Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: staff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and how Stuff Works, and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And once upon a time, not that
Speaker 1: long ago, the only dangers I had to worry about
Speaker 1: on my walks to and from work were bicyclists, slow walkers, joggers,
Speaker 1: the occasional dude on one of those unicycle scooters, and
Speaker 1: of course zombies because I'm in Atlanta. But over the
Speaker 1: last several months, a new mode of transportation has become
Speaker 1: increasingly popular along my walk. It's one that's popping up
Speaker 1: in lots of cities across the world. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the GPS enabled rental scooters known as dockless scooters, belonging
Speaker 1: to companies like Lime or Bird or one of a
Speaker 1: half dozen others. So what's the story behind those scooters?
Speaker 1: Where did this idea come from? How did it become
Speaker 1: so popular? Well, the logic behind the companies that are
Speaker 1: offering this service is actually pretty solid. Right, people need
Speaker 1: to get around and getting stuck in traffic is a drag.
Speaker 1: If you live in a city where there's a lot
Speaker 1: of car traffic, you don't necessarily really enjoy getting into
Speaker 1: your car at any given to point, and especially if
Speaker 1: you have to go just a short distance. Meanwhile, many
Speaker 1: cities in America are not terribly convenient if you happen
Speaker 1: to be a pedestrian. Atlanta is one of those cities.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a car in Atlanta, it's challenging
Speaker 1: to get around. Now, my city is slowly getting better
Speaker 1: in this regard, at least in some neighborhoods, but not
Speaker 1: all of them. And bicycles can really help cut down
Speaker 1: on car traffic plus pollution. It promotes exercise. There's been
Speaker 1: several attempts at making bike sharing or renting infrastructure available
Speaker 1: in various urban environments, and there are quite a few
Speaker 1: bicycle rental companies and programs out there, apart from the
Speaker 1: ones that you're gonna encounter in traditional spots like vacation
Speaker 1: destinations where you rent a bike for a day and
Speaker 1: you go along various bike trails. There's been a few
Speaker 1: companies and organizations that have set up businesses and services
Speaker 1: in various cities. A few cities, and some companies and
Speaker 1: some colleges have experimented with providing free bicycles to a population.
Speaker 1: They distribute bicycles across the city and people can just
Speaker 1: grab one whenever they need it and ride for as
Speaker 1: long as they want to. Google does this on their campus.
Speaker 1: If you work at Google's campus and you need to
Speaker 1: get across the area for a meeting, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: big campus, so if you're in a one building and
Speaker 1: you have to go meet in another one, that can
Speaker 1: be a bit of a hike. So you can hop
Speaker 1: on one of these bikes that are typically parked right
Speaker 1: outside of the various buildings and you can ride it
Speaker 1: over to your destination. Those bikes have no locking mechanisms
Speaker 1: for the most part. A lot of these free bike
Speaker 1: programs don't include any locking mechanisms or other preventive measures
Speaker 1: in place because it's a little antithetical to the philosophy
Speaker 1: behind the program. But that also means that those bikes
Speaker 1: aren't protected against theft, and so you can end up
Speaker 1: with some pretty tough distribution problems as well. Maybe people
Speaker 1: have taken them and not return them, or maybe you
Speaker 1: find out that all the bikes tend to end up
Speaker 1: at the bottom of hills because no one ever wants
Speaker 1: to ride the bikes back up a hill, so they
Speaker 1: just leave them at the bottom of the hill, and
Speaker 1: that's where they all accumulate. And so the bikes tend
Speaker 1: to end up being away from the places where people
Speaker 1: need them, and they collect in places where people don't
Speaker 1: want them. That's a problem. Then there are coin operated
Speaker 1: and automated docking station style services out there. Typically companies
Speaker 1: that use these follow the same general plan. You as
Speaker 1: a customer would need to go to a specific location,
Speaker 1: such as a kiosk or a docking station, where there
Speaker 1: would be bikes parked and locked in that station, and
Speaker 1: there's the point where you would rent the bike and
Speaker 1: it would release the bike, you could go ride it,
Speaker 1: and when you were done, you are meant to return
Speaker 1: the bike at a similar location. It might be a
Speaker 1: similar kiosk or dock that's across town, but it belongs
Speaker 1: to the same company and you have to take it
Speaker 1: to that specific spot. You can't just leave the bike anywhere,
Speaker 1: so you might pay for this rental with a smart
Speaker 1: card or a phone map, so it makes it a
Speaker 1: little more high tech. But this model has some fairly
Speaker 1: big drawbacks as well, and the biggest is that the
Speaker 1: renter has to find a spot to drop off the
Speaker 1: bike when they're done with it. Now they can't just
Speaker 1: ride it too, say their workplace and leave it outside
Speaker 1: if their workplace doesn't have a docking station or kiosk.
Speaker 1: But then over in China, some entrepreneurs came up with
Speaker 1: a different approach. They went with a dockless bike model,
Speaker 1: and that model allows riders to grab any available bike
Speaker 1: that belongs to the company that happens to be in
Speaker 1: the area, and then you unlock the bike with a
Speaker 1: companion app in order to rent it, and then you
Speaker 1: can ride that bicycle around and when you're done, you
Speaker 1: would end the trip. You would pull open your app
Speaker 1: and say all right, I'm done, and the bike would
Speaker 1: have an electronic lock that would engage and prevent the
Speaker 1: wheel or both wheels from turning, and then you would
Speaker 1: just leave the bike wherever it happens to be, preferably
Speaker 1: parked out of the way so it's not in the
Speaker 1: line of traffic, but you can just leave it there.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day you might have
Speaker 1: crews to go out and retrieve bicycles and then redistribute them,
Speaker 1: or if they happen to be electronic bicycles like the
Speaker 1: electric scooters are that you've been seeing popping up everywhere.
Speaker 1: Maybe first they take them back to reach charge at
Speaker 1: a central facility and then redistribute them later on early
Speaker 1: the next morning. So your basic components of these bikes,
Speaker 1: in addition to your typical bicycle parts that is, would
Speaker 1: include a GPS receiver that is able to identify where
Speaker 1: the bike is UH. Then there's some sort of transmitter
Speaker 1: that sends this information, this location information back out to
Speaker 1: the general system that the company uses to keep track
Speaker 1: of all the different bikes UH. And then you would
Speaker 1: have some sort of unique code on the bike itself.
Speaker 1: There might be a string of characters, or it might
Speaker 1: be a QR code, and this would be what the
Speaker 1: user would input in their app to let the system
Speaker 1: know this is the specific bicycle I want to use.
Speaker 1: This is also a good way for the company to
Speaker 1: make sure that if someone has rented a bike and
Speaker 1: they're there just temporarily leaving it outside, they can keep
Speaker 1: that bicycle locked until the UH the initial writer has
Speaker 1: completely released it is that way you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about riding a bicycle to say a local store,
Speaker 1: leaving it outside and then coming out and finding out
Speaker 1: that the bike that you had rented is now gone
Speaker 1: because someone else has rented it after you went inside
Speaker 1: the store. Anyway, there's also the electric lock. Obviously, that's
Speaker 1: the really important part. It can disengage or engage after
Speaker 1: receiving the appropriate signal as relayed by the company's service.
Speaker 1: So let's do a quick rundown of the major component
Speaker 1: here of GPS, because I think it's fascinating how GPS works,
Speaker 1: and it's been a long time since I've actually talked
Speaker 1: about the process, and it really lets you appreciate the
Speaker 1: ingenuity that went into designing the GPS navigation system. So
Speaker 1: GPS stands for Global Positioning System, and so way above
Speaker 1: our heads, way on space, there are a collection of
Speaker 1: GPS satellites just whizzing around of there, and there about
Speaker 1: thirty of them out in space. They were originally intended
Speaker 1: to provide navigational data to the US military, but in
Speaker 1: the ninety nineties, the US President Bill Clinton did away
Speaker 1: with a policy that was called selective availability. Selective availability
Speaker 1: would purposefully introduce errors into the positioning data. So if
Speaker 1: you had a receiver and you didn't have the right
Speaker 1: code to tune into the GPS network, you would get
Speaker 1: location information that was wrong on purpose, not completely wrong,
Speaker 1: but it wouldn't be accurate to within a few hundred feet.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't really useful for anything because you wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know it would It would be too imprecise. If
Speaker 1: you were using it to get from point A to
Speaker 1: point B. As a navigation system, it wouldn't recognize that
Speaker 1: the turn you needed to take was a mile behind you. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe a miles being pretty I'm exaggerating there, but you
Speaker 1: might pass a turn and it might be several seconds
Speaker 1: after you've passed it before your navigation system says, hey,
Speaker 1: turn right at that place that was behind you. That
Speaker 1: would be a problem. So Clinton did away with that
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and at that point anyone could access
Speaker 1: the accurate information. Before then, it was just the military
Speaker 1: that could, and it was part of a strategy to
Speaker 1: keep things safe by keeping that a military operation that
Speaker 1: kind of expired in the nineties. Now anyone can use
Speaker 1: GPS data and have it be pretty precise to within
Speaker 1: just a few feet, So that's much more useful if
Speaker 1: you want to do like point to point navigation systems.
Speaker 1: So how does it work well. Each of those satellites
Speaker 1: in that group overhead are sending out pulses of information,
Speaker 1: and those pulses include a time stamp, which is incredibly important.
Speaker 1: The time stamp indicates when the pulse is leaving the
Speaker 1: satellite and also information about the satellites position above the Earth.
Speaker 1: So no matter where you are on Earth, there are
Speaker 1: at least four GPS satellites within line of sight of you.
Speaker 1: That is, you are visible to at least four satellites.
Speaker 1: A GPS receiver picks up on those signals that are
Speaker 1: being sent out by the satellites, so it's essentially a
Speaker 1: very high tech electronic ear And because the signals include
Speaker 1: the satellites positional information and a time stamp, the receiver
Speaker 1: can use that information to calculate how far away it
Speaker 1: is from that respective satellite. The signals travel at the
Speaker 1: speed of light, so you start with the time it
Speaker 1: took from the point that the data was time stamped
Speaker 1: to when it was received by the receiver, and then
Speaker 1: work backward to figure out how far away the receiver
Speaker 1: is from that satellite. So you know, if I were
Speaker 1: to say, it takes the sound I make travels and
Speaker 1: I'm just making this number of Let's say the sound
Speaker 1: I make travels one feet every second, and it took
Speaker 1: five seconds from the time I made a sound. Too.
Speaker 1: When you heard it, you do some math, you say, oh,
Speaker 1: that means I'm five feet away from Jonathan. Again, that
Speaker 1: was just me using a very basic, completely not realistic example.
Speaker 1: So the problem here is that this does not actually
Speaker 1: tell you what your position is from one satellite. It's
Speaker 1: one satellite alone, just tells you how far away you
Speaker 1: are from that satellite. Doesn't tell you anything about your position,
Speaker 1: just that you could be, in theory at any point
Speaker 1: that is that distance away from the respective satellite. So
Speaker 1: if you were to render this in a three D application,
Speaker 1: You've got a satellite that's an orbit around Earth, and
Speaker 1: you say, like, well, according to the this time stamp,
Speaker 1: I must be I don't know, let's say five kilometers
Speaker 1: from this satellite. Well, you could identify the satellite up
Speaker 1: in the sky and you could draw a transparent sphere
Speaker 1: that's five kilometers out from every direction from that satellite.
Speaker 1: It would be like this globe surrounding the satellite. Some
Speaker 1: of that sphere would intersect with the surface of Earth,
Speaker 1: but that would mean that you had a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of potential points where you could be based upon your
Speaker 1: distance from that one satellite. So that's not enough to
Speaker 1: let you know where you are, right, that's not enough information.
Speaker 1: You could potentially be anywhere along those points of contact.
Speaker 1: So you then have to look at more than one satellite.
Speaker 1: If you can pick up signals from multiple satellites, you
Speaker 1: can determine where you are. So you know you are
Speaker 1: X distance from satellite A, your y distance from satellite B,
Speaker 1: and your Z distance from satellite see. So you draw
Speaker 1: your spheres around these three different satellites. They're all going
Speaker 1: to intersect at a point on the face of Earth,
Speaker 1: and that would be your location. That's the one point
Speaker 1: that is the distance from all three of those satellites,
Speaker 1: the respective distance from each of those satellites, so it
Speaker 1: tells you where you would be. This approach, by the
Speaker 1: way of determining your location is called trilateration. This is
Speaker 1: different from triangulation because, as that name implies, triangulation is
Speaker 1: all about using angles to determine your position. Trilateration is
Speaker 1: about using distances from different known points. Also a word
Speaker 1: about that time feature. This is also I think really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely necessary for the satellites to send the time
Speaker 1: data or else there's no way to calculate the distance
Speaker 1: between the satellites and the receiver. But keeping accurate time
Speaker 1: isn't an incredible challenge because you could easily have clocks
Speaker 1: run out of uh, they could get desynchronized, right, This
Speaker 1: just can happen. So GPS satellites do this. They keep
Speaker 1: accurate synchronized time by using atomic clocks. Atomic clocks use
Speaker 1: the resonance frequencies of atoms as the resonator. The resonator
Speaker 1: is the part of the clock that keeps time. It's
Speaker 1: kind of I come grandfather's clock clocks pendulum. Usually it
Speaker 1: swings back once every second. That's a very slow resonator.
Speaker 1: Atoms resonate much much much more more quickly, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: if you have the atoms of specific stuff, they're always
Speaker 1: going to resonate at the same frequency. They're very consistent.
Speaker 1: I've got a little bit more to say about keeping
Speaker 1: time with the satellites and the GPS network, as well
Speaker 1: as getting back into the electric scooter land. But before
Speaker 1: I get into any of that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. In addition to keeping accurate time.
Speaker 1: The GPS network has to account for general and special relativity.
Speaker 1: Yeah we're talking super important science here. So, according to
Speaker 1: general relativity, the clocks on the satellites would run faster
Speaker 1: than clocks on Earth because time runs slower if it's
Speaker 1: in an environment that has a stronger gravitational pull. And
Speaker 1: a clock on Earth would have a stronger gravitational pull
Speaker 1: on it than a clock on a satellite, so the
Speaker 1: clocks on Earth would run a little more slowly than
Speaker 1: a clock in space. However, then you have special relativity.
Speaker 1: Special relativity says that the relative speed of a given
Speaker 1: object also determines how time will pass for that object.
Speaker 1: The faster the object is going relative to another object,
Speaker 1: the slower time will appear to pass for that uh
Speaker 1: fast moving object. So, since satellites are moving very quickly
Speaker 1: relative to a clock on Earth, the clocks on satellite
Speaker 1: will appear to run more slowly than o'clock on Earth.
Speaker 1: So they appear to run more quickly due to general relativity,
Speaker 1: but more slowly due to special relativity. Special in general
Speaker 1: relativity don't quite cancel each other out, so the GPS
Speaker 1: network actually has to take into account both special and
Speaker 1: general relativity when trying to make sure all these clocks
Speaker 1: are synchronized properly, and it shows that Einstein was really
Speaker 1: onto something and who would have thought that I could
Speaker 1: fit in this quick discussion about relativity in an episode
Speaker 1: that's all about electric scooters. So connected to this GPS
Speaker 1: receiver on these dockless bikes and scooters as a processor
Speaker 1: and a wireless communications device. It might be the equivalent
Speaker 1: of like a cell phone. There's some that use three
Speaker 1: gene networks to send information back to the general system,
Speaker 1: but different ones may use different proprietary approaches. The nature
Speaker 1: of the communications device depends upon the company, but essentially
Speaker 1: it just comes out to being a type of wireless
Speaker 1: ray deo that sends out information about the bike or
Speaker 1: scooters location. The respective company or organization or whatever is
Speaker 1: handling this receives that signal and then registers the vehicle's
Speaker 1: location and frequently will incorporate the information into the app
Speaker 1: that customers use. So if you're a customer, you can
Speaker 1: follow up an app and you can look at a
Speaker 1: map of your area and it should highlight the location
Speaker 1: of available vehicles because they are constantly paying the system
Speaker 1: with their location. This is also how the service is
Speaker 1: able to locate these individual vehicles at the end of
Speaker 1: the day so that they can redistribute them in the
Speaker 1: appropriate places and also recharge any that run on electricity.
Speaker 1: The electronic lock prevents people from just grabbing a scooter
Speaker 1: or bike and taking it for a joy ride or
Speaker 1: stealing it for themselves, and the lock prevents one or
Speaker 1: both wheels from turning, So not much more to say
Speaker 1: about that. It's pretty basic piece of technology. The unique
Speaker 1: identify or for the bike, like I said, could be
Speaker 1: a QR code, it could be a string of characters,
Speaker 1: but it's unique to the bike or scooter so that
Speaker 1: the network can send a signal for the lock to
Speaker 1: disengage and begin the rental period for that user. Also
Speaker 1: to alert users to the location of specific bikes, and
Speaker 1: to keep the location of bikes that are still being
Speaker 1: rented off of the map. Obviously, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: show the location of every single vehicle that was belonging
Speaker 1: to that system, because some of them might be in
Speaker 1: use and they would not be available to someone else
Speaker 1: who wants to just grab one right then and there.
Speaker 1: So you have to have a way of identifying each
Speaker 1: of these and saying all right, well, this one over
Speaker 1: here is not in use, therefore I'm going to show
Speaker 1: it on the map, whereas this one over here is
Speaker 1: being used right now by somebody, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to have that pop up on the map. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that these companies got started in China,
Speaker 1: or that this kind of service got started in China.
Speaker 1: The two largest companies in China that do this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, especially with bicycles, are called o fo Ofo
Speaker 1: That one has more than two million bikes in forty
Speaker 1: three cities in China, and another one called Mobike, which
Speaker 1: has more than one million bikes of its own. Now,
Speaker 1: inspired by the success of those businesses in China, several
Speaker 1: people in America decided to give this same concept to
Speaker 1: go and early companies to get into dockleas bike sharing
Speaker 1: in the US where Zagster Blue Go Go, which was
Speaker 1: a Chinese company, subsequently it went bankrupt. There was a
Speaker 1: spin which was recently acquired by Ford that Social Bicycles
Speaker 1: also known as Jump Bikes, which is now owned by
Speaker 1: Uber Motivated Company which is now owned by Lift and
Speaker 1: Lime or as it was originally known, Lime Bike. Many
Speaker 1: of those companies would pop up around the same time
Speaker 1: around two thousand seventeen early two thousand eighteen, but in
Speaker 1: different cities, and would rapidly expand out to other locations
Speaker 1: as soon as the company's had secured enough funding to
Speaker 1: do that, and funding came along pretty darn quickly. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of different examples, but I'm gonna look
Speaker 1: at two specifically. I'm gonna start with a line Bike
Speaker 1: as an example. It's admittedly a pretty dramatic example, but
Speaker 1: I think this is an interesting topic, not just from
Speaker 1: the text side, but also from the business side. So
Speaker 1: line Bike started as a startup in early and it
Speaker 1: was not the first dockless bike startup in the United States,
Speaker 1: but it did help define the model for success. You
Speaker 1: had co founders Brad Boo and Toby's son. They started
Speaker 1: the company in San Mateo, California, and they had the
Speaker 1: goal of creating a dockless bike rental company akin to
Speaker 1: what was going on in China. The actual rollout of
Speaker 1: bikes would happen in April. Like many other bike sharing
Speaker 1: and renting companies, Linebike opted to use special tires for
Speaker 1: their bikes. They didn't use the inflated tires that you
Speaker 1: would typically find on a bicycle. Instead, they are foam
Speaker 1: core tires. This helps cut down on maintenance and repair costs,
Speaker 1: as those tires aren't in as much danger of ripping
Speaker 1: apart or deflating, you know, getting a puncture. Other companies
Speaker 1: have used similar tires, some of them are even solid
Speaker 1: rubber tires. I imagine that these probably are a bit
Speaker 1: more stiff in the ride than your typical inflated tire bikes,
Speaker 1: but I've never actually been on once, I don't know.
Speaker 1: The pricing model for a line Bike originally was a
Speaker 1: dollar every half hour, and investors obviously thought that this
Speaker 1: was a promising idea, so at launch, firms like Andrea
Speaker 1: sen Horowitz and I d G Ventures poured twelve million
Speaker 1: dollars into the company, and that was just the first
Speaker 1: round of funding, which happened in March. The following October
Speaker 1: they had a second round of funding where they raised
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars in investment. Then in February, line Bike
Speaker 1: got another round of funding, this time at seventy million dollars,
Speaker 1: and in July two thousand eighteen, they got yet another
Speaker 1: round of funding for an amazing three hundred thirty five
Speaker 1: million dollars in investments, which meant that by July eighteen,
Speaker 1: Lime had reached a valuation of one point one billion dollars,
Speaker 1: and by then the company wasn't just offering up bikes
Speaker 1: but also electric scooters. But that's not all. In October
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, Bloomberg reported that Lime was looking for
Speaker 1: even more financing, and this time at evaluation of more
Speaker 1: than three billion dollars. Rumor has it that the company
Speaker 1: has also been in talks with Uber about a possible acquisition.
Speaker 1: And Lime story is incredible, but it's not unique. There's
Speaker 1: another electric scooter duckless rental company called Bird that has
Speaker 1: also experienced a meteoric rise. Bird was founded by a
Speaker 1: man named Travis vander Zanden. It was launched in two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen in Santa Monica, California, and vanders Enden had
Speaker 1: previously worked as an executive at both Lift and Uber,
Speaker 1: so he had experience in this world, just in the
Speaker 1: car world. Uh leading into this, he secured fifteen million
Speaker 1: dollars in funding in February two thousand eighteen. Just one
Speaker 1: month later, a second round of funding raised one hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars on in May, the company saw another one
Speaker 1: hundred fifty million dollars in investment, which catapulted Bird into
Speaker 1: the billion dollar valuation, making Bird the startup to reach
Speaker 1: the fabled unicorn status the fastest and start up speak,
Speaker 1: a unicorn is a company that reaches a billion dollars
Speaker 1: in valuation, and you hear a lot about unicorns in
Speaker 1: tech business speak. But of course the story doesn't stop there.
Speaker 1: In June two thousand eighteen, Bird got another three hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars in financing that boosted the valuation up to
Speaker 1: two billion, and Bird, like Lime, is seeking additional financing
Speaker 1: and apparently is doing so at evaluation even more than
Speaker 1: lines three point three billion dollars. Incredible. The electric scooter
Speaker 1: trend started up around the end of and it really
Speaker 1: began to get momentum, so to speak. In generally, the
Speaker 1: companies behind these business models followed a pretty brazen philosophy.
Speaker 1: They would move operations into a city, they would secure
Speaker 1: facilities to recharge scooters, and they would hire on staff
Speaker 1: to retrieve the vehicles at the end of the day
Speaker 1: and then place those scooters in strategic high traffic areas
Speaker 1: the next morning, all without first talking to city officials
Speaker 1: about it. The general approach has been, don't ask for permission,
Speaker 1: just go out and do it, and then deal with
Speaker 1: any issues as they pop up. What just caused more
Speaker 1: than just a few problems along the way. I'll explain
Speaker 1: more in just a moment, but first let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsor. It's a pretty common
Speaker 1: thread in technology that the law tends to lag behind innovation. Frequently,
Speaker 1: inventive people will create transformative technology that does not neatly
Speaker 1: fit into pre existing regulatory infrastructure, and then you get
Speaker 1: the awkward scramble as governments try to incorporate something new
Speaker 1: into a system that doesn't always deal with new stuff
Speaker 1: really well. We've seen this with autonomous cars, we're seeing
Speaker 1: it with artificial intelligence, and we're also seeing it with
Speaker 1: these bike rental and scooter rental companies. Rather than risk
Speaker 1: being denied the chance to do business in a city,
Speaker 1: many of these companies bypass the tricky step of getting
Speaker 1: permission and they just go straight into getting to work.
Speaker 1: But then you get a sudden flood of scooters in
Speaker 1: a city that may or may not have local laws
Speaker 1: dictating how such vehicles are supposed to operate, and cities
Speaker 1: scooters might be treated like bicycles, and there may be
Speaker 1: rules in place that say writers are supposed to wear
Speaker 1: helmets at all times, they're supposed to stick to roads
Speaker 1: and streets, they're supposed to stay off sidewalks. Other cities
Speaker 1: might have the opposite. They might say that scooters are
Speaker 1: not street legal and people should never ride on streets
Speaker 1: or roads and only stick to maybe bike paths, sidewalks,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Some cities have no real regulations
Speaker 1: at all for them because there are still a relatively
Speaker 1: new form of transportation. So if you live in a
Speaker 1: city that has one or more of these companies that
Speaker 1: are in operation in your area, you've likely either heard
Speaker 1: someone complaining about them, or maybe you've done some grousing yourself.
Speaker 1: I know I have, But in my case it tends
Speaker 1: to be directed not towards the companies necessarily, as I
Speaker 1: think their business model is a valid one, if not
Speaker 1: questionably applied. I think that asking for the permit approach
Speaker 1: is the more responsible way to do it, maybe not
Speaker 1: the most profitable, but more responsible. But my ire is
Speaker 1: directed more toward irresponsible or disrespectful customers. You can't necessarily
Speaker 1: blame a company for the quality of its customers unless
Speaker 1: that company is actively cultivating a customer base of jerk
Speaker 1: faces through its messaging, branding, and execution. But just a
Speaker 1: quick search online for duckless electric scooters or using actual
Speaker 1: company names like Lime or Bird or one of the
Speaker 1: numerous other companies out there is going to bring up
Speaker 1: tons of articles about how the scooters are causing headaches
Speaker 1: in cities around the world. So, for example, a piece
Speaker 1: on NPR's website that was published in August two thousand
Speaker 1: eighteen has the title Duckless scooters gain Popularity and scorn
Speaker 1: across the US. The piece details how the scooters are
Speaker 1: getting an enthusiastic reaction from users and inspiring frustration or
Speaker 1: worse in others, and it points out that now there
Speaker 1: are entire social media accounts dedicated to some of the
Speaker 1: more egregious examples of bad user behavior, such as an
Speaker 1: Instagram account called scooters Behaving Badly. City governments are starting
Speaker 1: to respond to this. In June two thousand eighteen, San
Speaker 1: Francisco's government ordered all electric scooter companies to cease and
Speaker 1: desist operations until those companies secured permits. The city announced
Speaker 1: that all electric scooters from those companies would have to
Speaker 1: be off San Francisco streets and sidewalks by June four,
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen. Otherwise the companies would face a one
Speaker 1: dollars per day fine for every scooter of theirs that
Speaker 1: was left in a public right of way after June four.
Speaker 1: In addition, San Francisco City government ruled that it would
Speaker 1: only issue permits for up to five companies MAX in
Speaker 1: a pilot program. Why did San Francisco react this way,
Speaker 1: It was largely in response to complaints from city residents.
Speaker 1: There were numerous incidents of scooters blocking sidewalks and ramps
Speaker 1: up to sidewalks, which made it harder for people to
Speaker 1: navigate when they were just walking on foot as a pedestrian.
Speaker 1: The city was particularly concerned about the welfare of the
Speaker 1: elderly and those with mobility issues, because you know, you
Speaker 1: have a scooter left on a sidewalk ramp that might
Speaker 1: prevent someone in a wheelchair from being able to get
Speaker 1: off the street and onto the sidewalk. In addition, there
Speaker 1: were concerns that writers were not operating the scooters safely
Speaker 1: or even with common sense, in some cases, putting themselves
Speaker 1: and others at risk. The permit program allows for a
Speaker 1: one year trial, and that trial has some other pretty
Speaker 1: big restrictions on it. Within the first six months of
Speaker 1: the trial, there could be no more than one thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred fifty scooters on San Francisco's streets. After that
Speaker 1: half year period of things are looking okay like they're
Speaker 1: still working, then the city government can bump that up
Speaker 1: to two thousand, five hundred scooters for the entire city.
Speaker 1: But to be considered for a permit, the companies have
Speaker 1: to provide proof that they will operate responsibly within the city,
Speaker 1: which includes having a plan in place to keep sidewalks
Speaker 1: clear of the scooters, which seems to me to be
Speaker 1: a pretty tall order because that relies on user behavior,
Speaker 1: and if users don't follow the rules, the companies are
Speaker 1: the ones that suffer for it. That might not be
Speaker 1: entirely fair, but at the same time, I don't really
Speaker 1: know what the solution would be, as it's pretty hard
Speaker 1: to dictate to users what they must and must not
Speaker 1: do when they are unsupervised. In addition to keeping the
Speaker 1: sidewalks clear, the companies also have to provide insurance that
Speaker 1: to give trip data to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation agency,
Speaker 1: and they have to prove that the companies have privacy
Speaker 1: and security measures in place to protect customers. In October
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, San Francisco began the scooter share permit
Speaker 1: and pilot program with just two companies. One of them
Speaker 1: is called Scoot and the other is called Skip. These
Speaker 1: two companies operate in relatively small regions in the city.
Speaker 1: I mean they have to. There are only one thousand,
Speaker 1: two d fifty scooters allowed in total between the two
Speaker 1: of them, so it's impractical to offer wide coverage. You
Speaker 1: would rarely, if ever, run across a scooter, so they
Speaker 1: operate in pretty small areas within the city. So interestingly,
Speaker 1: the limited availability of scooters in certain neighborhoods in San
Speaker 1: Francisco has created a new disagreement, a new argument among
Speaker 1: city officials. There are representatives from some of those neighborhoods
Speaker 1: who have complained that the San Francisco Municipal Transit Authorities
Speaker 1: approach means that the districts they represent have few, if
Speaker 1: any scooters available, so the people who live in those
Speaker 1: districts can't take advantage of those services. So while the
Speaker 1: initial problem was that there were too many of these
Speaker 1: darned scooters everywhere. Now the opposite is true. Now you've
Speaker 1: got people complaining that there aren't enough scooters out there,
Speaker 1: and that's probably in the back of the minds of
Speaker 1: many of the executives at these companies, because if they
Speaker 1: can launch their service quickly in cities without first getting
Speaker 1: permission from the city government, they can create a business
Speaker 1: that at least some people are going to find useful
Speaker 1: and fun, and some will even think of it as
Speaker 1: a a necessary service once they start relying on it
Speaker 1: more frequently. And then as cities respond to complaints or
Speaker 1: they try to get a grip on what is going
Speaker 1: on to make sure everything is being operated in a
Speaker 1: safe and responsible manner, the cities are the ones that
Speaker 1: have to deal with the backlash from customers. If they
Speaker 1: are to remove those scooters, you're gonna have a bunch
Speaker 1: of angry citizens who say, you're taking away something that
Speaker 1: I use to get to and from work, for example.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a parent taking away a
Speaker 1: favorite toy from their child and then having to deal
Speaker 1: with the imper tantrum, except in this case, I'm being unfair.
Speaker 1: I think temper tantrum is really being unfair. Because for
Speaker 1: some people, these these electric scooters really have been a
Speaker 1: way to become independent of cars. If they're just taking
Speaker 1: short trips between locations, then they can hop on one
Speaker 1: of these things. They don't have to drive. They're not
Speaker 1: contributing to the traffic issues or the pollution, So there
Speaker 1: are legit arguments for using these services, even if those
Speaker 1: services came into cities without the first, you know, getting permission.
Speaker 1: While all this is going on, it is good to
Speaker 1: remember that Blue Go Go, that Chinese bike sharing company
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, did go out of business and went bankrupt.
Speaker 1: So some analysts say that might indicate that this whole
Speaker 1: duckless sharing model, both for bicycles and for scooters, could
Speaker 1: be a bubble, and that there could be a bubble
Speaker 1: burst in the future. There's also no shortage of competing
Speaker 1: companies out there, although only a few have really seen
Speaker 1: the monumental financial success at least from an investment standpoint
Speaker 1: of a company like Bird or Lime, and as right
Speaker 1: hailing companies like Uber and Lift get more involved, will
Speaker 1: probably see more integrated approaches rolling forward, so to speak.
Speaker 1: I didn't even cover issues of cities seeing a rise
Speaker 1: in things like people getting injured, broken bones, or even
Speaker 1: fist fights that are broken out over scooters. Things like that.
Speaker 1: That's also happening. But you know that's again I can't
Speaker 1: necessarily fault the companies for this. That's again user behavior.
Speaker 1: So will the dockless electric scooter business models survive? I
Speaker 1: think so. I think it's likely to continue, and we're
Speaker 1: probably gonna see a real patchwork approach to it as
Speaker 1: different cities respond in different ways. Some will be more restrictive,
Speaker 1: some more permissive, and I doubt all the different companies
Speaker 1: are going to stick around. I'm sure a few will
Speaker 1: follow in Blue Go Goes Away can eventually go out
Speaker 1: of suineness or get acquired by competitors. But at fifteen
Speaker 1: cents per minute for a lot of these electric scooter models,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty cheap way to get around, and when
Speaker 1: you're scooting about at fifteen miles an hour, it's got
Speaker 1: to be fun. Also, just full disclosure, I have never
Speaker 1: ever ridden on one of these electric scooters. I suspect
Speaker 1: I would fall off almost immediately because I'm old and
Speaker 1: I don't have great balance. I would love to give
Speaker 1: one a try, but I've actually seen a guy take
Speaker 1: a really serious spill off of one of these in
Speaker 1: a major street in Atlanta called Highland, and he did
Speaker 1: a real tumble. And if that had happened to me,
Speaker 1: he bounced up pretty quickly and seemed more embarrassed than
Speaker 1: anything else. I would not have bounced up. I would
Speaker 1: have crunched. I would have been embarrassed and injured. So
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm ever going to get on
Speaker 1: one of these anytime soon, but they are interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I'm curious if you guys have them in your neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: Do you what what's your opinion? Do you think they're great?
Speaker 1: Do you think they are a blight on civilization? And
Speaker 1: if you have any other suggestions for episodes of tech Stuff,
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