Those “rent a e-bike/scooter for your commute” apps. Doesn’t take that many rides to exceed the cost of getting your own. If you find yourself using those regularly just save up to buy an e-bike/scooter.
our city had a great service when it was manual bikes. you could get a yearly membership for about the cost of a monthly bus pass. allowed for one hour but you could dock and undock anywhere to restart the clock. No per minut or per mile fee. Once they started doing e-bikes the problem is they stopped stocking regular bikes as much and now you don’t know if any will be at a docking station when you get there and the ebikes have an extra cost outside of the membership.
Where I live they also have these very restricted service areas where you have to be in if you want to be able to park the scooter, otherwise the app simply won’t let you end the session and pay. Not sure how they even determine these areas, I wouldn’t be surprised if the competing scooter companies here have their own territory and keep people locked in for the mutual benefit of the companies and at the cost of anyone wanting to commute with these things.
And aside from all that, as you said they are extremely expensive even for a ride around the block, and also very dangerous if the roads are designed with only cars in mind.
Those “rent a e-bike/scooter for your commute” apps. Doesn’t take that many rides to exceed the cost of getting your own. If you find yourself using those regularly just save up to buy an e-bike/scooter.
Here in China, the yellow scooters/ebikes cost about 40 cents for a 30 minute ride.
People hire bikes for a commute? I only ever saw bike hires as something you might do on holiday or a trip somewhere. Not daily.
A lot of it is having bikes wherever, and not having to worry about securing it.
our city had a great service when it was manual bikes. you could get a yearly membership for about the cost of a monthly bus pass. allowed for one hour but you could dock and undock anywhere to restart the clock. No per minut or per mile fee. Once they started doing e-bikes the problem is they stopped stocking regular bikes as much and now you don’t know if any will be at a docking station when you get there and the ebikes have an extra cost outside of the membership.
Where I live they also have these very restricted service areas where you have to be in if you want to be able to park the scooter, otherwise the app simply won’t let you end the session and pay. Not sure how they even determine these areas, I wouldn’t be surprised if the competing scooter companies here have their own territory and keep people locked in for the mutual benefit of the companies and at the cost of anyone wanting to commute with these things.
And aside from all that, as you said they are extremely expensive even for a ride around the block, and also very dangerous if the roads are designed with only cars in mind.
I rented a scooter in iceland and - long story - dropped my phone just while renting it. Thus, renting a scooter was $400 that day.