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Comment by majormajor | Hacker News Reader

A halfway-competent operation management team would see that as a reason to make the hardware harder to repurpose, not easier. Big organized operations can figure shit out, but put some barriers in front of the script-kiddie/homeless-dude contingent.

A me-too copycat startup like Spin who got kicked out of Seattle a year ago ( https://www.seattlebikeblog.com/2022/05/13/city-announces-ne... ) doing it this way doesn't seem like a great endorsement to me.

You have to spend $$$ up front on thousands of vehicles that cost hundreds of dollars each, and your marginal revenue per ride ain't great. Putting a dent in your vehicle theft rate becomes a big deal fast.

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A halfway-competent operation management team would run the numbers to see if there are enough people stealing scooters and stripping them for parts to justify developing proprietary hardware. They probably did and the answer was probably "no."

I'm doubtful that a copycat operation like Spin really ran the numbers as much as a much-higher-scale operation like Lime who clearly came to the "yes, we need custom shit" conclusion: https://flutterawesome.com/custom-iot-for-lime-gen-3-e-scoot...

> A halfway-competent operation management team would see that as a reason to make the hardware harder to repurpose, not easier.

Given that it's a routine sport in many cities, particularly those with bodies of water, to damage or destroy the scooters, it's imperative to make them as cheap as possible and as easy to repair as possible. Both conflict with stuff like custom boards or barriers to opening them up.

Are you getting this info from financial reports or such? Cause it directly contradicts all the first- or third-party reporting I've seen from the big players in the industry. As well as the hacker discussions around trying to repurpose newer Limes and such (another link in addition to the one I put in the other subthread: https://scootertalk.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=30090&start=10 )

The biggest theft use I see locally these days of the modern Limes and Birds is using the batteries for charging shit at homeless encampments.

But there were a million copycat companies like Spin who launched with off the shelf stuff after Bird and Lime who seemed to copy the "light money on fire theft-wise" problems of off the shelf stuff.

> The biggest theft use I see locally these days of the modern Limes and Birds is using the batteries for charging shit at homeless encampments.

Okay, I'm German, so no idea about homeless encampments because we simply don't have these in large scale, but how does that even work? Like okay, you rip out the batteries, but then what? You'd still need some sort of voltage regulator just to power a device, and that hasn't even included recharging the batteries.

None of that's very complicated electronics. Homeless != stupid. Wire some shit up once and then free mobile power is free power. Either jack another battery out of another scooter and reuse your wiring, or do some further wiring to charge off a streetlight or something if you're YOLO.

But it's a lower-demand type of theft than "spend 30 bucks on alibaba and have a free scooter forever thanks to the off-the-shelf-nature of the first rental scooters" that people in the US market were going nuts with in 2018/19. It's a bit more wild west than Germany. ;)

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