February 4, 2020 • 39 mins
City governments know them as sharable, dockless mobility devices. The rest of us call them electric scooters. Whether you’re a fan of the micromobility movement or not, you have to admit they’ve made us all think differently about our urban transport options. Join Scott and Kurt as they examine the electric scooter craze, and consider making some quick cash as Bird Catchers or Lime Juicers.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio's How
Stuff Works. Hi, and Welcome to car Stuff. I'm your
host Scott Benjamin and I am Kurt Garren. And we're
missing Ben again. Yeah, well that's okay. He'll be back.
I promise, No, really, he will be back. He's he's around.
He's just doing other stuff. Probably. I bet we'll hear
(00:22):
all about incomes back. I hope so where he can
make something up. Anyway, it's a shame that he's not
here because he would love the topic we're going to
talk about today. You know, I feel like he would
because I've got to be honest with you, Kurt. You
said we were going to talk about bird scooters. Um,
which are you know? The electric scooters are a type
of scooter that has proliferated just about every major city,
(00:44):
at least the United States, all around the world, I know,
and in markets like Europe and um, North America, the
Middle in the Middle East, They're all over the place. Um,
you nor I have any real experience with you know,
these these electric scooters. I'm not going to ride one
of those silly things I have. I'll tell you I
(01:05):
have a lot of knowledge about them. But I've never
been on one, and maybe that's going to change soon.
I think I think I'm due for a ride here.
But I would bet if I had, if I was
a betting person, I would bet that Ben is somebody
that has used these. If not, you know, just once
or twice, probably a lot. I hope I'm not giving
anything away that he doesn't want it, but he's he
lives sort of nearby. He does drive a vehicle, so
(01:26):
he might be, you know, too far to use one
of these, but um, I would. I just have a
feeling that getting around town. He did live real close
and that was no secret. He he lived real close
to this building in an old Ford factory as a
matter of fact, which is kind of cool. Um he
wasn't homeless. I mean they made it into apartments, you know,
but but I know that, you know, he was real
close to here. And if you look outside of our
(01:46):
window right now from our office, we're on the fourth floor,
and if you look outside, I would bet anything that
we would be able to spot just on the curb side,
probably a dozen electric electric scooters on the curb, you know,
just park waiting for people to use, and probably two
or three in motion. You know, people on them in
bike lanes, would you guess, yeah, I would guess so.
(02:07):
And even and when it's raining, you may even see
a few in the roadway that have been washed down.
Have seen that before too from our window out here?
Have you really washed downstream? Huh? Yeah, well we get
some torrential drain rain down here, and then you know,
with all the hills and everything, it ends up being
like you know, small rivers running through downtown. If it rains,
it's a it's a disaster practically if it rains more
(02:29):
than about an inch, and that's you know, part of
the problem with the scooters is exactly that, the fact
that they are relatively lightweight and just can be scattered
about willy nilly. Oh yeah, you know. I know we're
gonna talk about that because parking is an issue with
these as well. But um, just for for those that
don't know what we're talking about. And I didn't think
(02:49):
that this is really going to be an issue until
yesterday when we were talking off air about this, uh,
this program in particular, and I said, well, every we
don't really need to describe them because everybody knows what
these are, right, And you said, probably not. Yeah, most definitely.
I mean they're in a lot of larger cities in
the United States and around the world, but there are
plenty of places that do not have these scooters at
(03:10):
least owned by these companies, some kind of dispersed everywhere
as a motor transportation. Yeah. Sure. See you're in a
city like Atlanta where there's close I mean we're bordering
on seven million people. Now it's above six million, I believe.
And uh, and you're gonna find a lot of something
like this. You go to you know, Dallas, you go
to where was it you were recently, San Antono, San Antonio,
(03:30):
San Antonio there there, you go to Miami, you go
to you know, Los Angeles, San Francisco. They're all over
the place and some of the bigger cities. Um. In fact,
I've think I've seen just even this one brand, Bird,
and we'll talk about many different brands, but Bird in particular,
I think they're in something like a hundred and twenty
different markets. So and it means I guess cities they
call them markets. But um, what we're talking about in
(03:51):
particular here, if you're not familiar, is a kick scooter,
you know, kind of scooter that you stand up on.
It's got a little deck and two small wheels um
handlebar that is coming up off of a stem, you know,
straight stem in front of you. Normally you would put
one foot on the deck and then kick like he
would on a skateboard to get moving, and then put
your second foot up and coast on it. Right. These
have a wheel or a wheel motor, a motor in
(04:12):
the wheel that's an electric and drives these things, and
it actually is pretty efficient. It moves them along pretty good.
You would think that I would have a lot of
difficulty here in Atlanta because of the terrain that I
just mentioned. You know, it's very hilly here, even in downtown.
But these really move people along pretty good. I mean
you get up to speed pretty quick. And I don't
know what that speed is. I want to say it's
it's above ten miles per hour. It's probably closer to
(04:32):
twelve or even maybe I would say between ten and
fifty somewhere on their speed. Yeah. Again, no personal experience
on it yet, but I'm gonna get there, and so
I don't have personal experience on the scooter either, but
I do have experience being around them being a cyclist
I don't ride on the belt line often, but it
is a nice little connector to get from one road
(04:54):
to another, so I'll hit it every now and then.
And the scooters are outrage Now the belt line is
as a walking path, that is, it's like it wasn't
an old railroad line. Yeah, And they do this with
many old railroad lines across the country. They turned them
into bike pass walking past recreational paths, tear the tracks off,
(05:14):
smooth it out, put some pavement down, and they've got
some trees nearby. A lot of businesses back up to
the properties. You can walk, you know, to and from
businesses that way. Um. I don't know how many miles
this thing goes, but it's big. It's a long. It's
a long, uh you know, walking path that is accessible
to just about everybody downtown really and they're always lengthening
it on either side. Now they this one here isn't
(05:35):
it's not continuously very long. It's like maybe two miles
this section. But they have a bunch of different sections
throughout the city that they that you can link up
with bike paths and sidewalks. And there is one that
is in Smyrna Georgia that goes all the way into Alabama.
It's called the Silver Comet, and then in Alabama it's
name changes, but it does keep going for a few
(05:58):
more miles in Alabama, I think Anniston. Maybe that's just
actually good ways and yeah, so that's a example of
one of these trails. It's very long, the Silver Common Trail, Okay,
so we have to check into that, all right. Well,
so I think a lot of people are familiar with
that type of environment in a city. A lot of
you know, they've repurposed some of these these old train
tracks or railroad pathways that they left behind once the
(06:19):
railway has gone or in no longer in use. But yeah,
we feel we find a lot of traffic on that
area or in that that walking path there formerly walking path.
Now it's scooters and bikes and all kinds of things.
Early on, you know, you'd find these things on sidewalks
as well, and it was a little bit dangerous little
if he you know, when you walk out of a
business and you know, a scooter that's running silently just
(06:39):
zips past you, going, you know, twelve fifteen miles an hour.
It's a little bit frightening because it happened. It happened often.
There were a lot of pedestrian scooter collisions, and unfortunately,
there have been a lot of you know, scooter car
collisions that have happened as well. And and well, not
to let the cat of the bag or anything, but
I mean there have been several deaths here in Atlanta
alone that have led to some some abums with with
(07:00):
the city, between the city and the scooter companies. So
there's a lot to really talk about here there there.
It's actually it's not a bad solution for what they
intended it for. For the micro mobility, I think is
what they call it, right. Um, it's like the last
mile transportation is what they often refer to it as.
I'm not sure that the scooters are being used in
(07:21):
that way. I feel like the e bikes have gotten
more of a grip on that type of situation. They
they're definitely way more organized, like they have the stations
where you put the bikes to charge and whatnot. There's
more of an infrastructure there, whereas the scooters are just uh,
kind of littered about. So you're talking about the same thing.
Only bike form that is electric that you like. City
(07:41):
bike is one of them, and yeah, I think there's
something called there's one called Jump. Um. I don't remember
some of the other names of these. I've got a
list of operators here in city of Atlanta that include,
you know, the names and the number of units that
they have, but I don't have them broken down by
what type of device that they market into in here.
So there's Um, There's Bird, Bows, Bolt, Gotcha, Jump, Lime, Lift,
(08:03):
Spin Wheels. All these are operating within the city limits
of just Atlanta, and you can multiply this by however,
many large city centers are nationwide and then also worldwide. Um.
As we said, you know, just one of those companies
on Bird, I believe operates in something like a hundred
and twenty different markets. Or maybe I'm thinking of Lime.
I can't remember which, because we had some big news
(08:23):
recently about Lime. Lime has just decided this month to
pull out of Atlanta. They're they're removing themselves from the
Atlanta market because um of some restrictions that have been
placed on them. Yeah. San Antonio is another place they're
pulling out of, which I found surprising because I felt
like they were everywhere in downtown San Antonio. Yeah, but
you know, Here's the confusing thing is that a lot
(08:45):
of them look the same, right, These all have the
general shape and appearance of each other. They might have
a little bit of you know, like a different sticker
package or different color combination that they use, you know,
red and black or purple and black, or green and white,
or whatever it happens to be. They're all branded in
a certain way. But maybe you were seeing you know,
um Bird scooters and thinking they were Lime scooters. And
(09:05):
it's easy to do, easy to confuse, very easy um
Or maybe it was you know, I don't know, a
Bolt scooter, you know, one of the other brands. But
the point is that you know, right here at the
beginning of the turn of the year, in Lime has
decided to pull out of Atlanta, and they are one
of many companies that has now left Atlanta because of
some of these restrictions that have been put in place.
And that's due to the earlier accidents that I mentioned.
(09:28):
There was a rash of of deaths here in Atlanta,
really close together, I mean, within a couple of weeks
of each other. I think there might have been one
that was spaced out a little bit more, you know,
and then a couple right in the road in succession,
rapid succession. That led our mayor UM to decide that
and these these accidents happened typically at night. So I
let our mayor to decide that there was going to
be a ban on these e scooters if they were
(09:51):
one of these ones that are actually licensed and permitted
through a bigger company to be run here, not individual
scooters that people owned. But UM, they decided that there's
gonna be banned on them during the nighttime hours, and
that was deemed to be between nine pm and four am.
So you're not allowed to be on the streets on
an electric scooter between nine pm and four am here
in Atlanta. And unless it's your own, if you own
(10:12):
that scooter, you're fine to do that. If you're on
personal vehicle, or you can still ride bikes and do
whatever you want, but you know, within safe reason, lights
and all that. But there is that band and then
you know there's also they're changing around the way that
these things are licensed and permitted to be here. And
I keep saying permitted, I don't mean they're just saying like, hey,
you can you can be here. I mean I'm talking like,
you know, there's money changing hands for this. You know,
(10:32):
you have to ever permit for each vehicle that you
have on the street. And you know, all those companies
that I just named off in a in a row, Bird, Bows, Bolt,
at cetera, all the way down the list. I mean,
I'm looking at the numbers here of permitted devices and
it comes up to somewhere in the neighborhood. I thought
I saw a number here of like I shoot, I
don't have them total up, but it's like ballpark twelve
thousand vehicles I think is is something like that the
(10:54):
number of vehicles that are on the street, you know,
between all these these these companies. However, I will tell
you this that you know, Lime has now left, but
they're not the first ones to leave. You know. We
we had um Lift pulled their scooters off the streets
as well, Um gotcha took their I think they had bikes.
I think got youa had bikes maybe um there And
there was another one that pulled off as well. But
(11:14):
you know we're talking about you know, taking you know,
at one swipe, you're taking two thousand of these off
the streets. You know that are that are licensed by
companies like Bird, has two thousand permitted devices here in
the city. Bolt has a thousand, Lime had two thousand,
Lift had two thousand, Spin has two thousand. Company called
Wheels has one thousands. So these are the types of
(11:35):
numbers that we're talking about. They're they're big numbers, and
there's big money to be earned here. But it's not
costing the user a lot of money. I mean, it's
just by volume. They do so much business and these
things are put into you so often that it's profitable
for the companies to be to still do this even
with the wear and tear that is associated with these scooters.
And that's the thing. They're marketed as a transportation alternative
(11:58):
and a more eco friendly transportation alternative at that. However,
their lifespan is relatively short. Of course, there's maintenance involved.
There's programs that people get involved with where they go
and pick up the scooters and then bring them home
and charge them and um so I just feel like
(12:20):
all that transport and all that movement kind of negates
the impact or the lack of impact that the scooters
have on transportation. It's kind of like the uber situation
where you have ubers clogging the streets you know, so
it's like, so you don't you might have less traffic,
but you saw a bunch of people, you know, pulling
(12:40):
off on undesignated places, dropping people off, causing traffic issues
as well. So they're marketed like their minimal impact, but
they're really not. There's a whole there's a whole movement
around them that causes issues in that ecosystem. I guess.
So that's a good point. I've never thought about it
that way, you know that, you know there we spend
so much fuel transport them back and forth with you know,
(13:01):
some of these different programs that they have, and you've
mentioned that it negates any of the benefit of having
an electric vehicle to do this type of thing. But
it's convenient as heck, right, I mean for a lot
it can be because they're they're marketed. As we said
earlier on, it was it was marketed initially, or it's
kind of promoted to the city or whoever they have
to go through for these permits that they get that
(13:21):
you know, these are GPS tract of course, they're electric,
available for rental through mobile applications and you can do
you have an app on your phone, but they're marketed
as like the first mile and last mile transportation for commuters.
So you get off the train at the train station
and you still have a mile to go to get
to your office. You know, normally you'd be walking that distance.
So you can grab a nearby scooter, you know, whatever
(13:42):
brand that might be, or an e bike, jump on it,
and it'll cost you. In the case of Bird, it's
a dollar to start, and then it's fifteen cents per
mile or sorry not per mile per minute after that,
and then you immediately shut it off once you're done
using it and using the app again Parket it's lay old,
as you know, available for the next user. And you know,
there's the whole process of how this whole thing works,
(14:04):
but you get the idea that it's it's a relatively
cheap way to get around. The average rider spends about
three dollars and seventy cents per ride on these things,
so you multiply that by how many rides there are
in a given area in a given time. So I
don't know if his Lime again or Bird, I can't
remember which that I read an article and said the
first year that they were in production, and both those
(14:25):
companies that I just mentioned, by the way, started in
the year seventeen, which is hard to believe because that's
not that long ago. It seems like they've been around
longer than that here in Atlanta anyways, or at least
you know, we've been hearing about them. The first year,
they made something like more than ten million rides. And
I know that doesn't translate exactly into dollars, but if
it's three seventy five average rider per, you know they're
(14:46):
they're making, you know, lots of lots of money. Let's
put it that with lots of money. And I know
there's a huge overhead and maintenance and all that and
paying employees. Because you said a lot of things there, Kurt,
in that instance where you're speaking just a minute ago,
and you were talking about, you know, how they're marketed,
their programs that are that are set aside for people
to make money with them. Um, you know, there's a
lot of problems with them as well. There's a lot
(15:08):
of things we can talk about here. One thing that
I want to be sure to talk about it is
the mechanics programs that they offer for these and the
charging programs that they offer for them. Now I keep
(15:28):
using bird as an example, because it's an easy one
to get information about. They've got a lot of promotional
material out there and how to type videos and articles.
If you want to be a bird mechanic, which I
thought was called an ornithologist up until this point, but
it's not. I make her laugh. That's good. Hopefully made
someone laugh, all right, So all right, that's a different thing.
(15:48):
That's a bird vet alright, So bird bird mechanic. There's
actually an employment opportunity for fixing and repairing the bird
scooters and likewise with the other scooters. So if you
know you lieb or jump or who have you can
you can do this type of thing. But they also
have a charging employment opportunity as well. You can take
them home and charge them for a fixed rate as well.
And I'm sorry, shouldn't say fixed. It's a floating rate
(16:09):
and it changes based on availability, need all that. Um,
But you do have to choose one. You can't do both.
You can't be a charger and a mechanic. You have
to choose which one you want to do, which career
path you want to take. And I would say that
this isn't a career I should say, um, this is
one of those things that they refer to as you know,
the gig economy, right, Yeah, this is something that you
do outside of your normal business operation, you know, like
(16:32):
I could do this during the day. I could go
collect bird scooters at night and take them home and
charge them and put them back on the street during
the day. Although some people get pretty territorial, Yes they do. Absolutely. Yeah,
there's a there's a lot of articles and I don't know,
I don't maybe maybe we should not go to in
depth into that. Let people look into that, because there's
a lot of stories there about how people are getting
(16:55):
a little bit a little bit testy about other people
swooping in and stealing the birds scooter right in front
of them. And they say stealing, but you know, swiping. Yeah,
I mean it's, as they've said many many times, this
is kind of like Wild West territory here for a
lot of because it's they don't know how to not
anybody really has a specific set of rules or laws
laid down how to handle it self governed and you
(17:16):
know how that goes, Yeah, exactly. So you can sign
up to be a mechanic, you can sign up to
be a a charger, and you just kind of have
to play the game. However, however, you know other people
have been doing it, and then you can maybe adapt
and change and you can make a fair amount of
money doing either one. Really, but there are some pros
and cons and you should definitely look into both because
you know, hear really good stories about, you know, both
(17:38):
sides of this thing. You know, like it's it's really
great to be a scooter mechanic because of this, and
you can also find like I thought I would wanted
to be this, but man, it's been a headache. You know,
I've had a barely made any money and it's really difficult.
Or the charging thing. You know, I really thought I
had a plan worked out. It was gonna make a
ton of money every night, but it didn't work out.
And then you hear the other one where there's a
(17:58):
high school kid that makes sick hundred dollars a night
charging Bird scooters in California. And I read that story
and you know, it's amazing that a high schooler could
do that and still go to high school and still
make six hundred bucks a night doing this. That's that's
a remarkable success story for him, right, just an extra job,
but a lot of people are doing that just to
make a little bit extra money, and they're happy with
(18:18):
you know, maybe you make um, you know, maybe make
fifty bucks a night and you can go out to
dinner the next night. They're happy with that. You know.
It's just a little spending cash, a little little beer
money on the side, you know. So there's there's there's mechanics,
there's charging you. You're making a few dollars per repair,
and I don't I don't know, you know what the
exact amount is here, but I've seen numbers like fifteen
dollars for one of the more complex repairs that you
(18:40):
can do, which is probably like break adjustment, you know,
wheel changing, that type of thing, ten dollars. If you
are collecting these scooters and then finding that you can't
repair them, you have to take them to a facility
where they can repair them. That takes care of, you know,
something a little more complicated or something a little more
proprietary for the company. You can drop them off of
these these distribution centers where they they gather them, repair them,
(19:01):
and then send it back out. There's some actual company
mechanics that handle that stuff. And then there's also another
like a different version of that that's like a five
dollar captured charge. So you know, there's there's all these
different Yeah, capture, you can capture birds, right, that's a
and then they do you know, they play with the
words limes charging. People are called juicers. I just find
that clever. A lime juicer. Yeah, that's a that's a
(19:23):
good one. I like that. But yeah, the bird thing
is the same way you capture birds. You know, the
birds when the alarm is going off because someone's tampered
with it, it's called you know, it's chirping at you.
That's cute, yes, sort of cute, right, um. But the part, oh,
that's something we should mention too, is that people are
scavenging parts from these things. So you know, the good
side of this is that people are getting use them
(19:44):
to get around, and a lot of people are. There's
some bad sides to one. Might be one bad side
might be the whole origin of this thing, and that
a lot of the company has found that they were
going to or decided at some point, rather than to
ask permission and then be denied of access to the city,
they're going to dump off five hundred scooters into town overnight.
And it's kind of flood the market with their scooters
(20:05):
and you know there, of course they're ready to go.
They don't have any storefront to open or anything like that.
It's just all through you know, it's all paid through
an app. They might dump off the five hundred scooters
and then ask for forgiveness later. And then of course
as they're still making money, as they're still profiting on this,
they say, well, look they're already in place and we've
had this many rides. They need it, and they can
kind of make a case for themselves. Then the city
has to figure out how we're going to regulate this,
(20:27):
how we're going to charge you for this, and they do.
They charge them a a purse scooter fee, and you know,
that could be a huge number for a whole fleet
of scooters. You know, there's their standards. I guess there
are numbers that are generally I guess abided by if
you want to call it that, their rule of thumb numbers.
If you want, I'm showing you my thumb like that
ruw thumb rule of thumb numbers for the number of
(20:50):
vehicles that you need for certain populations. When that comes
up in just a minute when we talk about buying
your Oh this is interesting. You can buy your own
fleet of scooters if you wanted to, and I Kirk
could have our fleet of scooters if we wanted to.
But it's expensive. But there's a there's kind of a
rule of thumb of how many you should have, and
and then they charge you per vehicle. And if they're
parked illegally by you know, someone just rents it, throws
(21:11):
it down on the curb and it's not part correctly.
You know, the Department of Motor Vehicles might come by,
pick it up throwing the back of a truck and
impound it, you know, the same place they take poorly
parked cars. They impounded, and it's a seventy five dollar
fee I think to to get it out of the
impound yard. And then it's twenty five dollars for every
night past that first night for a storage fee. So
(21:32):
we found out through some of these articles that were
written about Lime leaving Atlanta that at one point last summer,
I believe it was in a three month period. I
think it was like June through September. That was quiet,
think quick on my feet there. But for that three
month period we found out that the fees that were
owed by Lime to the City of Atlanta just for
these impound fees is something like seventy thousand dollars just
(21:54):
for the ones that they picked up, you know, in
these individual scooters, seventy five dollars at a time. And
and you know, on top of that, you know the
twenty five dollar a night fees that were being accrued,
you know, every single time that you know, the clock
ticked over. Essentially, you know, they might be able to
park a hundred scooters in a spot where they park
one car because they just got them in a pile there.
But they're still charging as if it was a vehicle
(22:15):
park there. So they're making a pile of money. The
city is making a pile of money on these and
and oftentimes the company might decide and I just let
him go because it's not worth it to us to
to pick up these scooters that are probably all mangled anyway,
you just leave them in there. They can sell them
at you know, police auction or whatever. Because when you
say the police picked them up because they're parked in
the wrong place, I mean that's a loose term. They
(22:37):
can be strewn about. Yeah, that's over the fence and
down the hill. And I was gonna say, have you
seen some of the more flagrant violations of parking rules
or people that are just simply upset with them, because
there's a lot of people that don't like these things
at all for some reason. There's a lot of people
that are just angry about electronic scooters being in town.
I kind of, I kind of get it. I kind
(22:58):
of don't get it. I mean, if they're handled properly,
if they're out of the way, fine, but a lot
of people are just really upset with them. And I
think it's because of the way that a lot of
them are parked. It also comes down to sometimes they're
used improperly where you know, it's it's disruptive or it's
dangerous scooters and crimes out Criminals riding around on scooters
right using them to get away although you get caught
(23:20):
if you know it, just feel like it's not the
smartest way to get away. No, you're sin on yourself, right,
I mean, but hey, use your friends phone to rent
one of these, and then whatever phone. I guess if
you're a criminal, you probably just stole the phone or something.
That's true. Also they're not they're not particularly I mean
they're fast, but come on as a getaway vehicle, I
guess maybe in a crowd you can get just blend in,
(23:42):
you know. Just I'm just riding the scooter. Well, that's true,
using it to get to the last mile of my community.
That's right. They just happened to have a bag of
diamonds that, you know, I picked up somewhere. That's all
or a couple of thousand dollars worth of merchandise at it.
I'm just headed to the train. What's what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with that? Kurt? All right? So man, they're
I feel like I'm wandering all over the place with this.
(24:02):
But we've we've said that, you know, the parts are stolen.
People are finding ways to hack these things. There's their
hacks online. I don't know if I should even tell
you how about the hacks, but it's out there. Find it,
find it on YouTube. It's pretty clever. And don't do it. Yeah,
don't do it. I mean, you can buy these scooters
at auction and uh and I'll tell you this because
maybe someone is doing this. Maybe maybe let's say that
(24:24):
you're definitely someone is doing. Okay, let's say that you
didn't steal one off the street, because you know there're
thousands of them out there. Let's say you didn't do that.
You resisted, right, you didn't want to do that, Kirk,
don't steal one, I won't. Okay, good, So you didn't
steal one, and you found one at a police auction,
and you know it's one of these impounded vehicles that
they decided to sell, and you pick it up for
a hundred bucks. They're valued. It's somewhere you know, like
(24:46):
six or seven hundred dollars each or something like that.
They're they're expensive. But you buy wanted an impound yard
or a sale police sale, and you want to use
it as your own personal scooter. You're gonna take the
you know, the branding off of it. You're gonna make
it your own painted or whatever. You can buy a
scooter conversion kit that comes from at this point, comes
from China. You gotta be a little bit wary of
(25:07):
of this because you know there are some scams out
there that happened that looks like the right kip that
or not. But you can buy a conversion kit from
China that will for about thirty dollars convert that into
a non tracked, non GPS, uh you know, recognizable, non
bricked version of that scooter that you can then use
around town to motor yourself. Now, you're gonna still need
the charge, You're gonna need all of the I guess
(25:29):
you're gonna have to put some effort into it to
make it look like your own. So it's not like
you're you know, any other bird out there or any
other Lime scooter out there. But let's say you're doing
it all on on the level. It's it's not gonna
cost you a whole lot of money to convert this
thing over to your own private use scooter, which is
kind of nice, I guess for people right now. I
haven't heard of any other companies besides these in China
that are they're offering this. That's probably where the scooters
(25:49):
made anyway, Yeah, maybe you know what um it is
that there's a model number that's associated with most of them,
and I have that here. Um I won't begin to
try to uh, well, maybe I will, I'll try to.
How about that. It's okay, it starts with an X,
so you know this is gonna be tough. So geomy geomy,
I hope that's it. It's X I, A O, M
(26:11):
I so Zeomi, maybe Misia M three scooter. Now, if
you just look up M three sixty five scooter, you'll
find typically the scooter. And I believe a lot of
these companies will now actually sell you one, but they're
kind of price you and they have different versions of them,
but they're your own personally used scooter, and they come
in different colors you can have. You know, you can
get a pink one, you can get a green one,
(26:32):
a white one, whatever, black, whatever your favorite color is.
You can do that and make it kind of your own.
I'll even have Kick scooters for little kids that you
can buy. But you know, I mentioned one other thing
that I think we probably should include here, and that
is that if you wanted to through one of these companies,
and again I use Bird as an example, you're able
to buy your own fleet of branded Bird scooters and
(26:55):
operate them within city limits as long as you adhere
to the regulations that go along with it. Now, this
may be initially enticing, but when you really think about
what you're investing and the possibilities of things that can
go wrong. I mean We have seen deaths here in
the city and other cities nationwide and of course worldwide
as well as you know, disfigurement and uh and people
(27:16):
just getting you know, small even if it's a small
uh you know, nick or cut or whatever, there are
bills that have to be paid, you know, there pre
insurance bills. Um Liability is a big thing, and you
do have to get your own insurance, but you do
have to also go through their licensing, their fees that
they charge in the within the city limits. The nice
part is that you are using the Bird app in
(27:38):
order to run these things. If you do go through
Bird and so they have kind of that infrastructure already
in place. If you do order them, you know, you
can rebrand them with your own name. That could be
could be Kurt's Scooter Company, but it also would have
birds somewhere small on the on the label, you know,
if you had to do it that way. But you
get to design your own scooter, which is kind of cool. Um.
Here's the kicker here. The price is somewhere between six
(28:01):
and seven dollars each depending on you know, what features
you want to add onto those lights and you know
that type of thing. Uh, sticker packages whatever. You have
to have a minimum of fifty vehicles. You can't order
you know five or you know two or whatever. You
can't just run one around town. If you're gonna get
it through, license it through the company. You have to
have a minimum of fifty vehicles. And of course you
(28:22):
have to do the you know, all the licensing, as
I said, and each one comes with the cost, and
I think that's a yearly cost. You have to update. Um.
They also will be they will follow the restrictions that
are set in place by Like in our case, our
mayor set this restriction in and said, you know, no
one past nine four and you'd have to have your
own maintenance, you know system set up. But you can't
(28:43):
just do it all on your own. There'll be no
way to do it, especially tracking down fifty scooters in
a in a city of the size of this or
or Dallas or San Francistco or whatever would become impossible
to be scattered everywhere. Here's the here's some of the
numbers that we're talking about. Before you know the rule
(29:04):
of thumb numbers that I did it again, I showed
you my thumb. Did that the rule of thumb for
the numbers that they kind of the typical fleet numbers
that they recommend. So if you have a population of
about ten to fifty thousand people, the typical fleet number
for you would be between fifty and one hundred vehicles.
Now again remember that's six to seven hundred dollars each,
(29:25):
and then up keep charging all that, paying people to
charge them, paying people to collect them, maintain them, all
that the numbers get bigger. So anything from fifty to
one thousand people, you're gonna need one hundred to about
five hundred vehicles. That jumped up considerably doing anything over
a hundred thousand, like hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty thousand,
(29:47):
that's still that's a big city, but not enormous. Anything
from five hundred to one thousand vehicles is recommended. And
then of course you go over two hund fifty thousand,
they recommend over a thousand vehicles, so that that number
jumps up exponentially as you as you get into the
you know, the fifty thousand plus territory as far as
(30:08):
your population goes. So, um, I could see like maybe
you know, someone wanting to get you know, fifty vehicles
for you know, maybe the five thousand people that work
here in this office and that'd be kind of great,
uh or this building, I should say, we're a factory
that employees, you know, several shifts of people. You know,
they could you know, have routine docking stations where you know,
they can bring them over and charge them routinely and
(30:29):
and that might work out pretty well too. Or you know,
at the airport where they have the people mover, they
could have a little separate area and you can jump
on a scooter or and just that's a great idea now,
I think it's a good idea. There's probably a huge
liability issue as well, and people would you know what,
and they wouldn't just stay in the little here and
in the little path with them either. See that's just
that's people being people. Because I feel like they would
(30:51):
also try to balance all of their luggage on that
and drive it, you know, across the concourse. You know,
that's the that's the problem I think is that you know,
people would try to be the hero and take you know, uh,
not just another one backpack with them, but maybe in
the he could just drag your carry on. That sounds
real society. Yeah, that plus you can have you know,
the kid's balance on the front end back of the
(31:12):
thing as you drive, because why spring for one? Oh,
there's age limits to riding these things, I think, yeah,
I saw the number. I saw a number as well
as sixteen, but I think eighteen is is kind of
the Yeah, yeah, and I think that's just controlled by um.
The way they could com police that and only to
a point though, is that they say that you can't
(31:32):
sign up for the app if you're under this age.
But we all know how that works, right, I mean,
how many young kids you know they have Facebook account
or how many kids do you think get right get
right on these things by their parents, you know, using
their their device to activate the scooter and then activate
a second scooter, activate a third scooter for the family,
and the kids are still under you know, under age,
(31:53):
so it happens, I think. Um. And of course they
recommend helmets, so as usual, you know, they recommend all
the safety gear, and I rarely see people with helmets
on hardly. You really should wear a helmet if you're
at these things. Yeah, there's a man these are There's
actually so many different angles. I mean, you don't have
to just go into exactly how they operate, and you know,
the types of controllers they use. We can't do that.
We could in another show if we wanted to, but
(32:15):
I feel like at this point most people are familiar
with them or have at least seen them on the
news or you know, I've heard about the troubles that
they've had in the cities, and uh, it's just a
kind of a fascinating thing. There's so many behind the
scenes things that are going on that I found fascinating.
Until we really started digging into it. I didn't know
about the mechanics program at all, had no idea. I
thought it was just a corporate thing. Oh you know what,
(32:36):
It's one thing I neglected to tell you. We we
talked about lifespan of these you know, how they're treated roughly,
and you see a lot of them that end up
hanging from trees or someone sees them in their parking spot.
I've witnessed this one. I saw a lady pull into
a parking lot and she was opening a business that
I was. I was parked, you know, in the same
strip ball. She's opening a business that she was just
(32:57):
coming in for the day. It was, you know, nine
am or whatever. Some one had unloaded. Looked like about
twenty of these scooters and I don't remember what brand,
but they were unloaded in a parking spot that she
normally parks in. So she parks her car right near them,
grabs each one, who or two at a time sometimes
and just heaves them under a tree out by the road,
like just I mean throws them eight ten ft you know,
(33:18):
maybe I don't remember how far she could throw. Yeah,
she wasn't gentle with him at all, not at all.
I mean, and I was watching the whole time. She
moved every one of them that way and then parked
in that spot. Bold move. I mean, they were all
tangled up like like a game of pickup sticks or
something on the side of the road. But these are
all you know, it been laid out that morning and
they were all charged and ready to go. But someone
was going to find a big tangle of scooters. I
(33:40):
don't think it necessarily damaged them all that much. They're
pretty rough and tumbled. But the company does say, you know,
if you're gonna buy one of these vehicles or buy
a fleet of vehicles, that the average expected life of
these things is something like eighteen months and that's just
general use. Of course, they're out in whether they're out
during all types of you know, hot and cold and uh,
you know, just riding them on city streets is rough
(34:01):
to begin with. People are vandalizing them, which I find
pretty awful for the writers and for the company, clipping
brake lines things like that, you know, and making them inoperable.
And again it comes back to that, you know, there
there's for some reason raging against them. They don't quite
get that. I mean, it's an inanimate object, really, but
they're upset with the people that use them, I think,
(34:23):
and the behavior that they see. So there's a there's
quite a bit to talk about on this thing. I mean,
I think we've maybe for today exhausted this. I'd kind
of like to bring Vent on in on something like
this later, something similar, not exactly the same, because we've
already had this discussion, but when he gets back we
can ask him about it. Just kind of in the intro.
(34:43):
But they do have the second generation Bird two scooters
coming out, and I thought it was funny because they
mentioned that as a kickstand that you can't tip it
over apparently, so that's the dual kickstand. It comes down
on out both sides and it's just a little more stable. Yeah,
I was thinking, you know, of course the people are
just gonna they're gonna still tip them over. Well, of course,
(35:04):
I mean, you know, you know this is how silly
this is. You can you can watch videos of people
vandalizing these. You can watch them walking, you know, up
to one you other, just out for a walk on
the street. They'll see a whole line of them, you know,
ready to go, charge, ready to go in the curb,
parked as they should be, and they'll just kick every
one of them over. The only way to stop that
is to have a scooter that will then jump back
up and then kick chase the person down and then
(35:26):
kick them over. That's a good idea. It's just an
idea I'm putting out there. I like it. I like it,
you know, normally idea I'm the idea guy. What's going
on here? A my and am I in charge of
implementing that? Because any idea that I have, you're in
charge of implementing. So, um is that that is? That
it works both ways? I'll get to work. But you know, honestly,
I think that, um, very soon, I'm just gonna give
(35:47):
one of these things to try. And we've got coworkers
that will walk out of the building, jump on one
of the witnesses. Did they get on a scooter, write
a block, pick up their lunch and then write it
back and come back into go and eat their lunch? Uh?
I mean it's funny to me because it's a short distance.
You think they just walk. But um, I won't name names.
It's no one in this room, no one that will
(36:08):
be in the room next week with us. It's not
been U might be another ben though in the office. Yeah,
maybe I don't want to give anything away. You know.
I found the behavior funny. I thought I thought it
was pretty silly, but um, you know, who knows. Maybe
it just likes to ride them. You never know. Yeah,
they can be fun. I'm sure there are a lot
of fun and I think that's how a lot of
people use them. I think they'll drive here, yeah, and
(36:30):
they'll park and they'll jump out there on the belt
line and then just ride them for recreation. I have
seen a couple of coming on major highways, arrive on
major highways from the north. So I'm one five everybody
can familiar with I seventy five comes right through Atlanta.
Some of the exits in downtown. I have seen bird scooters,
(36:51):
electric bikes, that kind of thing parked leaning against the
concrete ramps. They're down on the highway there. Someone rode
those down onto the highway. They came, you know, onto
the highway on the off ramp or the on ramp
and left them somewhere. Now, this is puzzling to me,
and I'm not trying to be insensitive in any way
to this, but you'll find that a lot of homeless
(37:11):
people right these to get to and from places in town.
And I don't understand exactly how this works. I'm asking
this more out of just curiosity. I'm not angry. I'm not,
you know, trying to point fingers anybody. But how is
it that someone who is, you know, living under these ramps,
living on the streets has a smartphone to be able
to unlock a bird's and a bird account or Lime
(37:34):
account or whatever. I guess that's that's clever, right, But
it's just an oddball thing. And I've seen a couple
of them that have just been left on the side
of the road so you can get a lime chaser
down there on the freeway. To find a couple that
have been missing for a few months, probably probably worth
a lot of money. Maybe there's a big bounty on this.
I don't know. All right, So I think we're gonna
wrap up for today, but I do want to tell
you that we are on all forms of social media
(37:56):
that you can think of everything under the sun. Really Okay,
well there's maybe three, all right, So we're on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram. You can find us there. You can always uh,
you know, kind of give us a little bit of
feedback there if you want. We are car stuff hsw
at all three of those, and um, we do have
of course a big archive of material that you can
find on iHeart dot com if you get your podcast there,
(38:18):
or you can go to Apple Podcasts and leave some
feedback at either one of those places. You can find
our extensive archive on iHeart dot com. If you want
to go to Apple Podcasts, I think you're limited to
the most recent three hundred, which still sounds like a lot.
I mean, it's a lot of car stuff to to bear, right,
I mean it's a lot of stomach. Can I say
it that way? It's a lot of stomach, right, yeah, Follo,
would you listen to three episodes. But you know, I enjoying.
(38:40):
I listened back to my own voice. I think, why
would they do that? You know, people don't like their
own voice. That's a common thing, that's universal truth, I think.
All right, So, um, anyways, you can find our archive
there at at i heeart dot com if you want to,
and of course tell your friends because we're always trying
to grow the audience and get more people involved. So
we're really I do appreciate it, and we will catch
(39:01):
you next time. That's all right, see you later. Car
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio's How
Stuff Works. Hi, and Welcome to car Stuff. I'm your
host Scott Benjamin and I am Kurt Garren. And we're
missing Ben again. Yeah, well that's okay. He'll be back.
I promise, No, really, he will be back. He's he's around.
He's just doing other stuff. Probably. I bet we'll hear
(00:22):
all about incomes back. I hope so where he can
make something up. Anyway, it's a shame that he's not
here because he would love the topic we're going to
talk about today. You know, I feel like he would
because I've got to be honest with you, Kurt. You
said we were going to talk about bird scooters. Um,
which are you know? The electric scooters are a type
of scooter that has proliferated just about every major city,
(00:44):
at least the United States, all around the world, I know,
and in markets like Europe and um, North America, the
Middle in the Middle East, They're all over the place. Um,
you nor I have any real experience with you know,
these these electric scooters. I'm not going to ride one
of those silly things I have. I'll tell you I
(01:05):
have a lot of knowledge about them. But I've never
been on one, and maybe that's going to change soon.
I think I think I'm due for a ride here.
But I would bet if I had, if I was
a betting person, I would bet that Ben is somebody
that has used these. If not, you know, just once
or twice, probably a lot. I hope I'm not giving
anything away that he doesn't want it, but he's he
lives sort of nearby. He does drive a vehicle, so
(01:26):
he might be, you know, too far to use one
of these, but um, I would. I just have a
feeling that getting around town. He did live real close
and that was no secret. He he lived real close
to this building in an old Ford factory as a
matter of fact, which is kind of cool. Um he
wasn't homeless. I mean they made it into apartments, you know,
but but I know that, you know, he was real
close to here. And if you look outside of our
(01:46):
window right now from our office, we're on the fourth floor,
and if you look outside, I would bet anything that
we would be able to spot just on the curb side,
probably a dozen electric electric scooters on the curb, you know,
just park waiting for people to use, and probably two
or three in motion. You know, people on them in
bike lanes, would you guess, yeah, I would guess so.
(02:07):
And even and when it's raining, you may even see
a few in the roadway that have been washed down.
Have seen that before too from our window out here?
Have you really washed downstream? Huh? Yeah, well we get
some torrential drain rain down here, and then you know,
with all the hills and everything, it ends up being
like you know, small rivers running through downtown. If it rains,
it's a it's a disaster practically if it rains more
(02:29):
than about an inch, and that's you know, part of
the problem with the scooters is exactly that, the fact
that they are relatively lightweight and just can be scattered
about willy nilly. Oh yeah, you know. I know we're
gonna talk about that because parking is an issue with
these as well. But um, just for for those that
don't know what we're talking about. And I didn't think
(02:49):
that this is really going to be an issue until
yesterday when we were talking off air about this, uh,
this program in particular, and I said, well, every we
don't really need to describe them because everybody knows what
these are, right, And you said, probably not. Yeah, most definitely.
I mean they're in a lot of larger cities in
the United States and around the world, but there are
plenty of places that do not have these scooters at
(03:10):
least owned by these companies, some kind of dispersed everywhere
as a motor transportation. Yeah. Sure. See you're in a
city like Atlanta where there's close I mean we're bordering
on seven million people. Now it's above six million, I believe.
And uh, and you're gonna find a lot of something
like this. You go to you know, Dallas, you go
to where was it you were recently, San Antono, San Antonio,
(03:30):
San Antonio there there, you go to Miami, you go
to you know, Los Angeles, San Francisco. They're all over
the place and some of the bigger cities. Um. In fact,
I've think I've seen just even this one brand, Bird,
and we'll talk about many different brands, but Bird in particular,
I think they're in something like a hundred and twenty
different markets. So and it means I guess cities they
call them markets. But um, what we're talking about in
(03:51):
particular here, if you're not familiar, is a kick scooter,
you know, kind of scooter that you stand up on.
It's got a little deck and two small wheels um
handlebar that is coming up off of a stem, you know,
straight stem in front of you. Normally you would put
one foot on the deck and then kick like he
would on a skateboard to get moving, and then put
your second foot up and coast on it. Right. These
have a wheel or a wheel motor, a motor in
(04:12):
the wheel that's an electric and drives these things, and
it actually is pretty efficient. It moves them along pretty good.
You would think that I would have a lot of
difficulty here in Atlanta because of the terrain that I
just mentioned. You know, it's very hilly here, even in downtown.
But these really move people along pretty good. I mean
you get up to speed pretty quick. And I don't
know what that speed is. I want to say it's
it's above ten miles per hour. It's probably closer to
(04:32):
twelve or even maybe I would say between ten and
fifty somewhere on their speed. Yeah. Again, no personal experience
on it yet, but I'm gonna get there, and so
I don't have personal experience on the scooter either, but
I do have experience being around them being a cyclist
I don't ride on the belt line often, but it
is a nice little connector to get from one road
(04:54):
to another, so I'll hit it every now and then.
And the scooters are outrage Now the belt line is
as a walking path, that is, it's like it wasn't
an old railroad line. Yeah, And they do this with
many old railroad lines across the country. They turned them
into bike pass walking past recreational paths, tear the tracks off,
(05:14):
smooth it out, put some pavement down, and they've got
some trees nearby. A lot of businesses back up to
the properties. You can walk, you know, to and from
businesses that way. Um. I don't know how many miles
this thing goes, but it's big. It's a long. It's
a long, uh you know, walking path that is accessible
to just about everybody downtown really and they're always lengthening
it on either side. Now they this one here isn't
(05:35):
it's not continuously very long. It's like maybe two miles
this section. But they have a bunch of different sections
throughout the city that they that you can link up
with bike paths and sidewalks. And there is one that
is in Smyrna Georgia that goes all the way into Alabama.
It's called the Silver Comet, and then in Alabama it's
name changes, but it does keep going for a few
(05:58):
more miles in Alabama, I think Anniston. Maybe that's just
actually good ways and yeah, so that's a example of
one of these trails. It's very long, the Silver Common Trail, Okay,
so we have to check into that, all right. Well,
so I think a lot of people are familiar with
that type of environment in a city. A lot of
you know, they've repurposed some of these these old train
tracks or railroad pathways that they left behind once the
(06:19):
railway has gone or in no longer in use. But yeah,
we feel we find a lot of traffic on that
area or in that that walking path there formerly walking path.
Now it's scooters and bikes and all kinds of things.
Early on, you know, you'd find these things on sidewalks
as well, and it was a little bit dangerous little
if he you know, when you walk out of a
business and you know, a scooter that's running silently just
(06:39):
zips past you, going, you know, twelve fifteen miles an hour.
It's a little bit frightening because it happened. It happened often.
There were a lot of pedestrian scooter collisions, and unfortunately,
there have been a lot of you know, scooter car
collisions that have happened as well. And and well, not
to let the cat of the bag or anything, but
I mean there have been several deaths here in Atlanta
alone that have led to some some abums with with
(07:00):
the city, between the city and the scooter companies. So
there's a lot to really talk about here there there.
It's actually it's not a bad solution for what they
intended it for. For the micro mobility, I think is
what they call it, right. Um, it's like the last
mile transportation is what they often refer to it as.
I'm not sure that the scooters are being used in
(07:21):
that way. I feel like the e bikes have gotten
more of a grip on that type of situation. They
they're definitely way more organized, like they have the stations
where you put the bikes to charge and whatnot. There's
more of an infrastructure there, whereas the scooters are just uh,
kind of littered about. So you're talking about the same thing.
Only bike form that is electric that you like. City
(07:41):
bike is one of them, and yeah, I think there's
something called there's one called Jump. Um. I don't remember
some of the other names of these. I've got a
list of operators here in city of Atlanta that include,
you know, the names and the number of units that
they have, but I don't have them broken down by
what type of device that they market into in here.
So there's Um, There's Bird, Bows, Bolt, Gotcha, Jump, Lime, Lift,
(08:03):
Spin Wheels. All these are operating within the city limits
of just Atlanta, and you can multiply this by however,
many large city centers are nationwide and then also worldwide. Um.
As we said, you know, just one of those companies
on Bird, I believe operates in something like a hundred
and twenty different markets. Or maybe I'm thinking of Lime.
I can't remember which, because we had some big news
(08:23):
recently about Lime. Lime has just decided this month to
pull out of Atlanta. They're they're removing themselves from the
Atlanta market because um of some restrictions that have been
placed on them. Yeah. San Antonio is another place they're
pulling out of, which I found surprising because I felt
like they were everywhere in downtown San Antonio. Yeah, but
you know, Here's the confusing thing is that a lot
(08:45):
of them look the same, right, These all have the
general shape and appearance of each other. They might have
a little bit of you know, like a different sticker
package or different color combination that they use, you know,
red and black or purple and black, or green and white,
or whatever it happens to be. They're all branded in
a certain way. But maybe you were seeing you know,
um Bird scooters and thinking they were Lime scooters. And
(09:05):
it's easy to do, easy to confuse, very easy um
Or maybe it was you know, I don't know, a
Bolt scooter, you know, one of the other brands. But
the point is that you know, right here at the
beginning of the turn of the year, in Lime has
decided to pull out of Atlanta, and they are one
of many companies that has now left Atlanta because of
some of these restrictions that have been put in place.
And that's due to the earlier accidents that I mentioned.
(09:28):
There was a rash of of deaths here in Atlanta,
really close together, I mean, within a couple of weeks
of each other. I think there might have been one
that was spaced out a little bit more, you know,
and then a couple right in the road in succession,
rapid succession. That led our mayor UM to decide that
and these these accidents happened typically at night. So I
let our mayor to decide that there was going to
be a ban on these e scooters if they were
(09:51):
one of these ones that are actually licensed and permitted
through a bigger company to be run here, not individual
scooters that people owned. But UM, they decided that there's
gonna be banned on them during the nighttime hours, and
that was deemed to be between nine pm and four am.
So you're not allowed to be on the streets on
an electric scooter between nine pm and four am here
in Atlanta. And unless it's your own, if you own
(10:12):
that scooter, you're fine to do that. If you're on
personal vehicle, or you can still ride bikes and do
whatever you want, but you know, within safe reason, lights
and all that. But there is that band and then
you know there's also they're changing around the way that
these things are licensed and permitted to be here. And
I keep saying permitted, I don't mean they're just saying like, hey,
you can you can be here. I mean I'm talking like,
you know, there's money changing hands for this. You know,
(10:32):
you have to ever permit for each vehicle that you
have on the street. And you know, all those companies
that I just named off in a in a row, Bird, Bows, Bolt,
at cetera, all the way down the list. I mean,
I'm looking at the numbers here of permitted devices and
it comes up to somewhere in the neighborhood. I thought
I saw a number here of like I shoot, I
don't have them total up, but it's like ballpark twelve
thousand vehicles I think is is something like that the
(10:54):
number of vehicles that are on the street, you know,
between all these these these companies. However, I will tell
you this that you know, Lime has now left, but
they're not the first ones to leave. You know. We
we had um Lift pulled their scooters off the streets
as well, Um gotcha took their I think they had bikes.
I think got youa had bikes maybe um there And
there was another one that pulled off as well. But
(11:14):
you know we're talking about you know, taking you know,
at one swipe, you're taking two thousand of these off
the streets. You know that are that are licensed by
companies like Bird, has two thousand permitted devices here in
the city. Bolt has a thousand, Lime had two thousand,
Lift had two thousand, Spin has two thousand. Company called
Wheels has one thousands. So these are the types of
(11:35):
numbers that we're talking about. They're they're big numbers, and
there's big money to be earned here. But it's not
costing the user a lot of money. I mean, it's
just by volume. They do so much business and these
things are put into you so often that it's profitable
for the companies to be to still do this even
with the wear and tear that is associated with these scooters.
And that's the thing. They're marketed as a transportation alternative
(11:58):
and a more eco friendly transportation alternative at that. However,
their lifespan is relatively short. Of course, there's maintenance involved.
There's programs that people get involved with where they go
and pick up the scooters and then bring them home
and charge them and um so I just feel like
(12:20):
all that transport and all that movement kind of negates
the impact or the lack of impact that the scooters
have on transportation. It's kind of like the uber situation
where you have ubers clogging the streets you know, so
it's like, so you don't you might have less traffic,
but you saw a bunch of people, you know, pulling
(12:40):
off on undesignated places, dropping people off, causing traffic issues
as well. So they're marketed like their minimal impact, but
they're really not. There's a whole there's a whole movement
around them that causes issues in that ecosystem. I guess.
So that's a good point. I've never thought about it
that way, you know that, you know there we spend
so much fuel transport them back and forth with you know,
(13:01):
some of these different programs that they have, and you've
mentioned that it negates any of the benefit of having
an electric vehicle to do this type of thing. But
it's convenient as heck, right, I mean for a lot
it can be because they're they're marketed. As we said
earlier on, it was it was marketed initially, or it's
kind of promoted to the city or whoever they have
to go through for these permits that they get that
(13:21):
you know, these are GPS tract of course, they're electric,
available for rental through mobile applications and you can do
you have an app on your phone, but they're marketed
as like the first mile and last mile transportation for commuters.
So you get off the train at the train station
and you still have a mile to go to get
to your office. You know, normally you'd be walking that distance.
So you can grab a nearby scooter, you know, whatever
(13:42):
brand that might be, or an e bike, jump on it,
and it'll cost you. In the case of Bird, it's
a dollar to start, and then it's fifteen cents per
mile or sorry not per mile per minute after that,
and then you immediately shut it off once you're done
using it and using the app again Parket it's lay old,
as you know, available for the next user. And you know,
there's the whole process of how this whole thing works,
(14:04):
but you get the idea that it's it's a relatively
cheap way to get around. The average rider spends about
three dollars and seventy cents per ride on these things,
so you multiply that by how many rides there are
in a given area in a given time. So I
don't know if his Lime again or Bird, I can't
remember which that I read an article and said the
first year that they were in production, and both those
(14:25):
companies that I just mentioned, by the way, started in
the year seventeen, which is hard to believe because that's
not that long ago. It seems like they've been around
longer than that here in Atlanta anyways, or at least
you know, we've been hearing about them. The first year,
they made something like more than ten million rides. And
I know that doesn't translate exactly into dollars, but if
it's three seventy five average rider per, you know they're
(14:46):
they're making, you know, lots of lots of money. Let's
put it that with lots of money. And I know
there's a huge overhead and maintenance and all that and
paying employees. Because you said a lot of things there, Kurt,
in that instance where you're speaking just a minute ago,
and you were talking about, you know, how they're marketed,
their programs that are that are set aside for people
to make money with them. Um, you know, there's a
lot of problems with them as well. There's a lot
(15:08):
of things we can talk about here. One thing that
I want to be sure to talk about it is
the mechanics programs that they offer for these and the
charging programs that they offer for them. Now I keep
(15:28):
using bird as an example, because it's an easy one
to get information about. They've got a lot of promotional
material out there and how to type videos and articles.
If you want to be a bird mechanic, which I
thought was called an ornithologist up until this point, but
it's not. I make her laugh. That's good. Hopefully made
someone laugh, all right, So all right, that's a different thing.
(15:48):
That's a bird vet alright, So bird bird mechanic. There's
actually an employment opportunity for fixing and repairing the bird
scooters and likewise with the other scooters. So if you
know you lieb or jump or who have you can
you can do this type of thing. But they also
have a charging employment opportunity as well. You can take
them home and charge them for a fixed rate as well.
And I'm sorry, shouldn't say fixed. It's a floating rate
(16:09):
and it changes based on availability, need all that. Um,
But you do have to choose one. You can't do both.
You can't be a charger and a mechanic. You have
to choose which one you want to do, which career
path you want to take. And I would say that
this isn't a career I should say, um, this is
one of those things that they refer to as you know,
the gig economy, right, Yeah, this is something that you
do outside of your normal business operation, you know, like
(16:32):
I could do this during the day. I could go
collect bird scooters at night and take them home and
charge them and put them back on the street during
the day. Although some people get pretty territorial, Yes they do. Absolutely. Yeah,
there's a there's a lot of articles and I don't know,
I don't maybe maybe we should not go to in
depth into that. Let people look into that, because there's
a lot of stories there about how people are getting
(16:55):
a little bit a little bit testy about other people
swooping in and stealing the birds scooter right in front
of them. And they say stealing, but you know, swiping. Yeah,
I mean it's, as they've said many many times, this
is kind of like Wild West territory here for a
lot of because it's they don't know how to not
anybody really has a specific set of rules or laws
laid down how to handle it self governed and you
(17:16):
know how that goes, Yeah, exactly. So you can sign
up to be a mechanic, you can sign up to
be a a charger, and you just kind of have
to play the game. However, however, you know other people
have been doing it, and then you can maybe adapt
and change and you can make a fair amount of
money doing either one. Really, but there are some pros
and cons and you should definitely look into both because
you know, hear really good stories about, you know, both
(17:38):
sides of this thing. You know, like it's it's really
great to be a scooter mechanic because of this, and
you can also find like I thought I would wanted
to be this, but man, it's been a headache. You know,
I've had a barely made any money and it's really difficult.
Or the charging thing. You know, I really thought I
had a plan worked out. It was gonna make a
ton of money every night, but it didn't work out.
And then you hear the other one where there's a
(17:58):
high school kid that makes sick hundred dollars a night
charging Bird scooters in California. And I read that story
and you know, it's amazing that a high schooler could
do that and still go to high school and still
make six hundred bucks a night doing this. That's that's
a remarkable success story for him, right, just an extra job,
but a lot of people are doing that just to
make a little bit extra money, and they're happy with
(18:18):
you know, maybe you make um, you know, maybe make
fifty bucks a night and you can go out to
dinner the next night. They're happy with that. You know.
It's just a little spending cash, a little little beer
money on the side, you know. So there's there's there's mechanics,
there's charging you. You're making a few dollars per repair,
and I don't I don't know, you know what the
exact amount is here, but I've seen numbers like fifteen
dollars for one of the more complex repairs that you
(18:40):
can do, which is probably like break adjustment, you know,
wheel changing, that type of thing, ten dollars. If you
are collecting these scooters and then finding that you can't
repair them, you have to take them to a facility
where they can repair them. That takes care of, you know,
something a little more complicated or something a little more
proprietary for the company. You can drop them off of
these these distribution centers where they they gather them, repair them,
(19:01):
and then send it back out. There's some actual company
mechanics that handle that stuff. And then there's also another
like a different version of that that's like a five
dollar captured charge. So you know, there's there's all these
different Yeah, capture, you can capture birds, right, that's a
and then they do you know, they play with the
words limes charging. People are called juicers. I just find
that clever. A lime juicer. Yeah, that's a that's a
(19:23):
good one. I like that. But yeah, the bird thing
is the same way you capture birds. You know, the
birds when the alarm is going off because someone's tampered
with it, it's called you know, it's chirping at you.
That's cute, yes, sort of cute, right, um. But the part, oh,
that's something we should mention too, is that people are
scavenging parts from these things. So you know, the good
side of this is that people are getting use them
(19:44):
to get around, and a lot of people are. There's
some bad sides to one. Might be one bad side
might be the whole origin of this thing, and that
a lot of the company has found that they were
going to or decided at some point, rather than to
ask permission and then be denied of access to the city,
they're going to dump off five hundred scooters into town overnight.
And it's kind of flood the market with their scooters
(20:05):
and you know there, of course they're ready to go.
They don't have any storefront to open or anything like that.
It's just all through you know, it's all paid through
an app. They might dump off the five hundred scooters
and then ask for forgiveness later. And then of course
as they're still making money, as they're still profiting on this,
they say, well, look they're already in place and we've
had this many rides. They need it, and they can
kind of make a case for themselves. Then the city
has to figure out how we're going to regulate this,
(20:27):
how we're going to charge you for this, and they do.
They charge them a a purse scooter fee, and you know,
that could be a huge number for a whole fleet
of scooters. You know, there's their standards. I guess there
are numbers that are generally I guess abided by if
you want to call it that, their rule of thumb numbers.
If you want, I'm showing you my thumb like that
ruw thumb rule of thumb numbers for the number of
(20:50):
vehicles that you need for certain populations. When that comes
up in just a minute when we talk about buying
your Oh this is interesting. You can buy your own
fleet of scooters if you wanted to, and I Kirk
could have our fleet of scooters if we wanted to.
But it's expensive. But there's a there's kind of a
rule of thumb of how many you should have, and
and then they charge you per vehicle. And if they're
parked illegally by you know, someone just rents it, throws
(21:11):
it down on the curb and it's not part correctly.
You know, the Department of Motor Vehicles might come by,
pick it up throwing the back of a truck and
impound it, you know, the same place they take poorly
parked cars. They impounded, and it's a seventy five dollar
fee I think to to get it out of the
impound yard. And then it's twenty five dollars for every
night past that first night for a storage fee. So
(21:32):
we found out through some of these articles that were
written about Lime leaving Atlanta that at one point last summer,
I believe it was in a three month period. I
think it was like June through September. That was quiet,
think quick on my feet there. But for that three
month period we found out that the fees that were
owed by Lime to the City of Atlanta just for
these impound fees is something like seventy thousand dollars just
(21:54):
for the ones that they picked up, you know, in
these individual scooters, seventy five dollars at a time. And
and you know, on top of that, you know the
twenty five dollar a night fees that were being accrued,
you know, every single time that you know, the clock
ticked over. Essentially, you know, they might be able to
park a hundred scooters in a spot where they park
one car because they just got them in a pile there.
But they're still charging as if it was a vehicle
(22:15):
park there. So they're making a pile of money. The
city is making a pile of money on these and
and oftentimes the company might decide and I just let
him go because it's not worth it to us to
to pick up these scooters that are probably all mangled anyway,
you just leave them in there. They can sell them
at you know, police auction or whatever. Because when you
say the police picked them up because they're parked in
the wrong place, I mean that's a loose term. They
(22:37):
can be strewn about. Yeah, that's over the fence and
down the hill. And I was gonna say, have you
seen some of the more flagrant violations of parking rules
or people that are just simply upset with them, because
there's a lot of people that don't like these things
at all for some reason. There's a lot of people
that are just angry about electronic scooters being in town.
I kind of, I kind of get it. I kind
(22:58):
of don't get it. I mean, if they're handled properly,
if they're out of the way, fine, but a lot
of people are just really upset with them. And I
think it's because of the way that a lot of
them are parked. It also comes down to sometimes they're
used improperly where you know, it's it's disruptive or it's
dangerous scooters and crimes out Criminals riding around on scooters
right using them to get away although you get caught
(23:20):
if you know it, just feel like it's not the
smartest way to get away. No, you're sin on yourself, right,
I mean, but hey, use your friends phone to rent
one of these, and then whatever phone. I guess if
you're a criminal, you probably just stole the phone or something.
That's true. Also they're not they're not particularly I mean
they're fast, but come on as a getaway vehicle, I
guess maybe in a crowd you can get just blend in,
(23:42):
you know. Just I'm just riding the scooter. Well, that's true,
using it to get to the last mile of my community.
That's right. They just happened to have a bag of
diamonds that, you know, I picked up somewhere. That's all
or a couple of thousand dollars worth of merchandise at it.
I'm just headed to the train. What's what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with that? Kurt? All right? So man, they're
I feel like I'm wandering all over the place with this.
(24:02):
But we've we've said that, you know, the parts are stolen.
People are finding ways to hack these things. There's their
hacks online. I don't know if I should even tell
you how about the hacks, but it's out there. Find it,
find it on YouTube. It's pretty clever. And don't do it. Yeah,
don't do it. I mean, you can buy these scooters
at auction and uh and I'll tell you this because
maybe someone is doing this. Maybe maybe let's say that
(24:24):
you're definitely someone is doing. Okay, let's say that you
didn't steal one off the street, because you know there're
thousands of them out there. Let's say you didn't do that.
You resisted, right, you didn't want to do that, Kirk,
don't steal one, I won't. Okay, good, So you didn't
steal one, and you found one at a police auction,
and you know it's one of these impounded vehicles that
they decided to sell, and you pick it up for
a hundred bucks. They're valued. It's somewhere you know, like
(24:46):
six or seven hundred dollars each or something like that.
They're they're expensive. But you buy wanted an impound yard
or a sale police sale, and you want to use
it as your own personal scooter. You're gonna take the
you know, the branding off of it. You're gonna make
it your own painted or whatever. You can buy a
scooter conversion kit that comes from at this point, comes
from China. You gotta be a little bit wary of
(25:07):
of this because you know there are some scams out
there that happened that looks like the right kip that
or not. But you can buy a conversion kit from
China that will for about thirty dollars convert that into
a non tracked, non GPS, uh you know, recognizable, non
bricked version of that scooter that you can then use
around town to motor yourself. Now, you're gonna still need
the charge, You're gonna need all of the I guess
(25:29):
you're gonna have to put some effort into it to
make it look like your own. So it's not like
you're you know, any other bird out there or any
other Lime scooter out there. But let's say you're doing
it all on on the level. It's it's not gonna
cost you a whole lot of money to convert this
thing over to your own private use scooter, which is
kind of nice, I guess for people right now. I
haven't heard of any other companies besides these in China
that are they're offering this. That's probably where the scooters
(25:49):
made anyway, Yeah, maybe you know what um it is
that there's a model number that's associated with most of them,
and I have that here. Um I won't begin to
try to uh, well, maybe I will, I'll try to.
How about that. It's okay, it starts with an X,
so you know this is gonna be tough. So geomy geomy,
I hope that's it. It's X I, A O, M
(26:11):
I so Zeomi, maybe Misia M three scooter. Now, if
you just look up M three sixty five scooter, you'll
find typically the scooter. And I believe a lot of
these companies will now actually sell you one, but they're
kind of price you and they have different versions of them,
but they're your own personally used scooter, and they come
in different colors you can have. You know, you can
get a pink one, you can get a green one,
(26:32):
a white one, whatever, black, whatever your favorite color is.
You can do that and make it kind of your own.
I'll even have Kick scooters for little kids that you
can buy. But you know, I mentioned one other thing
that I think we probably should include here, and that
is that if you wanted to through one of these companies,
and again I use Bird as an example, you're able
to buy your own fleet of branded Bird scooters and
(26:55):
operate them within city limits as long as you adhere
to the regulations that go along with it. Now, this
may be initially enticing, but when you really think about
what you're investing and the possibilities of things that can
go wrong. I mean We have seen deaths here in
the city and other cities nationwide and of course worldwide
as well as you know, disfigurement and uh and people
(27:16):
just getting you know, small even if it's a small
uh you know, nick or cut or whatever, there are
bills that have to be paid, you know, there pre
insurance bills. Um Liability is a big thing, and you
do have to get your own insurance, but you do
have to also go through their licensing, their fees that
they charge in the within the city limits. The nice
part is that you are using the Bird app in
(27:38):
order to run these things. If you do go through
Bird and so they have kind of that infrastructure already
in place. If you do order them, you know, you
can rebrand them with your own name. That could be
could be Kurt's Scooter Company, but it also would have
birds somewhere small on the on the label, you know,
if you had to do it that way. But you
get to design your own scooter, which is kind of cool. Um.
Here's the kicker here. The price is somewhere between six
(28:01):
and seven dollars each depending on you know, what features
you want to add onto those lights and you know
that type of thing. Uh, sticker packages whatever. You have
to have a minimum of fifty vehicles. You can't order
you know five or you know two or whatever. You
can't just run one around town. If you're gonna get
it through, license it through the company. You have to
have a minimum of fifty vehicles. And of course you
(28:22):
have to do the you know, all the licensing, as
I said, and each one comes with the cost, and
I think that's a yearly cost. You have to update. Um.
They also will be they will follow the restrictions that
are set in place by Like in our case, our
mayor set this restriction in and said, you know, no
one past nine four and you'd have to have your
own maintenance, you know system set up. But you can't
(28:43):
just do it all on your own. There'll be no
way to do it, especially tracking down fifty scooters in
a in a city of the size of this or
or Dallas or San Francistco or whatever would become impossible
to be scattered everywhere. Here's the here's some of the
numbers that we're talking about. Before you know the rule
(29:04):
of thumb numbers that I did it again, I showed
you my thumb. Did that the rule of thumb for
the numbers that they kind of the typical fleet numbers
that they recommend. So if you have a population of
about ten to fifty thousand people, the typical fleet number
for you would be between fifty and one hundred vehicles.
Now again remember that's six to seven hundred dollars each,
(29:25):
and then up keep charging all that, paying people to
charge them, paying people to collect them, maintain them, all
that the numbers get bigger. So anything from fifty to
one thousand people, you're gonna need one hundred to about
five hundred vehicles. That jumped up considerably doing anything over
a hundred thousand, like hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty thousand,
(29:47):
that's still that's a big city, but not enormous. Anything
from five hundred to one thousand vehicles is recommended. And
then of course you go over two hund fifty thousand,
they recommend over a thousand vehicles, so that that number
jumps up exponentially as you as you get into the
you know, the fifty thousand plus territory as far as
(30:08):
your population goes. So, um, I could see like maybe
you know, someone wanting to get you know, fifty vehicles
for you know, maybe the five thousand people that work
here in this office and that'd be kind of great,
uh or this building, I should say, we're a factory
that employees, you know, several shifts of people. You know,
they could you know, have routine docking stations where you know,
they can bring them over and charge them routinely and
(30:29):
and that might work out pretty well too. Or you know,
at the airport where they have the people mover, they
could have a little separate area and you can jump
on a scooter or and just that's a great idea now,
I think it's a good idea. There's probably a huge
liability issue as well, and people would you know what,
and they wouldn't just stay in the little here and
in the little path with them either. See that's just
that's people being people. Because I feel like they would
(30:51):
also try to balance all of their luggage on that
and drive it, you know, across the concourse. You know,
that's the that's the problem I think is that you know,
people would try to be the hero and take you know, uh,
not just another one backpack with them, but maybe in
the he could just drag your carry on. That sounds
real society. Yeah, that plus you can have you know,
the kid's balance on the front end back of the
(31:12):
thing as you drive, because why spring for one? Oh,
there's age limits to riding these things, I think, yeah,
I saw the number. I saw a number as well
as sixteen, but I think eighteen is is kind of
the Yeah, yeah, and I think that's just controlled by um.
The way they could com police that and only to
a point though, is that they say that you can't
(31:32):
sign up for the app if you're under this age.
But we all know how that works, right, I mean,
how many young kids you know they have Facebook account
or how many kids do you think get right get
right on these things by their parents, you know, using
their their device to activate the scooter and then activate
a second scooter, activate a third scooter for the family,
and the kids are still under you know, under age,
(31:53):
so it happens, I think. Um. And of course they
recommend helmets, so as usual, you know, they recommend all
the safety gear, and I rarely see people with helmets
on hardly. You really should wear a helmet if you're
at these things. Yeah, there's a man these are There's
actually so many different angles. I mean, you don't have
to just go into exactly how they operate, and you know,
the types of controllers they use. We can't do that.
We could in another show if we wanted to, but
(32:15):
I feel like at this point most people are familiar
with them or have at least seen them on the
news or you know, I've heard about the troubles that
they've had in the cities, and uh, it's just a
kind of a fascinating thing. There's so many behind the
scenes things that are going on that I found fascinating.
Until we really started digging into it. I didn't know
about the mechanics program at all, had no idea. I
thought it was just a corporate thing. Oh you know what,
(32:36):
It's one thing I neglected to tell you. We we
talked about lifespan of these you know, how they're treated roughly,
and you see a lot of them that end up
hanging from trees or someone sees them in their parking spot.
I've witnessed this one. I saw a lady pull into
a parking lot and she was opening a business that
I was. I was parked, you know, in the same
strip ball. She's opening a business that she was just
(32:57):
coming in for the day. It was, you know, nine
am or whatever. Some one had unloaded. Looked like about
twenty of these scooters and I don't remember what brand,
but they were unloaded in a parking spot that she
normally parks in. So she parks her car right near them,
grabs each one, who or two at a time sometimes
and just heaves them under a tree out by the road,
like just I mean throws them eight ten ft you know,
(33:18):
maybe I don't remember how far she could throw. Yeah,
she wasn't gentle with him at all, not at all.
I mean, and I was watching the whole time. She
moved every one of them that way and then parked
in that spot. Bold move. I mean, they were all
tangled up like like a game of pickup sticks or
something on the side of the road. But these are
all you know, it been laid out that morning and
they were all charged and ready to go. But someone
was going to find a big tangle of scooters. I
(33:40):
don't think it necessarily damaged them all that much. They're
pretty rough and tumbled. But the company does say, you know,
if you're gonna buy one of these vehicles or buy
a fleet of vehicles, that the average expected life of
these things is something like eighteen months and that's just
general use. Of course, they're out in whether they're out
during all types of you know, hot and cold and uh,
you know, just riding them on city streets is rough
(34:01):
to begin with. People are vandalizing them, which I find
pretty awful for the writers and for the company, clipping
brake lines things like that, you know, and making them inoperable.
And again it comes back to that, you know, there
there's for some reason raging against them. They don't quite
get that. I mean, it's an inanimate object, really, but
they're upset with the people that use them, I think,
(34:23):
and the behavior that they see. So there's a there's
quite a bit to talk about on this thing. I mean,
I think we've maybe for today exhausted this. I'd kind
of like to bring Vent on in on something like
this later, something similar, not exactly the same, because we've
already had this discussion, but when he gets back we
can ask him about it. Just kind of in the intro.
(34:43):
But they do have the second generation Bird two scooters
coming out, and I thought it was funny because they
mentioned that as a kickstand that you can't tip it
over apparently, so that's the dual kickstand. It comes down
on out both sides and it's just a little more stable. Yeah,
I was thinking, you know, of course the people are
just gonna they're gonna still tip them over. Well, of course,
(35:04):
I mean, you know, you know this is how silly
this is. You can you can watch videos of people
vandalizing these. You can watch them walking, you know, up
to one you other, just out for a walk on
the street. They'll see a whole line of them, you know,
ready to go, charge, ready to go in the curb,
parked as they should be, and they'll just kick every
one of them over. The only way to stop that
is to have a scooter that will then jump back
up and then kick chase the person down and then
(35:26):
kick them over. That's a good idea. It's just an
idea I'm putting out there. I like it. I like it,
you know, normally idea I'm the idea guy. What's going
on here? A my and am I in charge of
implementing that? Because any idea that I have, you're in
charge of implementing. So, um is that that is? That
it works both ways? I'll get to work. But you know, honestly,
I think that, um, very soon, I'm just gonna give
(35:47):
one of these things to try. And we've got coworkers
that will walk out of the building, jump on one
of the witnesses. Did they get on a scooter, write
a block, pick up their lunch and then write it
back and come back into go and eat their lunch? Uh?
I mean it's funny to me because it's a short distance.
You think they just walk. But um, I won't name names.
It's no one in this room, no one that will
(36:08):
be in the room next week with us. It's not
been U might be another ben though in the office. Yeah,
maybe I don't want to give anything away. You know.
I found the behavior funny. I thought I thought it
was pretty silly, but um, you know, who knows. Maybe
it just likes to ride them. You never know. Yeah,
they can be fun. I'm sure there are a lot
of fun and I think that's how a lot of
people use them. I think they'll drive here, yeah, and
(36:30):
they'll park and they'll jump out there on the belt
line and then just ride them for recreation. I have
seen a couple of coming on major highways, arrive on
major highways from the north. So I'm one five everybody
can familiar with I seventy five comes right through Atlanta.
Some of the exits in downtown. I have seen bird scooters,
(36:51):
electric bikes, that kind of thing parked leaning against the
concrete ramps. They're down on the highway there. Someone rode
those down onto the highway. They came, you know, onto
the highway on the off ramp or the on ramp
and left them somewhere. Now, this is puzzling to me,
and I'm not trying to be insensitive in any way
to this, but you'll find that a lot of homeless
(37:11):
people right these to get to and from places in town.
And I don't understand exactly how this works. I'm asking
this more out of just curiosity. I'm not angry. I'm not,
you know, trying to point fingers anybody. But how is
it that someone who is, you know, living under these ramps,
living on the streets has a smartphone to be able
to unlock a bird's and a bird account or Lime
(37:34):
account or whatever. I guess that's that's clever, right, But
it's just an oddball thing. And I've seen a couple
of them that have just been left on the side
of the road so you can get a lime chaser
down there on the freeway. To find a couple that
have been missing for a few months, probably probably worth
a lot of money. Maybe there's a big bounty on this.
I don't know. All right, So I think we're gonna
wrap up for today, but I do want to tell
you that we are on all forms of social media
(37:56):
that you can think of everything under the sun. Really Okay,
well there's maybe three, all right, So we're on Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram. You can find us there. You can always uh,
you know, kind of give us a little bit of
feedback there if you want. We are car stuff hsw
at all three of those, and um, we do have
of course a big archive of material that you can
find on iHeart dot com if you get your podcast there,
(38:18):
or you can go to Apple Podcasts and leave some
feedback at either one of those places. You can find
our extensive archive on iHeart dot com. If you want
to go to Apple Podcasts, I think you're limited to
the most recent three hundred, which still sounds like a lot.
I mean, it's a lot of car stuff to to bear, right,
I mean it's a lot of stomach. Can I say
it that way? It's a lot of stomach, right, yeah, Follo,
would you listen to three episodes. But you know, I enjoying.
(38:40):
I listened back to my own voice. I think, why
would they do that? You know, people don't like their
own voice. That's a common thing, that's universal truth, I think.
All right, So, um, anyways, you can find our archive
there at at i heeart dot com if you want to,
and of course tell your friends because we're always trying
to grow the audience and get more people involved. So
we're really I do appreciate it, and we will catch
(39:01):
you next time. That's all right, see you later. Car
Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
Popular Podcasts
1. Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
2. Stuff You Missed in History Class
Join Holly and Tracy as they bring you the greatest and strangest Stuff You Missed In History Class in this podcast by iHeartRadio.
3. Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.