> In many cases, it's a combination of cost, friction of setting up an app and account, and fear of something going wrong and being fined (for example, parking the scooter out of the operating zone).
I'm going to challenge this hypothesis with what I think are likelier reasons:
1. Many people like walking. I get much less exercise than I actually should, so to be honest the last thing I want to do is replace a short, 10 minute walk in an interesting urban environment with 10 minutes of me not moving
2. Fear of riding a scooter. I have family members who work in hospitals who have seen horrific injuries and deaths from scooters, and who refuse to ride them. Even without this specific fear, my guess is there are a ton of folks who are just uncomfortable riding scooters.
3. Many people walking around in urban environments do so with others, and like the social aspect. It's a lot harder to converse (safely) on a scooter.
If your primary solution is "make them free", I hardly see how that would eventually turn scooters into a profitable business.
I'd add that it seems like a worst of all worlds vehicle in my limited experience. I've only ridden one once in what was a busy downtown (I suspect the only place these things could possibly make economic sense). Riding on the sidewalk was frustrating because you're limited to other people's walking speed (and paying by the minute), so I switched to the street and immediately wondered how I'm not hearing about mass scooter deaths everyday because now you're basically a pedestrian moving amongst cars; the smallest of which weigh well over a ton. That was my first and last ride, and I can't believe that it was legal for me to ride either on the street or the sidewalk on one of those things.
The 'make them free' is to compete with the also-free walking.
Then you charge for upgrades, like going faster than walking pace or further than most people would be happy to walk (about 10 minutes in my experience).
> Many people like walking.
People say this... But when there is a convenience store 1 minute away and another one 10 minutes away, most people go to the one 1 minute away, indicating they don't actually like walking just for walkings sake. Even if they did, they probably prefer to 'go for a walk with a friend in a park' independantly to the 'walk to the convenience store to buy some milk'.
> But when there is a convenience store 1 minute away and another one 10 minutes away, most people go to the one 1 minute away, indicating they don't actually like walking just for walkings sake.
I'll clarify - it's not that I "like walking for walking's sake", but if I have to do something anyway (go to lunch, get from a train station to the office, etc.) I prefer to at least take a meager opportunity to try to keep my fat ass from getting any fatter.
I just think it's ludicrous when an article that discusses the extremely poor economics of scooter companies to think the solution is "make it free", even with "upgrades". So now suddenly 90% of your scooter fleet's battery usage is on free trips, and all these scooters now need to be charged again.
Or like me I replaced a lot of walking with scooters which are a lot more thrilling/fun/cool. Till I noticed I wasn’t walking as much and wasn’t feeling as good, and then dropped scooters 100%.
I will short term choose convenience but medium term, I have a belief that certain kinds of inconvenience are essential to a good day. Walking or otherwise using my body being a chief example. Also being around people and hard mental work and cooking.
I'm going to challenge this hypothesis with what I think are likelier reasons:
1. Many people like walking. I get much less exercise than I actually should, so to be honest the last thing I want to do is replace a short, 10 minute walk in an interesting urban environment with 10 minutes of me not moving
2. Fear of riding a scooter. I have family members who work in hospitals who have seen horrific injuries and deaths from scooters, and who refuse to ride them. Even without this specific fear, my guess is there are a ton of folks who are just uncomfortable riding scooters.
3. Many people walking around in urban environments do so with others, and like the social aspect. It's a lot harder to converse (safely) on a scooter.
If your primary solution is "make them free", I hardly see how that would eventually turn scooters into a profitable business.