Lime scooters
-
This came up in a garage thread due to people claiming the scooters were racist. You can go find it if you want. My take on it was:
@polygeekery said in 🔥 Everything is racist:
Did I read that correctly? This startup is just dropping off obnoxious scooters on the sidewalks without any approval and they yell at people who mess with them without downloading the app and paying?
Fuck those motherfuckers. You won't be able to hear shit once they are run through a trash truck and then send the bill to the morons that thought this was a good idea. Problem solved.There is nothing about these things that is not a bad idea.
For starters, they chose a name that is so generic and ubiquitous that a search for "lime" did not find them in the first several pages, so I gave up looking. SEO fail. Morons.
Searching "lime scooters" got me there.
https://www.limebike.com/electric-scooter
The scooters are "dockless". I assume they did this so they do not need to really build anything. But it also means that you are not really going to know where to go to get one of these stupid things if you wanted to look like a hipster idiot. I presume their mobile app (everything has a mobile app) will tell you where they are. That has to be expensive though. Every scooter is going to require GPS and a data connection. That has to cost something and their fees are cheap. $1 to unlock and $0.15/minute, so $9/hour if they are at 100% utilization. Which they won't be. Their batteries only last about an hour if you are zipping about at high speed. Then they need charged.
How does a "dockless" scooter get charged? Glad you asked, because that is even dumber. You can sign up to go pick these stupid things up and bring them back to your house and they will pay you to do so. If you do that, they will refer to you as a "Lime Juicer". Nevermind that juicers typically deplete limes of their juice. It is hip and trendy, just roll with it.
Can I become a Lime Juicer?
Absolutely! We're always looking to grow our team. Juicers can earn up to $30+ per hour and $100+ per night collecting, charging and redistributing Lime-S.
They say you can do this from your car or truck or van. These things are bringing in maybe $20/day and they have to pay average idiots to go out and collect them and bring them to their own homes with their own vehicles to charge them and you can make up to $100/night. The math seems off here, but it also doesn't account for you driving all over a metro area, picking them up, taking them home and charging them with your electricity and then driving them back out and dropping them off where they tell you to.
Their deployment strategy was supremely dumb. They literally just took them and dropped them off in select cities without asking permission or anything and if you touched them without unlocking first it started yelling at you that it was going to call the police. Basically they were littering and the first interaction people might have with it is it threatening to have you thrown in jail.
The dumbest part: They have $250M in funding. Fucking hell.
Scooter startup Lime is reportedly raising $250M led by Uber investor GV | TechCrunch
It's scooters all the way down this morning, with Lime also reportedly raising $250 million in a funding after a new Delaware filing this morning
Just do the math on how long that will take to pay back based on the rates. It tends towards infinity.
-
I love these things. They drop them off all around university campuses too, and if I'm about to be late to class finding one on the way can be a godsend. I didn't know you could sign up to charge them; I thought it was just official company vans came around and rounded them all up. As for the 'littering' thing - if you see a scooter lying around, you assume it belongs to someone else. It doesn't get dumped in the trash, it's not littering, etc. The deployment strategy of peppering them everywhere is sound, but I do agree that it's retarded that they did it without speaking to city officials first.
By the way, the reason you didn't find it in a Google search is that they're actually named LimeBike (the scooters are a side thing).
-
This post is deleted!
-
@pie_flavor said in Lime scooters:
By the way, the reason you didn't find it in a Google search is that they're actually named LimeBike (the scooters are a side thing).
Then they need a better press team. I have only seen it referred to as "Lime".
-
-
Maybe this is my optimism showing through, but this isn't the dumbest startup idea I've heard.
I don't think it'll work in this reality, but it would probably work in a related one.
-
@aygeeplus said in Lime scooters:
Maybe this is my optimism showing through, but this isn't the dumbest startup idea I've heard.
No, it isn't. Juicero beats it easily.
-
@polygeekery I know a guy who works for a crypto startup that sells an app that takes your four cryptocurrencies and 'rebalances' them every day so that you have equal value in each.
-
@aygeeplus that's.........pretty fucking dumb.
-
@boomzilla said in Lime scooters:
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
Then they need a better press team.
Yes. That's what they need.
It's a start. I don't know
@pie_flavor is getting on about. Even the TechCrunch article I posted refers to them simply as "Like".
-
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
Their deployment strategy was supremely dumb. They literally just took them and dropped them off in select cities without asking permission or anything and if you touched them without unlocking first it started yelling at you that it was going to call the police. Basically they were littering and the first interaction people might have with it is it threatening to have you thrown in jail.
This paragraph gets me into fits of laughter. It sounds like something from Idiocracy or some other sci-fi spoof.
I still think the Juicero tops this thing as the stupidest investor-backed startup, though. Lime Scooters is something whose implementation needs improvement, but the business idea itself is not so bad. Bike sharing and stuff have been around and have shown at least some success in certain cases. Juicero was just a bad idea in the first place.
-
@the_quiet_one said in Lime scooters:
Lime Scooters is something whose implementation needs improvement, but the business idea itself is not so bad.
Well, they need docks so that they charge themselves. But that costs more money upfront. They also need staff and not "juicers".
-
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
@the_quiet_one said in Lime scooters:
Lime Scooters is something whose implementation needs improvement, but the business idea itself is not so bad.
Well, they need docks so that they charge themselves. But that costs more money upfront. They also need staff and not "juicers".
Well, yeah. That strategy will never work. Seeing that the vast majority of people using them would be likely commuting, the vast majority of people would be taking advantage of being a juicer by effectively taking their scooters back home, charging them, and making the money back from whatever it cost to rent them in the first place. I mean $30 an hour to plug a friggen scooter into an outlet is crazy, even for silicon valley costs of living.
-
@the_quiet_one said in Lime scooters:
I mean $30 an hour to plug a friggen scooter into an outlet is crazy
"Up to" that amount. I assume it is piecemeal and not hourly.
-
I assume they have some way of preventing "juicers" from just taking the thing home, having it plugged in 24 hours a day and raking in 30s of dollars.
-
@hungrier said in Lime scooters:
I assume they have some way of preventing "juicers" from just taking the thing home, having it plugged in 24 hours a day and raking in 30s of dollars.
I assume it is something like they pay you $2/scooter to pick it up, charge it, and drop it back off.
-
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
@boomzilla said in Lime scooters:
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
Then they need a better press team.
Yes. That's what they need.
It's a start. I don't know
@pie_flavor is getting on about. Even the TechCrunch article I posted refers to them simply as "Like".Oh, Facebook is doing their own?
-
Apparently they aren't even unique!
Bird Charger - Ultimate Guide For Charging Electric Scooters
Bird Charger - Charging Bird Scooters is a great way to make money. Read this before signing up to charge Birds. Learn what it takes to be successful.
-
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
Well, they need docks so that they charge themselves.
Actually, dockless design has some benefits. Instead of having to find a dock, you just find a bike or scooter, which the app helpfully gives you a map of. Since they're scattered all around, it's much better to go the two or so blocks to find one that someone left than it is to walk all the way to the nearest dock.
-
@pie_flavor said in Lime scooters:
Actually, dockless design has some benefits.
They could sharpen things up by dropping the majority of the “electric” part so that the user has to provide all the motive power themselves, with the scooter then just stealing enough energy to communicate its telemetry and handle the locking/unlocking. Basically the same thing that's already been done with ordinary bikes in other cities; once it settles and people get used to it, it seems to work well so I see no reason why it couldn't also work for scooters. The overall advantage of that is that it gets rid of all the complexity involved in keeping things charged…
Still won't use one myself.
-
@dkf They do that with bicycles. There's some powered bicycles and some unpowered bicycles. They started the scooters (of which all are powered) as a lark.
-
@pie_flavor We had "commie bikes" at my college. One of the clubs would go to the city's thrift stores and buy up 50 or so kids bikes every year. They'd leave them all over campus for everybody to share. It was awesome.
-
@pie_flavor said in Lime scooters:
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
@boomzilla said in Lime scooters:
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
Then they need a better press team.
Yes. That's what they need.
It's a start. I don't know
@pie_flavor is getting on about. Even the TechCrunch article I posted refers to them simply as "Like".Oh, Facebook is doing their own?
Goddamn phone.
-
Do they taste like limes though?
-
-
I read the story below the other day. Before this I had never heard of the scooter craze. It caught my attention because of the (to me) obvious hoarding that will happen from the "extra incentive" to find lost scooters and eventual fighting to pick them up before someone else does.
Also, I can't imagine anyone could make money charging these things in the vastly suburban area where I live. I suppose if the density of scooters is high enough it makes sense to drive around and pick them up, but my first assumption was that after gas for a truck or van and the wear-and-tear from the extra mileage that $5 per scooter must be close to break-even for the contractors.
-
Someone investing two hundred and fifty million United States fucking Dollars is proof that everyone who values their lives needs to stock up on nonperishable foods. Buy your beans and rice and spices, because another bubble is about to burst, and when this one does it's going to make 2008 or the dotcom burst look like tiny hiccups. Former corporate paper pushers with mortgages and angry wives will roam the streets, devouring each other. It's gonna be biblical. Fortify your house if you live in one, make peace if you live in an apartment in a city.
http://c0248141.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/VENB_18126_0038264A.JPG
-
@blek you really should have went with the '28 Days Later' one:
-
-
@aygeeplus
I didn't know you knew @cartman82! Fruit survivor?
-
If any company tried to do something like this in my country, all the scooters would get stolen in less than 24 hours. And of course they would be laughed at instead of given 250 million dollars to piss away.
-
@magnusmaster said in Lime scooters:
If any company tried to do something like this in my country, all the scooters would get stolen in less than 24 hours.
I think the USA is the only place where this kind of thing would last more than 24 hours.
I am torn on whether that is a good or bad thing. One part of me says that it is good we have less brazen thieves than the rest of the world.
The other part of me wishes that natural selection worked more quickly.
-
@quijibo said in Lime scooters:
So the company is subsidizing a rather fun activity:
Lucas says he goes out with friends nearly every night, and even when they don’t find tons of Birds, it’s still a fun, social activity. “It’s like a whole-city scavenger hunt,” he says. He even jokes that it would make a great date.
Also:
Criminals and pickpockets have also begun to recognize Bird hunters as prime targets and can use the Birds to lure their prey to isolated areas.
One scooter charger said he has been nearly robbed on two occasions and that he now won’t retrieve scooters that are left in strange places, for instance, at the end of a dark alley.
-
@magnusmaster
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:@magnusmaster said in Lime scooters:
If any company tried to do something like this in my country, all the scooters would get stolen in less than 24 hours.
I think the USA is the only place where this kind of thing would last more than 24 hours.
I am torn on whether that is a good or bad thing. One part of me says that it is good we have less brazen thieves than the rest of the world.
The other part of me wishes that natural selection worked more quickly.
Which country?
I'm in Budapest, Hungary and they've introduced a bike sharing system citywide, in partnership with the city administration. Everyone told them that the bikes will be stolen in a day but they are somehow cleverly designed not to be valuable not even as raw metal. I know a guy who works there and he says that one or two bikes got stolen over the years.
-
@marczellm said in Lime scooters:
I'm in Budapest, Hungary and they've introduced a bike sharing system citywide, in partnership with the city administration. Everyone told them that the bikes will be stolen in a day but they are somehow cleverly designed not to be valuable not even as raw metal. I know a guy who works there and he says that one or two bikes got stolen over the years.
I guess it's a bit harder to make electric scooters worthless in terms of raw components.
Bike sharing seems to work out, though. IIRC the first system I saw was based on docks with the bikes locked to the dock/station, so it's hard to steal the bikes without registering/unlocking them through the system. But now there's Mobike (apparently a big player in China) et al., where you can leave the bike "anywhere", by just locking the tire. To ride it you have to unlock the bike, but that wouldn't stop you from going there with a truck and lifting the bikes that way. But apparently that's not a big enough problem.
(Anywhere = any publicly accessible and legal spot.)
-
I really don't think they did anything wrong. Granted, $250 million is a lot more than they need to start, but at least they're actually delivering a service.
-
@marczellm said in Lime scooters:
Everyone told them that the bikes will be stolen in a day but they are somehow cleverly designed not to be valuable not even as raw metal.
When they introduced them in the city where I work, there was an initial burst of trouble due to the local scum being stupid and mean (e.g., by throwing them in one of the canals after use) but that seems to have largely stopped. The scrap merchants don't want the bikes because they phone home regularly and getting pegged as a receiver of stolen goods is a very good way for a scrapper to end up in prison.
-
@cvi said in Lime scooters:
Bike sharing seems to work out, though. IIRC the first system I saw was based on docks with the bikes locked to the dock/station, so it's hard to steal the bikes without registering/unlocking them through the system. But now there's Mobike (apparently a big player in China) et al., where you can leave the bike "anywhere", by just locking the tire. To ride it you have to unlock the bike, but that wouldn't stop you from going there with a truck and lifting the bikes that way. But apparently that's not a big enough problem.
Around here, I see two types of shared bikes. Both seem to be primarily provided by employers for employees to make trips between buildings, although there may be some that are public, most of the ones I see are located at buildings of large companies.
One type is the locked/docked type, and I assume company ID (or some sort of app for public ones) are required to unlock them. Many of these look like they're electric bikes. Then there are G-bikes — every Google building has a bunch of cheap, heavy, distinctively-painted, featureless bikes sitting in front with (as far as I can tell) nothing to keep anybody, employee or not, from walking up and riding away on one. And one finds them abandoned all over the valley, miles from any Google building. I think probably the only reason they haven't all disappeared is that they're such crappy bikes that nobody wants to steal them; I wouldn't want to have to ride one between buildings if I were a Google employee.
Also, a "lime scooter" sounds like it should be a cocktail of, I dunno, tequila and lime sherbet, or something.
-
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
you really should have went
"should have went"? I'm going to stab you with the hot end of a GAU-8.
On second thoughts, at least you didn't say, "should of went."
As you were.
-
@steve_the_cynic Knowing @Polygeekery, he probably wrote it on purpose to annoy you, me, and the other grammar
s.
-
@hardwaregeek said in Lime scooters:
@steve_the_cynic Knowing @Polygeekery, he probably wrote it on purpose to annoy you, me, and the other grammar
s.Did you see the easter egg I left for you the other day?
-
@polygeekery Probably, but I'm not sure. I don't even remember what I wrote the other day, much less what anyone else wrote.
-
@hardwaregeek said in Lime scooters:
@polygeekery Probably, but I'm not sure. I don't even remember what I wrote the other day, much less what anyone else wrote.
Murder.
-
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
I think the USA is the only place where this kind of thing would last more than 24 hours.
That would explain someone thinking segway was a good idea there
-
@sockpuppet7 said in Lime scooters:
@polygeekery said in Lime scooters:
I think the USA is the only place where this kind of thing would last more than 24 hours.
That would explain someone thinking segway was a good idea there
That's a little harsh.
At one of the local centres commerciaux (shopping malls to you, Chuckles), the security guys use Segways to move around the place, and for a while, Transpole (the local transit authority) used to rent Segways for people wanting to tour the exterior(1) of La Citadelle (17th Century star-shaped "bastion" fortress).
Um. La Citadelle de Lille. In Lille, France.
And there was the time, in 2006 if memory serves, when I was in Amsterdam, and there was a crew shooting promotional video for the Carver One, and there were assistants riding Segways to scare pigeons and make them fly up around the vehicles.
(1) The interior is still in military use - today it's the headquarters of a NATO rapid reaction force - and mostly off limits to random civilians, although there are guided tours available.
-
@steve_the_cynic said in Lime scooters:
the security guys use Segways to move around the place
Are they named Paul Blart?
If you like you can tour Brugges on segways. And I think that it is done in Brussels as well ... where it makes more sense given the city size and the non-flat layout as opposed to a small historical center where the only uphill are bridges and cobbles.
-
@luhmann said in Lime scooters:
If you like you can tour Brugges on segways. And I think that it is done in Brussels as well
I did a Segway tour in SF once. I felt pretty silly on that thing (especially since they give you this glowy yellow vest), but it was fun enough to do once. If it weren't for the novelty back when I did it, I probably would have preferred walking, though. Also not wearing the vest.
-
@luhmann said in Lime scooters:
@steve_the_cynic said in Lime scooters:
the security guys use Segways to move around the place
Are they named Paul Blart?
I wouldn't know. I haven't bothered to ask. Also, can you imagine the conversation? I don't really fancy getting banned from the place, thanks.
-
@luhmann said in Lime scooters:
@steve_the_cynic said in Lime scooters:
the security guys use Segways to move around the place
Are they named Paul Blart?
If you like you can tour Brugges on segways. And I think that it is done in Brussels as well ... where it makes more sense given the city size and the non-flat layout as opposed to a small historical center where the only uphill are bridges and cobbles.
I've done a segway tour through Munich once. They got the segways insured and licensed same as small motorscooters so we could use the normal roads and everything. Was a blast! :D
-
Just saw this on /r/neoliberal
