Just days after Uber Technologies’ venture into the Jump electric scooter sharing program, Bird unveiled its new custom designed Bird Zero. Bird has also announced a new all-day rental package that lets riders own scooters for the whole day.
Bird Zero is designed to meet the demands of Rideshare 2.0 with 60% better battery life, better lighting, and enhanced durability. The company has also included two additional features into the Bird Zero that were missing in the previous Bird scooters – battery indicators and speedometers. These features were, however, found on scooters owned by rival Lime.
There has not been a major upgrade in top speed, which continues to be around 15 miles per hour. Bird executive chief Travis VanderZanden said, given the fact that electric scooters are more environment-friendly, people should start experimenting with it for short trips rather than using cars.
The possibility of e-scooters getting robbed when parked in front of a restaurant or shop had so far played spoilsport for dockless ones. Bird has now solved this issue by launching a new all-day scooter rental service called Bird Delivery. As per this service, Bird Zero scooters are delivered to customers by 8 am for the whole day and they remain incapable of being used by other customers.
Experts believe that the rental service could be priced over $150 with discounts during the first few days.
Bird competes with Lime and Spin in the country. Now that Uber and Lyft have also ventured into the bike-sharing industry, competition is likely to get stiffer. Even as US cities are invaded by bike-sharing players, Bird has ventured into the international markets, setting its footprint first in Paris.
But the bigger rival Lime had already expanded to Europe by 2017-end with around 500 bikes on circulation in Frankfurt and Zurich. In addition, Lime has plans to expand into 25 new markets by the end of this year.