An Electric Scooter Community on a Mission to Stamp out Transportation Mediocrity.

Covers electric scooter models whether shared or for consumers.
By Teslaguy
#20312
It seems Bird has ended monthly rentals. They've stopped doing monthly charges. In the app, rather than showing the 'Personal Rental' tab, it shows 'My Bird'. On that page, it shows a picture of a Bird One personal scooter (the one that costs like $1400) and has the lock/unlock and headlight feature. On the ES4 rental, the headlight feature doesn't work and the lock/unlock works for the bluetooth lock. Anyone else notice this? Is Bird trying to just find a way to dump their ES4s without properly recycling them?
By Teslaguy
#20324
Bike Share Museum wrote:
Thu Mar 26, 2020 5:34 pm
Which region is this happening in? Could be glitch in some of the markets where COVID-19 has shut down their operations.
This started in mid February actually. I reached out to Bird and they said it would not be resuming in the 'foreseeable future'. This doesn't seem to be affected by COVID-19.
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By Bike Share Museum
#20353
Interesting. Here in Miami, the original ES-series Ninebots (usually with the external battery, so I'll call them ES3's) were repurposed into the long-term rentals. I saw one being ridden down my street less than two weeks ago, and there are still a few others out there.

I'll ask if I see someone on one.
By Teslaguy
#20358
What's going on is that you can keep the rental, but they aren't offering new ones. I don't believe they're charging people anymore either.

At least in my area, all the rental ES4s are new. I think they were left over inventory when they switched to custom-built scooters only.
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By Bike Share Museum
#20367
I'm told the Miami Bird warehouse has a pile 10 feet high of M365's and ES-series sitting there. No idea what their fate is.

My info on the local ESes came from a charger, so the rentals here may include new ones too - haven't seen one close enough to know for sure if it shows the war wounds of a repurposed scooter (and if not on the neck, on the main platform) or not. Word was it though that they had a few people repairing ES's, so they must be doing something with them.
By Teslaguy
#20368
Got it! Bird tends to differ greatly market to market in that way. It feels like local operations teams than Bird itself. We started getting rental Bird Ones before the LA program stopped. I'm curious if there's any way to buy those scooters. Do you have any contacts you could reach out to?
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By Bike Share Museum
#20371
Teslaguy wrote:
Sun Mar 29, 2020 10:40 pm
Got it! Bird tends to differ greatly market to market in that way. It feels like local operations teams than Bird itself. We started getting rental Bird Ones before the LA program stopped. I'm curious if there's any way to buy those scooters. Do you have any contacts you could reach out to?

My charger friend seems to agree; he drones on endlessly about how disorganized our local bird ops are.

I've tried asking via my friend and the responses I get are like listening to Dark Helmet's "Father's Brother's Nephew's Cousin's Former Roomate" speech from Spaceballs. I've also been told that the Coral Gables PD has seized some and have reached out through some influential friends. The answer was "maybe, come back later."

I'm into retired shared bicycles more than scooters, but I'm really keen on getting a few myself. There are 38 fairly rough Spins left for me to sort out out of the donation (all on halt because of COVID), and I wouldn't mind doing a few e-bike conversions by mounting the drive wheel of the scooter over the rear wheel of the bike :idea: . I'm not content enough with the 8FUN hub conversion I'm working on for myself ;)

I've never reached out directly to Bird in this case, but it sounds to me as if they've got a junk pile they could get rid of. After all, the 500+ bike Spin donation I did was achieved by reaching out to them from the top, so what have I got to lose?
By Teslaguy
#20373
It would awesome if you could get in touch with them since you're over there and add some to your fleet. I'd also be interested in buying some for sure. Try with Bird for sure, but the local police is also a good route. Definitely check out their auctions for the scooters, and you might be able to find some bikes there, too. Is Spin getting rid of some old scooters? Maybe you could use one of their motors?
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By Bike Share Museum
#20377
Teslaguy wrote:
Mon Mar 30, 2020 12:27 am
It would awesome if you could get in touch with them since you're over there and add some to your fleet. I'd also be interested in buying some for sure. Try with Bird for sure, but the local police is also a good route. Definitely check out their auctions for the scooters, and you might be able to find some bikes there, too. Is Spin getting rid of some old scooters? Maybe you could use one of their motors?
Miami PD/parking authority might be worth asking instead of CGPD; I'll check with my sources. Going to be difficult given COVID, but at least I can throw my hat in the ring.

I haven't seen anything on PublicSurplus, and the City of Miami uses two auction houses, one of which is still stuck in 1992 as websites go: https://www.miamigov.com/Services/Doing ... plus-Goods. That contact person ought to be a start though.

Spin, in no uncertain terms, is keeping whatever scooters they have that are operational; the scooters are considered company assets at every level. This includes the retired ES fleet. Rough MAX/Gen 3s are also kept around, and whatever is deemed too broken to fix is kept on hand as parts to maintain the rest of the active fleet. When a parts scooter can finally serve absolutely no benefit anymore, only then does anything go out to scrap - usually only the bare deck. The rest goes into the parts bins (literally) to fix the others.

I give Spin them a lot of credit for making sure nothing goes to waste - the presumption that shared scooters have a month long lifespan doesn't apply to them. Our local fleet of MAX/Gen 3's are the same ones deployed around July/August of 2019, and they've been kept up regularly ever since. Pretty impressive, given that the public isn't exactly a good keeper of shared equipment.

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