Bird's electric scooters are becoming more robust to withstand intensive use

A year ago, non-anchored electric scooters appeared on the streets of San Francisco and Santa Monica. The initial reaction was disconcerting, finally giving way to embarrassment and dismissal. The companies that scattered these scooters everywhere, like Bird and Lime, seemed to embody the techno-brother's arrogance. It is certain that fashion could fade away and that scooters would be sent abroad from where they came to a landfill in China.

Twelve months later, scooters are in more than 100 cities around the world and, in the opinion of most, extremely popular. Bird and Lime have each yielded more than 10 million trips since their launch. Lime is valued at $ 1 billion; Bird at $ 2 billion. Running giants Uber and Lyft are now taking action, acquiring bicycle sharing companies and applying for licenses to operate their own e-scooters. The first complaints about vandalism, blocked sidewalks and illegal cyclists – although still valid – have since given way to an awareness that these things are pretty fun! In addition, they could be a crucial link to help cities solve critical transportation issues.

In this context, Travis VanderZanden, CEO of Bird, spoke with The edge on the second phase of its plan to conquer the micro-mobility sector. Before founding Bird, VanderZanden was an executive of the hike. He held the position of chief operating officer of Lyft until August 2014, when he left to join Uber. The move landed on him in the hot water with his former employers, who sued by claiming that VanderZanden had stolen confidential documents. The parties then settled an undisclosed amount.

Now, VanderZanden is there to steal Uber and Lyft customers, or at least those who use carpooling to make short trips around the city. He talked about Bird's increased number of users, the building of a more robust scooter and the competition with his former employers in the passenger car sector.

Photo of Mario Tama / Getty Images

The edge: Congratulations on your first birthday.

Travis VanderZanden: Yeah. We are very happy to announce the first anniversary and take a minute to reflect on the last year. We now see that we are making 10 million trips, 100 cities with two million passengers. The reason we're excited about getting out the numbers is that the first year was really … when we started the company, it was suggested, can we use electric scooters to really get out the car people? And we think that first-year data was kind of a big data point that people are ready to get out of the car and use electric scooters, so, glad to have this announcement.

What is the next step, would you say, of the company?

The second year is for us, doubling our efforts to work with cities and develop government technologies, call it our "GovTech" platform, where we spend a lot of our engineering resource building tools that the Cities can use to have an overview of Bird's data and also control Bird in their cities. One example is that we have just deployed a geological speed limitation function where the bird is already capped at 15 miles per hour, but when you enter an area like the Santa Monica bike path, the bird will slow down to 8 mph. miles. per hour automatically. So we do a lot of interesting things like that that help cities. The second year will consist of doubling these efforts.

It also includes geolocation, if I understand correctly, right?

Yeah, because there is geo-fencing, the limit of geo-speed will work with geolocation to slow you down. There are also "no-go" areas, "no-park" areas … a lot of cool stuff like the ones we do, and we're going to continue this way in the second year.

I mean, it's not cool, is it? For the first year, "everything is allowed", "no rules", and now it's like "good, lots of rules we have to deal with".

Well, when we started the business for the first time, you know, we did not know if electric scooters were going to work, we did not know if people would drive them. You know, companies have been trying to get cars out of the US for a long time, so it started with a little gamble and what we found is that people really appreciate electric scooters, which excites us. And we are also working with cities the first year, but we think the second year is about doubling those efforts.

How do you adapt to cities introducing these pilot programs and wishing to have more control over the deployment and use of scooters?

Yes, you know, Ridesharing 1.0 … we call Bird Ridesharing 2.0 and two of the biggest changes from version 1.0 are that we use environmentally friendly vehicles to reduce carbon emissions and traffic. But the second big difference lies in the actual collaboration with the cities and the sharing of data with them via API access in real time, via the dashboards. And then, build a technology to control and manage Bird in their market.

What about the scooter itself? Do you stick to the one you have? Would you like to perform hardware upgrades?

Yes, so we invested a lot last year. We have developed a very large automotive engineering team. We have the largest automotive engineering team in the industry. We are working on future vehicles now. We have already started testing a new vehicle recently, which is much more robust than our original vehicles and designed specifically for the faster sharing model.

Photo of Mario Tama / Getty Images

Can you give me more details on what this means?

The battery is 55% larger. The tree is built so as to be very resistant. Brake cables are not exposed. The tires are solid-core tires. We spent a lot of time trying to test tires that did not have air, but we still had a good pilot experience, which was very important for us. We finally found that we think about the best tires in the world. So, great things like that, so we're very excited to test these new vehicles.

How do you approach the issue of security? There have been recent reports about an increase in injuries related to scooters. How do you hope to deal with this problem and how do you talk to cities?

At first, Bird prioritized safety over everything else, including growth. It's easy to say that, but if you look at our actions, we've come up with a number of ways … Three examples of safety-versus-growth priorities are the speed of the vehicle at 15 miles per hour, even if the city does not force us to do it. We need a driver's license and the driver must be 18, even if the city does not need us to do it. And we pick up the birds at 9 pm every night, even if the city does not need it. And we also ship free helmets, even if the city does not need them. This helps us sleep better at night, prioritizing safety rather than growth.

Do you have any concerns about personal injury lawyers filing class action claims?

We think cars are dangerous. Our society is somehow built around cars and cars can be dangerous. I'm sure you know that 40,000 Americans died in car accidents last year. One statistic that you may not be aware of is that 6,000 other people, pedestrians, died while being crushed by cars. This can be dangerous, and that's why we try to educate runners to wear a helmet. We work with cities and encourage them to build more protected bike paths. And really align with some of the motorcycle advocates who want long-protected bike lanes.

Photo of Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

During the second year, you will obviously start to see the competition of some of your former employers: Uber and Lyft enter the game. Are you worried, somehow, to face them, given obviously the amount of capital that they will bring to the market?

No, I welcome Uber and Lyft in Ridesharing 2.0. We believe that Ridesharing 2.0 will make the world better and we welcome them into this world. I think they're working the way we did a year ago, so we think we're much more advanced in vehicle engineering, in the area of ​​government technology. We share data with cities, which they may not be used to in Ridesharing 1.0. We welcome them permanently.

So, why do you think that a user would choose a bird rather than a Lyft scooter at this point?

One, Bird's in a hundred cities, and we have many more vehicles deployed, many more vehicles being manufactured and sent to us. There is that. The vehicles will therefore be closer to the users because we have more. In addition, we built more robust vehicles, while they are still working on the vehicles we had a year ago, and have not yet found a way to strengthen them.

So, you do not fear that they might buy your supply chain out of you?

No, we are not concerned. We have excellent relationships that we have established over the last year. In fact, we have just signed an exclusive agreement with the original manufacturer of the reinforced scooter sharing company. This is the manufacturer who built the original Lime scooters. We have an exclusive agreement with them. We continue to work with Ninebot and others. We think we are ahead of this, and I think we currently have access to most of the offer. I understand that many others have trouble finding the offer.

What are the latest news to bring scooters to New York? Obviously, it would be a huge market for you guys.

I'm excited about any market with huge traffic and automobile problems, and certainly New York City is at the top of the list. For us, we always want to make sure we are legal before entering. There are people working with the city and state authorities to try to find the best way to adapt to the existing legal framework. I'm certainly happy to find out. I think New York would be much easier to move on Bird than in a car, of course.

Photo by Andy Hawkins / The Verge

Bird was excluded from the San Francisco pilot program. Do you think there's still a chance you can bring the scooters back to San Francisco at some point?

I did not spend a lot of time digging it. I think San Francisco is just a city. We are in a hundred cities now. This is the only city where we have not been able to stay in business until now and get a permit. That does not mean we do not want to be in San Francisco. We did not spend a lot of time thinking about it, because there are so many other cities that have adopted electric scooters. At one point we would obviously like to be in San Francisco. We do not spend a lot of time … we do not protest against that or something like that in the short term.

Yes, but you protested in Santa Monica before obtaining permits.

Yeah. In Santa Monica, this is our country of origin. We felt that it was the sharing of scooters, where we initially invented and created scooter sharing. We may have felt a little more sentimental about Santa Monica. Overall, we find that cities are really embracing these scooters. I think the press tends to focus on San Francisco. But we are in a hundred cities now. When we talk to cities about our mission to reduce car travel and traffic and carbon emissions, that's 100% of the cities' goals. They have the same goals. It's just a question of how we can best adapt. Being in a hundred cities and making 10 million trips in the first year is exciting and many cities are excited about electric scooters.

Bird has promised to provide funding for bike paths. Do you do this in all the cities where you work or only in the cities that ask for these kinds of things?

We offer it in all cities and try to determine who has to pay, which initiative makes the most sense. For us, the important thing is to invest in improving cycling infrastructure and scooter infrastructure in a city. Cities that have … many cities have permits with their own authorization rights, then they use the authorization rights to go to the bike infrastructure. For example, you want to use the money, you are happy to help pay for dedicated bike lanes, to get dedicated parking spaces. There are dozens of parking spaces in the block street, instead of taking this space away from a car, you could probably install 10 to 15 birds in that same space … And we think that Is a much more efficient use of space, but that said, we do not ask the city to pay us, and we do not ask [for] a handout We ask them to pay for this space. It's just a question of how we get there. So we certainly tried.

Bird is in Paris and Tel Aviv. You look at other international cities?

Yeah. We have just launched Brussels. We will develop throughout Europe and next week we will have more interesting announcements in other international markets.

Did you expect this year to be as busy as it was in the past? Did you expect him to be as popular and polarized as he is?

I certainly did not expect it to be so polarizing. I think that when I thought about doing business for the first time, I really felt like we could get people out of the car and use electric scooters. I did not think I could do 10 million trips. By comparison, if you go back and look … I think Lyft has published an infographic and an article about his 15-month anniversary, and they've made a million trips in the first 15 months. And making 10 million trips in 100 cities was very interesting to see. This does not mean that we do not have a lot of work ahead of us and that we want to continue working with cities to see how we make it less polarized. How can we settle? Do not complain about parked birds where they should not be. I think we are … we would like the team to work on that so that we have less polarization … I know that when the car was first introduced and everyone walked on horseback, the car was reacted like commuters now to scooters. I think that if we can break that addiction to the car we have, I think that eventually we will make a road there.