Bird has been aggressively trying to expand its share in electric scooter market over the last few months.
The dockless electric scooter sharing company Bird has reportedly announced that it has launched its new scooter, named Bird One, for shared-use cases and ownership. The company will also discard the Ninebot ES and rely on its M365 model for monthly personal rentals.
Reportedly, Bird One is equipped with a battery designed to last more than 4x longer in the shared space, last twice as long and cover a longer range.
Travis VanderZanden, CEO, Bird, reportedly stated that the company has developed Bird One on the learnings and benefits of Bird Zero and is predicted to last for well over a year in the sharing environment. The company is supplying a limited number of Bird Ones available to own, given the demand and excitement for next-gen e-scooter, he further added.
Apparently, the cost of Bird One will be $1,299 and it will be available in three colors. People can place a pre-order for the scooter now and can get it this summer. The announcement by Bird comes ahead of anticipated electric scooter launch of Boosted on May 15.
Bird has been aggressively trying to expand its share in electric scooter market over the last few months. The company had introduced monthly personal rentals in Barcelona and San Francisco. The program allows customers to rent a scooter for $24.99 a month with no number of rides capped.
Scooter-sharing in Barcelona and San Francisco is highly regulated, so delivery program of Bird is a very safe way to not be hindered by regulation. However, the bigger barrier for Bird may be the number of people deciding to simply buy their own scooters.
No matter how often people want to use the electric scooters, Bird is significantly trying to be the go-to provider of scooters, whether it is monthly rentals, traditional shared model or selling direct to consumer.
Source credit: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/08/bird-is-now-selling-its-electric-scooters-directly-to-consumers/