I dunno, they're all over the place and people seem to love them. For getting around a city center they're more convenient to rent simply because most of your destinations won't have a good solution for storage. You can pull up right to where you want to go and when you're ready to leave can usually find another one within a block or two.

In china, Mobike charges $1.58 per month for unlimited* trips on their ridesharing bikes. Given how their bikes cost ~$100 each, and how they operate millions of bikes, they are losing massive amounts of money.

Investors have the same mentality (once we are a monopoly, we can charge more) but until then they are incinerating cash.

*Mobike rides have the first 2 hours of each trip free. If you stay on longer you need to pay. However, you can just switch bikes after 2 hours to avoid the fee.

The bigger question here is whether people will adopt scooters when they are more comfortable on bikes.

If you, say, used one to get to & from work on a commute of a few miles you'd break even on buying your own scooter pretty quickly.

The big advantage is not having to deal with storing or charging the scooter, ever.

In Santa Monica & Venice there is usually a Bird or two within a block of you at all times.

“I know. Scooters. They cost money, right? And it’ll need a ton of marketing!”

In the UK any one who got their driving licence after 2001 must pass the CBT before they can ride a scoter and that's limited to 50cc

75 USD - 90 USD for a Bike (https://m.alibaba.com/product/60710077310/export-EU-standard...)

1 USD - 25 USD for the remote lock (https://m.alibaba.com/product/60623794401/GPRS-Bluetooth-Cho...)

At this scale I wouldn't be surprised that they could get a whole painted bike + the lock + all the importation costs and taxes for 100 USD (maybe even less).

One ride costs 1 USD... That means they just need 100 rides to break even on a bike... If they get an average of 1 ride per bike in all their fleet (which is low imo), they just need 100 days of operation to break even on all their fleet. (These calculations don't take into account the operational costs, but you get the idea. As you grow and start creating more network effects and gaining economies of scales these costs will only grow linearly).

According to Seattle City Data, the average ride per bike here is something around 0.6 rides per bike (daily). That would likely improve again once it starts warming up.

Now regarding the Scooters, you could do a similar analysis. I was able to find foldable electric scooters at very cheap prices in bulk (45 USD, 80 USD, 70 USD, 120 USD, etc...). So it's also technically possible to break even very fast with scooters as well -> https://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product...

Finally, there are more angles to a business like this. There's a huge component which is gov subsidies. Local governments love this crap and I can totally see them paying these companies for providing a reliable alternative transportation. Another angle is just plain cheap advertising. You can basically wrap these crappy bikes and scooters with ad decals. You could also monetize based on geo-location and sell contextual ads as well as selling the data to brands.

You also made other good points like why wouldn't someone simply buy a scooter. What's appealing about this model is that you can just leave it anywhere. You don't have to get worried about this thing getting charged, or someone robbing it or vandalizing it. You use it when you need it and you continue with your life. Owning one adds an incredible amount of burden to something as mundane as moving from point A to point B.