Transporting Little Caesars pizza on an electric scooter

I was reading an article about the introduction of a new scooter company into the Detroit market ("A fifth e-scooter brand just landed in Detroit," Detroit Free Press).  

The firm charges $1 base fee per trip, plus 39 cents/minute, which is pretty much what the other firms charge.  I don't know if the locality adds a sales tax per trip, the way DC does for car sharing.

That means a three minute trip costs more than a bus ride, and two ten minute trips per day for one month equal the cost of a bicycle, less if purchased used.\

[added 9/2/2021] I forgot to mention you can do a member subscription for these services, usually.  The member fee of $6/month means you're not charged a per trip fee of $1.

A ten minute trip is still about $4, even without the base charge.

Recreation versus transportation.  I still think most of the uses are recreational, not transportational, based on observation ("What the e-scooter industry hasn't figured out about Santa Monica: It's recreation not transportation").  

Although there is no question a significant number of the rides are transportational.  And some people, like the people in the photo, buy their own.

Nice Ride bicycle share in Minneapolis includes e-scooters.  I did see that electric scooters have been incorporated into the city wide bicycle sharing program in Minneapolis.  Lyft provides the scooters.  Pricing for Nice Ride members is slightly lower per minute, and there is no base charge of $1 per ride.  Nice Ride provides some scooter stations, separately from the bike sharing stations.  

And they come with locks and the user is expected to lock them up, rather than merely discard them in the public space.

It appears that Lyft is a Nice Ride partner, providing e-bikes and e-scooters.  But the standard bike share bike is a flat rate charge, while the e-vehicles have per minute fees.

Bird shows some profitability.  I figure that's the logical route to keep such micromobility devices as part of the transportation mix, since it seems unlikely that the business can ever be lucrative for for profit firms, especially venture capital funded firms seeking big returns ("The Scooter Wars Are Coming to the Stock Market," Wall Street Journal).  From the article:

“My view is that we are going to see more and more discouragement of the car, and not just the internal combustion engine. For short journeys it doesn’t make sense to use vehicles that are so excessive to consumer needs in terms of weight and seats,” says Kristina Church, head of sustainable solutions at Lombard Odier Investment Managers. 

The problem of broken scooters littering cities has muddied the green pitch, but micromobility companies are fixing this with proprietary ruggedized designs. Bird began by buying off-the-shelf scooters that only ended up lasting three to four months under the strain of the streets. Now a life of between 18 and 24 months is typical, says Chief Executive Travis VanderZanden. 

The financial case for buying the stocks also depends in part on vehicle lifespans. Profit growth will be a function of both increasing rider numbers and reducing operating expenses, including hefty depreciation charges. The longer scooters last, the lower the costs.

I just don't see it as being a particularly profitable business, even though improvements in the vehicl and battery make profit more likely.

Metropolitan transportation associations.  The integration of for profit and public mobility options in transit systems is discussed here ("The answer is: Create a single multi-state/regional multi-modal transit planning, management, and operations authority association" and "Another example of the need to reconfigure transpo planning and operations at the metropolitan scale: Boston is seizing dockless bike share bikes, which compete with their dock-based system").