Bird is a company that offers e-scooter shared rides starting at $1 to 15 cents per minute traveled. So far the company has a trial run in the city of Los Angeles and is now raising $100 million of its $300 million for its valuation.
Bird was founded by the highly public ex-Uber and Lyft executive Travis VanderZanden. He has been sued by Lyft, hired by Uber, and now the company is expanding.
So far, Bird has 1,000 of its e-scooters out to 50,000 people for 250,000 rides in the city of Santa Monica. But the real problem here is that the Santa Monica Police Department sees this new trend as a threat.
It issued 281 traffic stops and 97 tickets this year alone. Los Angeles’ fire department has already responded to 8 Bird e-scooter accidents.
At the heart of the Bird e-scooter expansion is the trick of how to get it to incorporate into the newly forming electric mobility (e-mobility) landscape of our future cities. The potential of last-mile mobility solutions like the Bird e-scooters cannot be underestimated. We see a great future for so many parts of the e-mobility puzzle that the Bird e-scooter has its place there and hopefully invites even more competition.