Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality

The bikes are ok, the electric push helps (you still have to pedal, but it levels out the effort, so going uphill is kind of the same effort as going level), and the convenience of just taking them from wherever and leave them where you feel like is really nice.

But holy shit they are expensive. My commute by bike would be aprox 30 mins, that is 5.5 pounds per ride - the tube is only 2.9 pounds, the bus only 1.5 pounds. A 1-year Santander bike subscription is only 90 pounds, and the ride is almost equally nice.

At 5 pounds per ride, buying a commute scooter would break even in 2 months. To make it worthwhile to ride the electric bikes, the price would have to come in at about half to be somewhere between the tube (which moves you fast, but you have to walk a bit to the station) and bus (which moves slower, but the stations are much closer to your home, usually), at 2.5 pounds per 30 min ride (a bit above Santander which charges 2 pounds per 30 mins, but which are not electric).

There are so many other situations where people can accidentally cause property damage that don't require insurance. Its just the cars have a very high risk of causing huge amounts of damage very easily.

No, it's not a given. I've never heard anyone want that before

I see, so you just said something that sounded edgy and cool to you that's backed up by no reasoning. Generally HN has higher quality discourse than this.

A similar related event was when stop lights got converted to LEDs. In some areas in some times of the year there would be snow that covers up the light which now no longer runs hot enough to melt it. News at the time sensationalized this issue making it seem like the LED stop lights were bad despite the obvious solution being to just put a heater on the light to run in those areas on those few days where it is needed.

When people suggest getting to work by bike they don't expect you to only ever use a bike for the rest of your life but to cut out the needless car trips that could be done by bike and leave the car until it is needed. The money you save on not using a car multiple times a day would easily pay for a taxi in the rare case you need it.

  I don’t know and I can’t explain it.

It's my experience that you can say something 99% of people agree with, the 99% don't feel the need to reply with their support. But the 1% who disagree do feel the need to say so. And forums will validate this, with upvotes for well-reasoned discussion (i.e. disagreement), and downvotes for 'me too' comments.

If you posted "The bald eagle is a majestic creature" I'd get downvoted for replying "This! You tell 'em" but I'd get upvoted for replying "Bald eagles are much smaller than wedge-tailed eagles, and they have a call so sickly film makers use the call of the red tailed hawk instead"

There are train lines from Miami to Seattle, and the US rail system is the most efficient in the world for metrics it cares about: $/ton and on-time.

Miami to Seattle is ~4400km, which would be 11 hours at 400 km/h without making any stops, or 4 hours longer than a flight.

Many cities were built with automobiles as assumed modes of transport, so walking with groceries would be silly as you're expected to purchase more than you can carry from a more centralized store. The tradeoff for being reliant on a car is the cost of goods are lower in bulk. People walk home with groceries all the time in cities built before the automotive age. For example, everyone walks home with groceries in Manhattan.

People cycle all the time in rain/snow in northern US cycling friendly cities. Actually the best cycling cities in the US include Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and New York, which all have very rainy/snowy seasons.

No one is building hyperloops seriously. They're fun projects for bored wealth.

It probably is. Saying something is "out of juice" to mean "out of power" has a fairly long history. It's a pretty straightforward to extend that slang to someone who restores power to things by recharging them.

99% of the streets for miles and miles around me were built after the invention of the car for near-dedicated use by automobiles, and those that were not were converted to that design.

> Cars are just too dangerous to have anywhere near people. They should be banned from cities and suburbs.

You say that, but I'd like to see you move your family to new house without using an automobile to move your stuff.