Bird Will Soon Start Delivering Electric Scooters To Users’ Doorsteps
The startup is also in the process of launching a more powerful, comfortable, beefed-up scooter.
Startup Bird will soon start delivering its electric scooters to customers for all-day use. Bird helped kick off the scooter-sharing craze, but now it faces increased competition from other startups, as well as larger companies like Uber and Lyft. As a result, the young company is already looking to innovate.
With the new Bird Delivery service, customers can have a scooter delivered to their home or office by 8:00 a.m., and then use it anytime throughout the day. However, Bird did not release any information on pricing or availability. For now, it's asking interested customers to join a waitlist.
Bird currently uses the popular "dockless" model of scooter sharing. Scooters are placed in public locations, and users can pick them up and drop them off wherever a trip happens to begin or end. That's very convenient for Bird customers, but it's less convenient for residents and officials in places like San Francisco and Santa Monica, where scooters left on sidewalks and in doorways quickly became an issue. Perhaps Bird Delivery will lead to fewer stray scooters.
Alongside the delivery service, Bird announced a new scooter design called Bird Zero. Manufactured by Chinese firm Okai, the Zero has 60 percent more range than current scooters. It also has a longer wheelbase and solid tires for greater stability, according to Bird. Top speed is 15 miles per hour, and the scooter features a digital dashboard displaying speed and battery life. Bird plans to start deploying the new scooters across the United States in the coming weeks.
Bird is now valued at $2 billion, which is not too shabby for a company that launched in 2017. But Bird now faces competition from Uber and Lyft, which are expanding beyond ride-hailing into two-wheeled transportation. Uber recently launched a scooter-sharing service in Santa Monica, while Lyft deployed its first scooters in Denver last month.
