Of the scooter companies that have launched in the Bay area, Spin were by far the least technically advanced - the scooters were basically unmodified Xiaomis, to the extent of still having power buttons. Rather than an integrated location and management system, location data came from a off-the-shelf GPS tracker spliced off the battery lines. Since the scooter control board had no cellular link, there was no mechanism for Spin to directly manage the scooters which meant that handshaking involved the app notifying Spin's API that the user was going to hire a scooter and then sending an unlock code back to the scooter via Bluetooth. Locking was the inverse, which left plenty of opportunity for state to get out of sync (server thinks scooter is unlocked but the unlocking failed, or vice versa).
It's possible that their launch was very much an MVP and they've been doing a lot of engineering work in the background, but they were way behind Lime and Bird at launch time.
(Edited to clarify that the unlock code is sent via Bluetooth)
>Bill Ford said the company sees an opportunity to build on its legacy and provide leadership in the rapidly changing mobility industry. Electrification is where the company is headed, he said.
>Unlike other companies, Ford wants to build on customer loyalty for established best sellers rather than try to market new brands that happen to be electric because it will speed up customer acceptance, Ford said.
But. Spin must still have //some// sort of technical knowledge Ford wants because they’re investing $11b into electrification vehicles with a product launch in 2020 and a lineup of 40 electrified and hybrid vehicles by 2022. [2]
If Spin is indeed just a rebadged Liubike (which itself is a rebadged Xiaomi (which itself is rebadged Aima in custom bodywork,)) then it will be md5 + counter
I'm not sure why you'd prefer ultrasonic over bluetooth - the hardware already has bluetooth (the consumer Xiaomis link to an app for various statistics and control functions), you can explicitly target the signal (it's typical for a bunch of these to be sitting near each other), you don't need to mess with the user's volume settings and you get bidirectional communication.
All of the commenters saying e-scooters shouldn't be allowed on sidewalks are right. Sidewalks in most densely populated US cities are too narrow and busy to safely allow a human gliding along at 15 mph within ~2 ft of a doorway where another human may be exiting, or past blind corners.
The bigger issue is that e-scooter parking is fundamentally broken right now. Despite being told not to, users still park them in the middle of a pedestrian walkway. Even if the user parks them correctly, they get knocked over or blow over into the walkway. This product is broken until these companies do what Jump did, and INTEGRATE A LOCK INTO THE PRODUCT, and make users lock it to something at the end of their ride. This almost entirely eliminates the problem of blocking a walkway, and also reduces the loss of product to theft, accidental damage, etc.
Since they're required by law in California, I'd also like helmets to be integrated into the locking mechanism, but that's a nice-to-have.
E-scooter companies: Build locks into your products. It fixes many of your problems.
Sidewalks being too narrow is an issue of prioritization. Cities have optimized for car traffic in many locations, and everyone else has to take the sliver of concrete they were graciously given next to the cars with one or two people in them each. You may think, but we can't make it wider else the cars don't fit. Absolutely. So don't let them there at all. Flank every block with a walking/slow bicycle/scooter/board plaza. City centers are for people doing things, so we should prioritize foot traffic, because if you are in a car you are merely coming to or moving through the city. You are not the primary use case of the city center. It evolved this way over time but that doesn't mean it was the right choice to let cars flow through city centers, and we can change it back.
I think a better, albeit more difficult and expensive solution, would be to implement space for scooters and things like them. In the US we only have two spaces: the sidewalk and the street. Adding a third space for bikes, scooters, and other small personal vehicles would go a long way to promote safety and efficiency.
Very good bill! Definitely moving in the right direction.
Some thoughts:
1)Helmet laws:
I've always found helmet requirements pretty arbitrary: if runners who run at 10-15mph aren't required to wear helmets, why force them onto cyclists and scooter users?
Such laws have been known to adversely affect ridership, which, in turn, decreases safety for everyone because drivers don't expect cyclists/scooter users. I've seen a study that found that the net effect is that helmet laws decrease safety.
2)No sidewalk riding:
Good. I'd argue that even if bicycles could be OK on sidewalks, e-scooters/e-bikes should not be, because there's no incentive for e-vehicles to go slowly on sidewalks.
For cyclists, intermittent slowdowns enforce a low speed, because it takes effort to accelerate. But on an e-scooter, all it takes is a turn of a handle to get to 15mph in a very short span of time.
So, while there's a physical cost for cyclists going too fast, there isn't one for e-scooter users.
Agree on the sidewalk clutter - they are starting to turn into a nuisance in Austin downtown. I had to move two, parked side by side, on a sidewalk. My attempt to move them resulted in them squealing, causing me to feel like a thief for just trying to make room on the sidewalk to keep walking.
Agreed. I have never seen an actual scooter owner park badly. It's always a rental scooter company. I object entirely to them just seizing the public sidewalks as the parking lot for their private businesses. And then I object again at the tragedy-of-the-commons effect when scooter renters feel entitled to drop it wherever they're done with it.
Bike lanes in the US are incredibly unsafe for bikers and scooters, and accidents easily result in death of the biker/scooter.
Scooters and pedestrians sharing a sidewalk is also unsafe, but accidents are far less lethal.
The problem is that bikes/scooters are adding a third distinct speed fundamentally incompatible with the existing two, and that takes up a lot of space costs a lot of allocative inefficiencies (what if there are lots of cars and pedestrians, but no bikes/scooters at this moment?). There's no easily solution but if we're going to ask scooters to share space, at least choose the one that is less fatal, as annoying at it is for pedestrians.
Scooters seem unnecessary in densely populated cities. Most high-density areas have good public transport within a few minutes walk of your destination, and the footpaths are too busy to ride a scooter on anyway.
They are much more useful in medium-density cities and suburbs where the roads and footpaths are less busy and public transport is not as effective.
I love using my scooter for commuting and errands in my low-density city, but I can't imagine riding it through a busy CBD - not on the road or the footpath. And yet that seems to be where most of these scooter rental companies are deploying. It seems crazy.
"Cars seem unnecessary in densely populated cities. Most high-density areas have good public transport within a few minutes walk of your destination, and the roads are too busy to drive a car on anyway."
High-density areas typically have bike lanes for scooters to use.
The problem of getting ~3 miles in a city like SF (SoMa to Mission) involves a 10 min walk to a train, and several more minutes walking once you get off the train, or walking to a bus stop and waiting 10+ mins there, with another walk to your destination. 10-15 minute car or scooter trips easily become 45+ min public transport trips.
Wait 20 minutes for a bus. Or take a scooter 20 blocks instead. How do I take the bus from Chinatown to Fisherman’s Wharf? By the time I figured that out, I’d be halfway there. Scooters represent speed and mobility. Buses represent crowds and waiting. Besides scooters are actually fun. A bus is an exercise in patience and time-wasting. If China followed your advice, Shanghai would be a continuous line of buses covering every square inch of road. Those that hate scooters have never used one.
Agreed 100% on the sidewalk-riding. The other day I was outside a restaurant waiting for a table. I moved back one step to let some people by and felt something brush my coat. It was some idiot riding one of those powered rental scooters downhill. 15 MPH at least, and given that it was downhill, maybe more. Two steps back and I would have been in the emergency room.
You are allowed to call people out for riding dangerously. They might not appreciate it at the time, but as long as you aren't aggressively rude they will probably ride more slowly the next time they get on a scooter.
Eventually personal transport will be normal and everybody will know how and where to use it appropriately, but it will take a bit of time and practice to get to that point.
What you're seeing is car companies trying to transition to "mobility" companies -- the difference being the former is a manufacturing company with 3% margins and the latter being a services company with much fatter margins.
Autonomous car fleets are the main "mobility services" prize of course -- all the major OEMs have autonomous research labs -- but you're seeing more interest in scooters and bikes (there was a headline about GM releasing an e-bike last week).
What we're likely seeing is M&A people caught up in the hype and trends.
In some ways, it's worth spending some amount as a hedge against something happening, but I don't believe these scooters will represent any meaningful change ... personally I think they are kind of a fad.
The logistics, cost, narrow use cases of all of it just don't work out well enough. Truly - what % of people could actually commute using these things? It's very small. Of those, who would actually do it? In winter? Up and down hills? Are they a little bit too old for this, or maybe not so open minded? Are there status issues, i.e. if you are a 'serious professional' in many industries it just doesn't bode well to be bouncing around on a scooter (I know this might seem foreign maybe to HN readers but this is a thing). And then of course - if it was useful for commuting, why wouldn't people just end up buying one so they always have it when needed? I think the use cases for these scooters is very narrow.
While I agree the general attitude of 'moving beyond traditional cars' is a strategic impetus, and it makes a lot of sense to 'participate' in these things early on ... I don't think this is a secular shift. Not yet anyhow.
America is a very spread out place - even LA.
And we're only just starting to see the regulatory and populist backlash.
>Truly - what % of people could actually commute using these things? It's very small. Of those, who would actually do it? In winter? Up and down hills? Are they a little bit too old for this, or maybe not so open minded?
Potentially: Everyone, winter to summer (look up his other videos), up and down hills (they're electric, hills don't matter), regardless of age. America is not the only country in the world, but even the US has cities far denser than the spread out, gridlocked hell of LA like San Francisco or NYC.
If nothing else--and I tend to agree they're a fad--the question of where you ride them seems as if it will be the ultimate stumbling block. Even if one stipulates for purposes of argument that they're OK to ride on sidewalks if you're careful about it and the sidewalks aren't too crowded, it seems hard to argue that this scales up to widespread usage. At the same time, it's fairly clear to me that these won't work for most people if they need to ride them in the road or even a non-separated bike lane.
Segways largely failed for a number of reasons but infrastructure was a big one. A lot of people probably forget this but they spent a lot of time and money lobbying cities to let them ride on sidewalks (and were mostly unsuccessful in this regard).
There's no reason to think that future margins for mobility services will be any higher. With few barriers to entry, margins will be driven down close to 0%.
I used Bird, Lime, Lyft, and Jump scooters over the weekend in LA and they were great for getting around when I'd have otherwise considered driving (over a 45 minute walk). I tried a Skip scooter again when I got back to SF, and once again, it simply could not handle a minor (for SF) hill. I don't know what the solution is, since it seems like a bad idea to power them more to handle hills given the dangers that would pose on flat (or downhill) terrain, but I can't imagine them really taking hold in the same way in hilly cities.
The old Bird and Lime scooters had 250W motors. The new Skip scooters have 350W (plus suspension which is nice). The skips can get to a walking pace up to ~10% grade, but grind to a halt anywhere near Nob/Russian Hill. You need at least 750W to do the trick.
They also all have just a single break, which makes going down those hills dangerous.
The Xiaomi scooter I have has 2 brakes, but you only have direct control of one. The motor does some regenerative braking any time you let off the accelerator, which I've found is enough to cruise down a moderate grade quite nicely. Sometimes on a steeper grade (which SF has some of) you need to reach for the disc brake. This essentially gives you a front and rear brake.
To my knowledge all the scooters do some sort of regenerative braking. The Segway-brand scooters that Lime uses seem to ONLY have regenerative braking but those give you a little paddle to control it with. I wouldn't trust one of those to go down-hill, but anything with a disc-brake is fine.
You need to look at torque for hill climbing. Power defines top speed.
Higher voltage batteries mean higher torque. There are ton of road-legal bikes with huge 52V batteries and top speed capped at 25km/h.
I have a 250w ebike and I have powered up slopes so steep I have to put my chin on the handlebars to keep the front wheel on the ground. Power isn't the issue. Its just piss weak motors.
What about Jump bikes? Because they go up hills pretty easily. Not the steepest ones but I get around pretty well with them in my neighborhood, which has lots of hills.
excitingly, when I read the Bird terms of service (while they were still allowed in SF), they stipulated that you could not ride their scooters down hills. The scooter struggled to go up a (not particularly steep) hill, and I was breaking the rules going back down. I only rode the scooter the one time, after that, I just walked the two blocks to Judah to ride transit.
You can increase power or at least torque while limiting top speed, especially since I think it's an electric throttle. Maybe they can tune the throttle mapping
Am I the only one who wants to see more seated scooter innovation? I would much prefer riding one of these self-balancing scooters/microcycles to the standing scooters that everyone is using.
These are much safer than small-wheeled scooters as their larger wheels allows them to more gracefully handle bumps in the road.
Also, unlike most ebikes I can actually sit stationary on these without falling over. I'm very short and most ebikes are not designed for short people.
I think there is some aversion to building a product that is too motorcycle-like; regulators may start to get ideas if the scooters look too much like a Vespa.
I might prefer these as well, but I think the standing ones fit more use cases than the sitting ones. For example, what if a woman was wearing a pencil skirt?
Some staff PM/engr/marketer folks at Hyundai Motor had the right idea. Too bad they were not in a position to start a startup.
edit: I'm not saying BIRD or any other copied Hyundai. Coming up with the idea and executing it is a big accomplishment. Electric motor scooters have been around a long time too.
I've owned both a scooter and skateboard for 7 months.
I disagree, you can ride a scooter on a sidewalk safely and I need to do it from time to time. Of course, I don't prefer it. But it's pretty easy to do safely and it shouldn't bother anyone if done correctly.
The rules I follow:
1. Go much much slower.
2. Stay far away from other people and blind corners.
3. Always assume a person is about to make an erratic movement
4. Never pass closely to a person. When passing, go their walking speed + 1mph. It should be a similar speed differential to passing someone when you're walking.
5. If you have no space to pass, you need to go walking speed
until space opens up.
6. if the sidewalk is too packed, just get off and walk it.
7. If you have far visibility (no blind corners, doorways, storefronts, etc) and there is no one in sight, let'er rip.
It all depends on the conditions. You should never blow by people at 15 mph. I commuted partly on 5th street in downtown Los Angeles and never had an issue, a close call, or had someone bat an eye. The goal is to blend in with other people walking.
It's not impossible, but it's unrealistic to expect that everybody who can poke their finger on an app button will do this.
If scooters require knowledge, thought, and skill to ride well on a sidewalk, then the two obvious answers are a) require training and a road test, or b) ban them on sidewalks. I don't much care which we go with, but having recently almost gotten flattened by some rental e-scooter idiot on the sidewalk, I think we need to pick one.
> I disagree, you can ride a scooter on a sidewalk safely and I need to do it from time to time. Of course, I don't prefer it. But it's pretty easy to do safely and it shouldn't bother anyone if done correctly.
Keep it simple. "Can" but people won't. There is reason in this post ... but the law should remain that riding on sidewalks is illegal.
"Trusting" strangers on scooters to slow down is unwelcome heart-burn, as a pedestrian. "Will they slow down for me? Will they move off to the side? Will my dog stray into their fast-moving path? Will my dog, who freaks out for any person-riding-on-vehicle, freak out as this scooter crawls past? Do I need to pull the neck-collar on my dog hard so he stays sufficiently close to my feet as the person riding on the vehicle passes?"
None of this thinking should be necessary for a pedestrian. Keep the law set. Stay off the sidewalks.
Go further, require license-plates for scooters, to track infringement of riding on the sidewalk. Report scooters dragged into the lane. There is something fundamentally "not right for a metropolitan" about these smallish, easily misplaced vehicles.
This. It's all about relative speed difference. If the cars are going slow then riding with them is no problem. If there's no (slow) people on the sidewalk then you can ride there.
It shouldn't be the opinion of the person on the scooter what is safe or not safe to do with said scooter on the sidewalk. Take space away from cars, not pedestrians.
> They belong in the bike lane (which should exist in the first place), and their speed should be capped in areas of dense foot traffic
These are great ideas. Write them into your representatives. Designated street-side scooter parking would also be a plus. Not only does it signal to drivers "consider another option," it also deals with the scooter litter problem.
(To form, San Francisco chose the worst of all options and coronated two companies chosen by bureaucrats to run amok in the city.)
I was just in LA, and scooters are everywhere. However, they're all parked upright, and in most cases even organized into a nice, out of the sidewalk path, line (initially I thought that Bird/Lime/etc were paying people to do this, but I saw a mix of different brands aligned as often as just one).
When they first launched in LA, this wasn't the case, it was just as much of a free for all as SF. SF succumbed to regulatory capture, but LA was able to figure out a way to allow all of the companies to exist in a better way.
Note that I was told that in some parts of LA, the organization is still pretty bad, but I was in Brentwood, Santa Monica, downtown, and Venice, all of which were in reasonably good shape.
It certainly would be amazing if national incentives could be set up to redesign streets nation wide to favor bikes and pedestrians in the same way we do cars.
I disagree. Bike lanes are extremely dangerous for cyclists and the current implementation of bike lanes in this country are really just big automobile lanes.
It puts all the risk on the cyclist. I have had numerous friends get hit and run while riding bikes on bike lanes, most recently a friend died from it.
I'll happily receive any citations for riding my bike or e-scooter on the sidewalk, and take full responsibility for any accidents I get into. It's not even up for discussion in my mind.
In the UK:
> In 2015, two pedestrians were killed and 96 seriously injured after being hit by a bicycle. But every year more than 100 cyclists are killed and more than 3,000 seriously injured on British roads
I don't think you're making a very compelling justification for bicycling on sidewalks.
Your statistic regarding UK pedestrians being killed/hit vs bicyclists being killed/hit isn't strong as it's probable that nowhere near as many bicyclists choose to ride on the sidewalk as compared to staying in bike lanes and roads. That is, if more bicyclists opted to ride on sidewalks, the incident rate would certainly increase.
Additionally, rationalizing this in terms of the risk towards the bicyclist just comes off as selfish: "I'm not comfortable with the risk I'm facing while bicycling on the roads, therefore I will put pedestrians at risk instead."
Perhaps instead of endangering pedestrians, something more constructive would be to engage politically to improve the situation (maybe you do this already, if so, awesome!).
> They belong in the bike lane (which should exist in the first place)
A bike lane really isn't safe enough to get people on bikes and scooters into it. It needs to be a separated cycle track like what is common in Copenhagen. This takes more space, but increases capacity of the whole road (the cycle track has more capacity than the driving lane it takes away).
There are a zillion other benefits too - more active/healthier population, higher retail spending along the cycle track (https://its.ucdavis.edu/inthenews/the-complete-business-case...), higher property values, only taking 30lbs of metal with you on every trip instead of 2000lbs, potentially local fuel source (food from nearby rather than oil or electricity from afar), etc etc etc.
In my city, we have a small conundrum. The scooters move more like bikes than walkers, but the language on our bike trail system explicitly forbids any "motorized vehicles". Of course, reasonable people could argue that such a law can be ignored, but I know I'm risking a ticket if an officer so chooses.
Also, bicyclists seem to seriously hate the scooters. I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems to be that they're just not used to having much traffic on "their" paths.
FWIW, most places have a definition of "motorized vehicle" written into their laws somewhere, and it's usually not "any vehicle with a motor". motors under a certain power outut or vehicles capped to a certain speed don't usually count as motor vehicles, to allow things like mobility scooters & powered wheelchairs to travel on sidewalks or bike paths.
> The scooters move more like bikes than walkers, but the language on our bike trail system explicitly forbids any "motorized vehicles"
If the bike lane laws disallow motorized vehicles, then how does the sidewalk law allow it? It sounds like the laws need to be updated to allowed motorized electric vehicles capable of going up to some reasonable maximum speed in the bike lane. Basically the inverse of the law that prevents mopeds and golf carts from going on the freeway today.
i'll reiterate my favored solution (for urban areas): turn parking lanes into protected bike/scooter lanes. that solves the safety problem both ways (cars on one side and pedestrians on the other).
until then i'm fine with scooters being encouraged (but not forced) to use less busy roads, and tolerating them on sidewalks for major roads without bike lanes.
Another perspective, from a skateboarder:
In New York skateboarders are banned from sidewalks and have to skate in traffic. I've got a solid push and hold my own among bikes and cars but, regardless, get all kinds of flack from drivers. When I take the to sidewalk due to dangerous road conditions pedestrians are simply far too unpredictable, scared, and oblivious to permit me on board so I reluctantly walk.
You know who I never see walking when they're on the sidewalk? Scooter riders, electronic and otherwise.
> They belong in the bike lane (which should exist in the first place), and their speed should be capped in areas of dense foot traffic.
I live downtown Minneapolis and have been almost hit by scooters multiple times. They are everywhere. I have no problem with them, but please follow the rules. I've had people on the scooters yell at me to get out of the way both oncoming and from behind.
In Dallas (and elsewhere I imagine) we're supposed to use them on the street, and most people have been learning this. First time I rode one on the sidewalk I barely got down one block before people in cars were telling me to get off the sidewalk. Once on the street I had no trouble sharing the road with other cars, though this was downtown where the speed limit is lower. The scooters seem to have been a little more warmly accepted than the bikes, where parked bikes which take up more space were clogging up sidewalks.
This summer when I was in San Diego for a half marathon I was standing on the sidewalk waiting when out of nowhere a scooter rider was crossing the street, hit the sidewalk curb, which was higher than they expected, and endo'ed right next to me. It was almost like the latest South Park episode. The scooters can be tricky to ride for new people, are fast, and really should only be used while wearing a helmet.
> meaning side-walk devices should go at max 10 mph.
10 mph is more than enough to injure someone on collision, especially if that person is frail. Average human walking speed is 3mph. Runners average 10mph, but a running human has a lot more control over their momentum than someone in a vehicle, because they are expending their own energy to move, rather than using an external propulsion system, and they aren't on wheels.
> Talking about such, is there any data on accidents caused by e-scooters? (percentage wise e.g. vs bikes)
I don't know, but except for small children, bikes are already banned on most sidewalks in cities with a lot of foot traffic. Some adults choose to ignore those rules, but that's a different issue.
I think it does depend on the city though. I'm really excited to try these out next time I'm in Charlotte or Raleigh. The sidewalk network in those places tends to be pretty lacking in the first place, and as a result, there are only a few spots with anything close to dense foot traffic on sidewalks. It's also usually a pretty long walk to anywhere due to everything being built at car-scale. If anything, I'm hopeful that the adoption of these may pave the way to a better side-walked future in cities like those.
I don't know about the sidewalk network being lacking in Raleigh although I admittedly tend to stay within a fairly small area. Many of the sidewalks are wide and don't have a huge amount of foot traffic. The roads tend not to be too congested either in the city core.
That said, I think it took about 4 hours from my arrival a few weeks back to nearly being run down from behind on one of the streets with a narrower sidewalk. A lot of riders definitely weave around people and generally expect walkers to get out of their way.
On the plus side there weren't a lot of parked e-scooters blocking sidewalks but there were some and I saw even more in Atlanta this past week. Not enough to be a meaningful problem for pedestrians but certainly for anyone in a wheelchair or mobility scooter.
They are parked so haphazardly as well. Years long fight for the physically changed to have any mobility is being undone by these scooters blocking the sidewalks. I can walk around them but what will a person in a wheelchair do? The feature that makes them the most convenient and why people use this over bikesharing is the fact that they can be dropped of anywhere and that's exactly what the major problem with it as well.
If you care about disabled mobility, the NYC’s subways need to be at the top of the list for any outrage. Elevators are every half dozen stops, if that and the ones they have are used as urinals half the time. Disabled mobility in cities has bigger problems than scooters.
They just appeared seemingly overnight here recently. They seem quite popular, but aren't really practical on rainy days. Will see what happens when winter really hits. I can't imagine many people preferring them to a car on a snowy, slushy day or with temps below freezing. Also wondering how they'll handle salt exposure, and how the cold will affect battery life.
I'm not sure if I agree with the bike lane point (versus street anyway), but I will say that after visiting SF for the first time a few weeks ago one of the first things I noticed about downtown was the number of scooters and scooter/motorbike parking everywhere.
You don't see much of anywhere near that much around Toronto.
I agree with your comment, but this is the law already.
I'm strongly in favour of more scooters/e-bikes in the city (and fewer cars), and I'm also strongly in favour of writing tickets for anyone who is antisocial enough to ride on the sidewalk.
If traffic cops spent a week or two rigorously enforcing the law, I bet you'd see a sharp drop-off in this behaviour.
(However given the number of cars, including cop cars, that I see blocking intersections after the lights change, I'm not sure that there's really a commitment to enforcing traffic laws in SF, even where this would be a revenue-generating activity).
These scooters aren't suppose to replace lyft or bart or muni. They're suppose to let you get from 24th mission to 16th mission with minimum context switching & waiting. This translates less well to manhattan but would (if theft weren't a problem) to Brooklyn, most 2nd tier cities in the U.S., and college campuses. I think it's a good investment.
Why not Manhattan? The sidewalk docking might be an issue in some neighborhoods but if they managed to get street docking areas like the citi bikes it would be a perfect fit in Manhattan as well.
Readit News
It's possible that their launch was very much an MVP and they've been doing a lot of engineering work in the background, but they were way behind Lime and Bird at launch time.
(Edited to clarify that the unlock code is sent via Bluetooth)
Freep at the Detroit Auto Show: [1]
>Bill Ford said the company sees an opportunity to build on its legacy and provide leadership in the rapidly changing mobility industry. Electrification is where the company is headed, he said.
>Unlike other companies, Ford wants to build on customer loyalty for established best sellers rather than try to market new brands that happen to be electric because it will speed up customer acceptance, Ford said.
But. Spin must still have //some// sort of technical knowledge Ford wants because they’re investing $11b into electrification vehicles with a product launch in 2020 and a lineup of 40 electrified and hybrid vehicles by 2022. [2]
——
[1]: https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/detroit-auto-show/201...
[2]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autoshow-detroit-ford-mot...
Of course in this case the problem is lack of feedback from scooter on lock state.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
The bigger issue is that e-scooter parking is fundamentally broken right now. Despite being told not to, users still park them in the middle of a pedestrian walkway. Even if the user parks them correctly, they get knocked over or blow over into the walkway. This product is broken until these companies do what Jump did, and INTEGRATE A LOCK INTO THE PRODUCT, and make users lock it to something at the end of their ride. This almost entirely eliminates the problem of blocking a walkway, and also reduces the loss of product to theft, accidental damage, etc.
Since they're required by law in California, I'd also like helmets to be integrated into the locking mechanism, but that's a nice-to-have.
E-scooter companies: Build locks into your products. It fixes many of your problems.
full text: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml...
Some thoughts:
1)Helmet laws:
I've always found helmet requirements pretty arbitrary: if runners who run at 10-15mph aren't required to wear helmets, why force them onto cyclists and scooter users?
Such laws have been known to adversely affect ridership, which, in turn, decreases safety for everyone because drivers don't expect cyclists/scooter users. I've seen a study that found that the net effect is that helmet laws decrease safety.
2)No sidewalk riding:
Good. I'd argue that even if bicycles could be OK on sidewalks, e-scooters/e-bikes should not be, because there's no incentive for e-vehicles to go slowly on sidewalks.
For cyclists, intermittent slowdowns enforce a low speed, because it takes effort to accelerate. But on an e-scooter, all it takes is a turn of a handle to get to 15mph in a very short span of time.
So, while there's a physical cost for cyclists going too fast, there isn't one for e-scooter users.
Scooters and pedestrians sharing a sidewalk is also unsafe, but accidents are far less lethal.
The problem is that bikes/scooters are adding a third distinct speed fundamentally incompatible with the existing two, and that takes up a lot of space costs a lot of allocative inefficiencies (what if there are lots of cars and pedestrians, but no bikes/scooters at this moment?). There's no easily solution but if we're going to ask scooters to share space, at least choose the one that is less fatal, as annoying at it is for pedestrians.
I hope for (1) but expect (2).
They are much more useful in medium-density cities and suburbs where the roads and footpaths are less busy and public transport is not as effective.
I love using my scooter for commuting and errands in my low-density city, but I can't imagine riding it through a busy CBD - not on the road or the footpath. And yet that seems to be where most of these scooter rental companies are deploying. It seems crazy.
FTFY
The problem of getting ~3 miles in a city like SF (SoMa to Mission) involves a 10 min walk to a train, and several more minutes walking once you get off the train, or walking to a bus stop and waiting 10+ mins there, with another walk to your destination. 10-15 minute car or scooter trips easily become 45+ min public transport trips.
However I have moved to San Francisco, and 2 months afterwards I just bought an electric longboard.
Public transportation sucks in this city compared to any great european large city.
Eventually personal transport will be normal and everybody will know how and where to use it appropriately, but it will take a bit of time and practice to get to that point.
Autonomous car fleets are the main "mobility services" prize of course -- all the major OEMs have autonomous research labs -- but you're seeing more interest in scooters and bikes (there was a headline about GM releasing an e-bike last week).
What we're likely seeing is M&A people caught up in the hype and trends.
In some ways, it's worth spending some amount as a hedge against something happening, but I don't believe these scooters will represent any meaningful change ... personally I think they are kind of a fad.
The logistics, cost, narrow use cases of all of it just don't work out well enough. Truly - what % of people could actually commute using these things? It's very small. Of those, who would actually do it? In winter? Up and down hills? Are they a little bit too old for this, or maybe not so open minded? Are there status issues, i.e. if you are a 'serious professional' in many industries it just doesn't bode well to be bouncing around on a scooter (I know this might seem foreign maybe to HN readers but this is a thing). And then of course - if it was useful for commuting, why wouldn't people just end up buying one so they always have it when needed? I think the use cases for these scooters is very narrow.
While I agree the general attitude of 'moving beyond traditional cars' is a strategic impetus, and it makes a lot of sense to 'participate' in these things early on ... I don't think this is a secular shift. Not yet anyhow.
America is a very spread out place - even LA.
And we're only just starting to see the regulatory and populist backlash.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RQrKP9a0XE
Potentially: Everyone, winter to summer (look up his other videos), up and down hills (they're electric, hills don't matter), regardless of age. America is not the only country in the world, but even the US has cities far denser than the spread out, gridlocked hell of LA like San Francisco or NYC.
Segways largely failed for a number of reasons but infrastructure was a big one. A lot of people probably forget this but they spent a lot of time and money lobbying cities to let them ride on sidewalks (and were mostly unsuccessful in this regard).
I own a bicycle, but I don’t always have it when needed.
Deleted Comment
They also all have just a single break, which makes going down those hills dangerous.
To my knowledge all the scooters do some sort of regenerative braking. The Segway-brand scooters that Lime uses seem to ONLY have regenerative braking but those give you a little paddle to control it with. I wouldn't trust one of those to go down-hill, but anything with a disc-brake is fine.
1. http://rynomotors.com (launches April 16, 2019)
2. https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/newest-fat-tyre-elect...
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcZk9zn82-g
I'm not sure I'd trust the balancing capabilities of the unicycles you've linked to, especially in the face of shitty roads. Have you tried one?
Also, unlike most ebikes I can actually sit stationary on these without falling over. I'm very short and most ebikes are not designed for short people.
Even on their landing pages, those products look ridiculous. Convincing people in mass to ride around on those things is going to be hard.
Scooters and ebikes have the advantage of all energy going into propulsion instead of stabilization.
If a pencil skirt is too constricting it could be a problem, but the same can be said for most seated mobile cycle-based transportation methods.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/pictures/hyundais-ioniq-scoote...
And BIRD was founded in Apr 2017.
Some staff PM/engr/marketer folks at Hyundai Motor had the right idea. Too bad they were not in a position to start a startup.
edit: I'm not saying BIRD or any other copied Hyundai. Coming up with the idea and executing it is a big accomplishment. Electric motor scooters have been around a long time too.
A motor-propelled machine going 15 mph doesn't belong on the same surface as a baby stroller, a senior citizen, or a person with a disability.
They belong in the bike lane (which should exist in the first place), and their speed should be capped in areas of dense foot traffic.
I disagree, you can ride a scooter on a sidewalk safely and I need to do it from time to time. Of course, I don't prefer it. But it's pretty easy to do safely and it shouldn't bother anyone if done correctly.
The rules I follow:
1. Go much much slower.
2. Stay far away from other people and blind corners.
3. Always assume a person is about to make an erratic movement
4. Never pass closely to a person. When passing, go their walking speed + 1mph. It should be a similar speed differential to passing someone when you're walking.
5. If you have no space to pass, you need to go walking speed until space opens up.
6. if the sidewalk is too packed, just get off and walk it.
7. If you have far visibility (no blind corners, doorways, storefronts, etc) and there is no one in sight, let'er rip.
It all depends on the conditions. You should never blow by people at 15 mph. I commuted partly on 5th street in downtown Los Angeles and never had an issue, a close call, or had someone bat an eye. The goal is to blend in with other people walking.
If scooters require knowledge, thought, and skill to ride well on a sidewalk, then the two obvious answers are a) require training and a road test, or b) ban them on sidewalks. I don't much care which we go with, but having recently almost gotten flattened by some rental e-scooter idiot on the sidewalk, I think we need to pick one.
Keep it simple. "Can" but people won't. There is reason in this post ... but the law should remain that riding on sidewalks is illegal.
"Trusting" strangers on scooters to slow down is unwelcome heart-burn, as a pedestrian. "Will they slow down for me? Will they move off to the side? Will my dog stray into their fast-moving path? Will my dog, who freaks out for any person-riding-on-vehicle, freak out as this scooter crawls past? Do I need to pull the neck-collar on my dog hard so he stays sufficiently close to my feet as the person riding on the vehicle passes?"
None of this thinking should be necessary for a pedestrian. Keep the law set. Stay off the sidewalks.
Go further, require license-plates for scooters, to track infringement of riding on the sidewalk. Report scooters dragged into the lane. There is something fundamentally "not right for a metropolitan" about these smallish, easily misplaced vehicles.
Skip Scooter https://i.imgur.com/K6RuVzE.jpg
More Skip https://i.imgur.com/ZkdndG1.jpg
That's why I believe they should be enforceable rules aka laws.
These are great ideas. Write them into your representatives. Designated street-side scooter parking would also be a plus. Not only does it signal to drivers "consider another option," it also deals with the scooter litter problem.
(To form, San Francisco chose the worst of all options and coronated two companies chosen by bureaucrats to run amok in the city.)
When they first launched in LA, this wasn't the case, it was just as much of a free for all as SF. SF succumbed to regulatory capture, but LA was able to figure out a way to allow all of the companies to exist in a better way.
Note that I was told that in some parts of LA, the organization is still pretty bad, but I was in Brentwood, Santa Monica, downtown, and Venice, all of which were in reasonably good shape.
It certainly would be amazing if national incentives could be set up to redesign streets nation wide to favor bikes and pedestrians in the same way we do cars.
It puts all the risk on the cyclist. I have had numerous friends get hit and run while riding bikes on bike lanes, most recently a friend died from it.
I'll happily receive any citations for riding my bike or e-scooter on the sidewalk, and take full responsibility for any accidents I get into. It's not even up for discussion in my mind.
In the UK: > In 2015, two pedestrians were killed and 96 seriously injured after being hit by a bicycle. But every year more than 100 cyclists are killed and more than 3,000 seriously injured on British roads
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cycle-safety...
Your statistic regarding UK pedestrians being killed/hit vs bicyclists being killed/hit isn't strong as it's probable that nowhere near as many bicyclists choose to ride on the sidewalk as compared to staying in bike lanes and roads. That is, if more bicyclists opted to ride on sidewalks, the incident rate would certainly increase.
Additionally, rationalizing this in terms of the risk towards the bicyclist just comes off as selfish: "I'm not comfortable with the risk I'm facing while bicycling on the roads, therefore I will put pedestrians at risk instead."
Perhaps instead of endangering pedestrians, something more constructive would be to engage politically to improve the situation (maybe you do this already, if so, awesome!).
Nobody would accept having "painted walk lanes" instead of sidewalks, but for some reason this is considered an acceptable norm for bikes.
A bike lane really isn't safe enough to get people on bikes and scooters into it. It needs to be a separated cycle track like what is common in Copenhagen. This takes more space, but increases capacity of the whole road (the cycle track has more capacity than the driving lane it takes away).
There are a zillion other benefits too - more active/healthier population, higher retail spending along the cycle track (https://its.ucdavis.edu/inthenews/the-complete-business-case...), higher property values, only taking 30lbs of metal with you on every trip instead of 2000lbs, potentially local fuel source (food from nearby rather than oil or electricity from afar), etc etc etc.
Also, bicyclists seem to seriously hate the scooters. I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems to be that they're just not used to having much traffic on "their" paths.
If the bike lane laws disallow motorized vehicles, then how does the sidewalk law allow it? It sounds like the laws need to be updated to allowed motorized electric vehicles capable of going up to some reasonable maximum speed in the bike lane. Basically the inverse of the law that prevents mopeds and golf carts from going on the freeway today.
Deleted Comment
until then i'm fine with scooters being encouraged (but not forced) to use less busy roads, and tolerating them on sidewalks for major roads without bike lanes.
Deleted Comment
I live downtown Minneapolis and have been almost hit by scooters multiple times. They are everywhere. I have no problem with them, but please follow the rules. I've had people on the scooters yell at me to get out of the way both oncoming and from behind.
This summer when I was in San Diego for a half marathon I was standing on the sidewalk waiting when out of nowhere a scooter rider was crossing the street, hit the sidewalk curb, which was higher than they expected, and endo'ed right next to me. It was almost like the latest South Park episode. The scooters can be tricky to ride for new people, are fast, and really should only be used while wearing a helmet.
Talking about such, is there any data on accidents caused by e-scooters? (percentage wise e.g. vs bikes)
10 mph is more than enough to injure someone on collision, especially if that person is frail. Average human walking speed is 3mph. Runners average 10mph, but a running human has a lot more control over their momentum than someone in a vehicle, because they are expending their own energy to move, rather than using an external propulsion system, and they aren't on wheels.
> Talking about such, is there any data on accidents caused by e-scooters? (percentage wise e.g. vs bikes)
I don't know, but except for small children, bikes are already banned on most sidewalks in cities with a lot of foot traffic. Some adults choose to ignore those rules, but that's a different issue.
That said, I think it took about 4 hours from my arrival a few weeks back to nearly being run down from behind on one of the streets with a narrower sidewalk. A lot of riders definitely weave around people and generally expect walkers to get out of their way.
On the plus side there weren't a lot of parked e-scooters blocking sidewalks but there were some and I saw even more in Atlanta this past week. Not enough to be a meaningful problem for pedestrians but certainly for anyone in a wheelchair or mobility scooter.
You don't see much of anywhere near that much around Toronto.
I'm strongly in favour of more scooters/e-bikes in the city (and fewer cars), and I'm also strongly in favour of writing tickets for anyone who is antisocial enough to ride on the sidewalk.
If traffic cops spent a week or two rigorously enforcing the law, I bet you'd see a sharp drop-off in this behaviour.
(However given the number of cars, including cop cars, that I see blocking intersections after the lights change, I'm not sure that there's really a commitment to enforcing traffic laws in SF, even where this would be a revenue-generating activity).