They make a profit so called by blowing through venture capital. Just like Uber which has never made a profit and run through multiple billions.
Their business model DOES NOT MAKE A PROFIT and I can’t see that it ever will.
Darty little scooters in a dense urban environment? It’s insane. Libertarians may advocate a free for all but they are creating accidents and I see parents with kids running around in the crazy traffic. It is not ok.
Math isn’t the strong point of your argument.
1) The scooters are about 6-700 a pop.
2) To activate the scooter, it’s $1.15.
3) Additional $0.15/minute.
The scooters are everywhere here in Charlotte, and easily paid themselves off by now.
If you have 10 riders a day, and each one goes 5 minutes, that’s $11.15 to activate and $5.75 for time. That’s a total of $16.85/day on average they make. (Some are more, some are less).
After 40 business days (8 weeks), you’ve made $674. In other words, by week 9, you’re profitable.
If you have 500 of them, you’re making $67,400/week. If you have employee costs of $12,000/week, you’re still making an over $55,000 profit per week. That’s over 2.8 million a year. And that’s one city. When you have it to 200 cities, you’re looking at $572 million a year profit.
I’d say the business model is VERY high. Their marketing consists of literally driving them out to locations and placing them around a city and they have to pay a programmer somewhere nationally (or 3 or 4) to write a web site. Their labor and expenses is VERY low.