When the streets and alleys of China City were occupied by colorful bicycles, Americans exclaimed, "How it affects the city appearance". Now, in the face of the rapid growth of electric scooters in the United States, they also have a headache.

Electric scooters are starting from major cities in the United States and gradually "invading" American life. Walking on the road, an electric scooter with lights on may pass you at a speed of 15 mph (about 25 km/h) without much movement.

In sparsely populated America, people ride bicycles less and less. In 20 17, more than 40,000 bicycles without piles were put into use in the United States, and most of them were idle. According to the report released by the National Association of Urban Traffic Officials, there were 85,000 electric scooters in the United States in 20 18 years, which was more than the most popular bicycles in the United States18,000.

Last year, consumers in the United States used electric scooters 38.5 million times, which has exceeded the number of times they used bicycles with piles (36.5 million times) and far exceeded bicycles without piles (3 million times), and bicycles without piles are still very popular in China. This trend is still strengthening.

Only one and a half years after its large-scale launch in the United States, the electric scooter, which is more labor-saving and convenient to travel, has taken away the title of "solving the last mile" in cycling.

Like bicycle sharing in China in the past few years, electric scooters are trying to connect cities through lightweight travel plans to solve the "last mile" problem. In fact, many electric scooter players developed from * * * bike sharing companies, and some companies provide both electric scooters and bicycles.

But judging from the data, electric scooter, which is still very young, has great potential to catch up. Most American teenagers are familiar with scooters. Light and labor-saving. You can easily accelerate by stepping on the electric version twice. Some people may not be able to ride a bike, but few people can fall off an electric scooter.

In the United States, today's electric scooters mainly have five players: Bird, Lyme, Spin, Jumping (Uber) and Raffles.

Bird is one of the fastest growing and largest start-ups enjoying electric scooters, and has raised more than $270 million so far. Lime transformed from a bicycle to an electric scooter, with a total financing of more than 700 million US dollars.

Uber and Raffles are already top players in the field of tourism. Uber acquired Jump on 20 18 and invested in Lime. Both brands of electric scooters and bicycles now appear on their main apps. Similarly, the main app of Raffles has also provided electric scooter options (displayed with bicycles) since the summer of 20 18, and now it has been extended to more than ten cities such as Washington, San Jose, Denver, Miami, Los Angeles and Dallas.

Spin has also changed from * * * to enjoying riding. It was acquired by Ford in June last year, 165438+ 10, which became another important part of Ford's travel map.

These major players are headquartered in California, and electric scooters can be seen in more than a dozen cities in California. The main launch area is in the city center or other commercial centers and crowded scenic spots.

Lucky Car * * * Enjoy the bicycle * * * Enjoy the screenshot of the electric scooter interface.

Similar to the domestic * * * bicycles, the * * * scooter can only be used by scanning the code of the mobile phone. However, if it is a newly registered account, the application often has one more step: safety instructions, including suggestions on wearing a helmet, driving methods, parking methods and asking consumers to obey traffic rules.

Safety instructions in app

Bird, Lyme, Spine and Raffles charge in a similar way. They all start with one yuan, and then use 0. 15 yuan per minute. Uber's jump seems to be more economical, and unlocking costs nothing, 0. 1 USD per minute. The specific charges may vary slightly according to different cities, but the prices are not high.

"Byrd and Lyme's cars feel heavier, and Raffles' cars are relatively easier to control, but using button brakes will be a bit unaccustomed. David, a Silicon Valley engineer who has tried different electric bicycles, told Titanium Media. In fact, most of these electric scooters originally came from Xiaomi or Segway's consumer-grade electric scooters. After obtaining the initial funds, Bird and Raffles began to customize skateboard models that were more suitable for * * * *.

It is worth mentioning that, unlike the * * * pleasure devices that can be seen everywhere in China, most of these * * * pleasure devices are now in tourist cities or big cities with dense crowds. After all, America is distributed in the form of urban agglomerations. These electric scooters are of little use in small cities with scattered population and small total amount.

However, it is quite similar to the advantages and disadvantages of * * enjoying a bicycle:

The advantage is that it can solve the "last mile" problem, requires fewer parking spaces, and is even better than * * * enjoying bicycles, and can ride without any study time; The disadvantage is the problem of parking and misplacing, which requires timely "rebalancing"-manually moving vehicles from areas with less demand to areas with greater demand.

In American cities such as San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and Denver, in addition to these nationally developed players, there are more than a dozen smaller electric scooter manufacturers competing for this growing market, as well as electric scooter manufacturers like Razor.

In San Diego at the southern tip of California and downtown San Jose in the hinterland of Silicon Valley, * * * electric scooters have become a common tool for young people and tourists, allowing them to walk freely in scenic spots or downtown areas where parking spaces are tight. For example, in downtown San Diego, most parking lots are very expensive, ranging from $20 to $30 (about RMB 138-205). If two people travel, they can use electric scooter whenever they want, and the cost is only close to driving. .

Transportation cost comparison

As mentioned above, electric scooters can certainly solve some travel problems. However, judging from the popularity of electric scooters in cities such as Los Angeles and San Diego, it seems that * * * cars will be parked indiscriminately in both the United States and China.

Electric scooter manufacturers mainly try to change this situation in three ways:

The first is the prompt in the app (the effect is very limited);

The second is to ask the user to take a good photo after parking to prove that the vehicle has stopped in the required area before ending the trip. In addition, a restricted area has been set up. If you park in the "no-go area", you will have to pay an extra fine.

Three, own employees or hire contract workers to dispatch and organize vehicles.

Street scooter, photography/Ding Shibei

The American government has found a unique regulatory entry point in the tide of electric scooters: data.

These disputes with managers and passengers are reminiscent of the dramatic plot at the beginning of Uber. An experienced veteran in the taxi fight in the past has also applied his thinking and analysis on * * * to this emerging market. Under the leadership of Seleta Reynolds, general manager of LADOT, LADOT has developed a system for managing * * * electric scooters and * * * bicycles. This system can make Los Angeles Transportation Bureau and electric scooters transmit data and information in real time.

"When taxis appeared, because the information given by these companies (Uber and Raffles) was very opaque, it was difficult for city decision makers to obtain even very basic data or make policy changes, and they lost the opportunity to manage, design and understand some changes in public areas." Recalling my experience as a manager of the San Francisco municipal transportation agency, Celeta said.

In order to avoid the same slip on the electric scooter, she turned her attention to technology. She cooperated with John Ellis, the former chief scientist of Ford Company, and asked the latter company to help Los Angeles Transportation Bureau to develop MDS(Mobility Data Specification), so that * * * electric vehicle companies can submit operational data through standardized data models and two API interfaces, and receive real-time notifications from city regulatory authorities.

In other words, they can always know when passengers are using electric scooters, where they are parked, and whether they violate the rules. They can also inform enterprises to deal with violations at any time or avoid ongoing demonstrations.

This means that all passengers' travel data can reach the government agencies directly, and there is no need for service providers to integrate and clean the data. For the once "completely blind" Los Angeles Transportation Bureau, it is tantamount to howard the duck, and the data supervision ability has been directly improved by an order of magnitude. In the past, different cities still needed companies to submit data in PDF, CSV and other formats, and the delay time was as long as weeks or even months, and all they got were summarized data. The company was facing different cities.

In the future, this system may also be used to manage taxis, self-driving cars, drones and so on. After applying MDS, urban management becomes easier.

From 2065438 to March 2009, Los Angeles granted Bird, Lime and Spin the license to operate electric scooters, but required them to deal with illegally parked vehicles within two hours after receiving the complaint from 7 am to 10 pm. For these companies, this is a more difficult and stressful management challenge than before.

On the other hand, in the future, the government can also make policy adjustments based on these data, and restrain or encourage these companies: I hope they can reach more low-income areas and reduce the operating expenses in this area; In urban infrastructure areas, increase operating costs to reduce the possibility that users of electric scooters will affect their work.

This is certainly not good news for * * * people who enjoy electric scooters, and even for all those who enjoy traveling. Uber has said that it will bring "unprecedented regulatory capacity" and introduced a bill to try to abolish MDS. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation said that the data would not be stored for too long, and any possibility that it could be traced back to specific users would be avoided.

The tug-of-war with the government may take some time to bear fruit, but for these companies that have already made hundreds of millions of dollars, the more urgent need is to make profits-or at least have room for imagination about future profits. Some time ago, The Information, a well-known science and technology media in Silicon Valley, pointed out that Bird has lost 654.38 billion US dollars and its income is still shrinking, which is just the epitome of this crazy money-burning industry.

For the * * * electric scooter, controlling the cost and loss of the vehicle is the key to finally achieve profitability. In the former case, many companies choose to make their own vehicles; In order to solve the latter, newly customized vehicles need to be able to run longer distances.

In the initial development of Bird, every trip was losing money, but after the launch of its own vehicle, its CEO Travis VanderZanden said that "it has been on the road to profitability". Bird's electric cars originally came from a brand familiar to consumers in China: Xiaomi, and later some of them were provided by Segway (Segway was also acquired by China company Ninebot).

Street scooter, photography/Ding Shibei

In recent six months, Bird has released two self-developed customized models, which are also produced in cooperation with China company OKAI: Bird No.1 and Bird No.0, which have significantly improved the life of batteries and tires. Van der Zanden was on Twitter this month? It is mentioned in the reply article that Bird Zero can earn $65,438 +0.27 per trip, and now this mode has accounted for more than 75% of the total number of Bird vehicles.

For customized models, VanderZanden said in an interview with The Verge that all Segway and Xiaomi scooters will be eliminated this summer.

Besides Bird, Lyme and Raffles also cooperate with Segway to produce customized vehicles. The updated version of Raffles is stronger and has a longer service life. The first batch of new cars just went on sale in Denver in June this year.

It is reported that these new cars can travel 37.5 miles (about 55 kilometers) after a single charge, more than twice as much as in the past, and the tire diameter has also increased from 8 inches (about 20 cm) to 10 inch (about 25 cm).

In June this year, Uber Jump also updated its model, which was built with the unnamed partner company * * * *. Users can replace the battery themselves-this means that after riding until the battery runs out, users can easily find another battery storage cabinet of Jump and replace the battery to continue their journey. Theoretically, this can also reduce some operating expenses, because some batteries will be replaced by users rather than contractors.

Another possibility of profit lies in the new business model. For example, Bird will also sell new customized models at an amazing price of $65,438+$0,299. Or adjust the charging method, such as Jump's monthly card and annual card.

Many people refer to * * * enjoying electric scooters as "Enjoy Travel Version 2.0"-compared with Uber and Raffles, which just brought this matter to the taxi industry, they have entered a brand-new field: lighter and more environmentally friendly, which may really solve the "last mile" problem.

But at the same time, they will also face more complicated challenges. They need to find the profit point of each free ride in the wrestling with the regulatory authorities, and find an effective and equally orderly road in daily management and deployment, so as to get rid of the "loss curse" in the future travel field. (This article is from Silicon Valley, First Titanium Media, author/Ding Shibei, editor/Li Xiaonian)