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Driverless Car Hype Gives Way To E-Scooter Mania Among Technorati (nbcnews.com)
Millions of dollars in funding and billions of dollars in valuations have made scooters the next big thing since the last big thing. From a report: When Michael Ramsey, an analyst for technology research firm Gartner, started in February to put together his 2018 "hype cycle" report for the future of transportation, he had plenty of topics to choose from: electric vehicles, flying cars, 5G, blockchain, and, of course, autonomous vehicles. But one type of transportation is conspicuously absent from the results of the report: electric scooters. "At the time, outside of California, these scooters were really not that common," Ramsey said. "That's how much has happened." As for autonomous vehicles, which have enjoyed years of hype as the next big thing, Ramsey labeled them sliding into "the trough of disillusionment," which Ramsey described as "when expectations don't meet the truth."
In a matter of months, electric scooter startups have gone from tech oddity to global phenomenon. In some cities, hundreds of scooters suddenly showed up on streets from companies including Bird and Lime, leaving municipalities to figure out how to handle the sudden influx of two-wheeled travelers. The concept behind the scooters is simple: A user can grab any available scooter, unlock it with an app, ride to their destination, and leave the scooter there for someone else to use. Even by the hyper-growth expectations of Silicon Valley, the rise of scooter companies has been dizzying. Scooters can be found in more than 125 cities in the U.S. and more than 10 across the globe. In the year after their launch, both Lime and Bird said their scooters had been used for more than 10 million rides.
In a matter of months, electric scooter startups have gone from tech oddity to global phenomenon. In some cities, hundreds of scooters suddenly showed up on streets from companies including Bird and Lime, leaving municipalities to figure out how to handle the sudden influx of two-wheeled travelers. The concept behind the scooters is simple: A user can grab any available scooter, unlock it with an app, ride to their destination, and leave the scooter there for someone else to use. Even by the hyper-growth expectations of Silicon Valley, the rise of scooter companies has been dizzying. Scooters can be found in more than 125 cities in the U.S. and more than 10 across the globe. In the year after their launch, both Lime and Bird said their scooters had been used for more than 10 million rides.
they homeless are having a field day with them. It's pretty easy to yank off the GPS and walk off with them. The batteries have value as scrap too and there's plenty of shady recycling centers that don't ask questions.
This'll go away when the investor cash dries up and they'll be clogging landfills the world over.
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Don't really have much to say about the scooters themselves but it's really bizarre how they showed up almost overnight. I've read stories about some American cities bitching about them even here on /. but there wasn't a single shared scooter here (city in central Europe).
Occasionally you'd see some dork ride an electric scooter or one of those unicycles and even those were pretty rare. I went away for three weeks on vacation, and when I got back they're all over the place.
One thing I've noticed before though is that a lot of successful local startups are essentially clones of what's been tried before in the US. One of a major and oldest companies here is a clone of Yahoo, there is also a clone of Groupon, and so on. I'm not really sure how financially successful these scooter companies are, but somebody is probably making money so this might've been a decent opportunity.