters. It has a current offer for would-be scooter empires to buy the scooters for $599.
Meanwhile, electric bicycles part of a shared fleet like Uber-owned Jump are "designed to last years," a company spokesperson said in an email. Yes, parts will need to be replaced like tires, but the bike itself can roll on much longer. Same with the Lyft-owned Motivate bike-sharing company that runs Ford GoBike in the Bay Area or Citi Bike in New York City. A spokesperson also said the e-bikes are designed to last for years.
Superpedestrian released what it calls a "smart" scooter last year, built for the hard-riding street life of a rental scooter. It's supposed to last in a shared fleet for nine to 18 months. CEO Assaf Biderman said in an email standard fleet technology used by other operators to monitor, track, and repair scooters means "much shorter vehicle lifespan" compared to the more involved system used for his scooters. He cited industry reports with as quick as 11 days of use in Austin, Texas, before a new vehicle is brought in.
Another built-to-last scooter for fleets comes from Acton (its fleet vehicle is billed as a an "urban warrior"). Company co-founder Peter Treadway said in a Mashable interview last year, "It’s built like a vehicle, not a toy, to withstand the everyday wear and tear of commercial use."
It's time for e-scooters to toughen up.
UPDATE: March 6, 2019, 4:09 p.m. PST Scooter rental company Scoot, with e-scooters in San Francisco and Santiago, credited its new locking system for longer lifespans. A Scoot spokesperson said, "Loss rates with the new lock are so low that we now project our kick scooter will be used for a year before it is lost or decommissioned. That is more than [six times] the industry useful life for a scooter."
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.
