Bolt Mobility Has Vanished, Leaving E-bikes and Unanswered Calls Behind in Several US Cities (techcrunch.com) 45
Bolt Mobility, the Miami-based micromobility startup co-founded by Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, appears to have vanished without a trace from several of its U.S. markets. From a report: In some cases, the departure has been abrupt, leaving cities with abandoned equipment, unanswered calls and emails and lots of questions. Bolt has stopped operating in at least five U.S. cities, including Portland, Oregon, Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski in Vermont and Richmond, California, according to city officials. City representatives also said they were unable to reach anyone at Bolt, including its CEO Ignacio Tzoumas. TechCrunch has made multiple attempts to reach Bolt and those who have backed the company. Emails to Bolt's communications department, several employees and investors went unanswered. Even the customer service line doesn't appear to be staffed. The PR agency that was representing Bolt in March of this year told TechCrunch it is no longer working with the company. Bolt halted its service in Portland on July 1. The company's failure to provide the city with updated insurance and pay some outstanding fees, Portland subsequently suspended Bolt's permit to operate there, according to a city spokesperson.
Sounds like... (Score:1)
collectors item (Score:2)
Garbage collectors and others
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Well, the battery packs in the bikes could be re-purposed. Maybe also the electric motors, but the controllers need to be replaced.
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Fortunately such controllers are dirt cheap - a quick search shows them spanning the range from $15 to $100. Pretty cheap fix for an extremely durable bike.
Bolt-ed with the money (Score:2)
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Since you mentioned it, you might find this an amusing read:
https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
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Why futures when you can do all the cocaine right now
Time to lock the stable door? (Score:2)
the departure has been abrupt
though too late in some places
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Same happened with other bike sharing companies (the term "micro-mobility" is weird). Bikes would be dumped when the ride was over, sometimes in the weeds, off the side of trails, etc. And the companies weren't collecting them, which was weird. These loaner bike systems in the US just all seem to have difficulty getting things to work. Whereas I've seen these in Europe and they just work; put a euro in the slot, pull the bike out from the rack (without gps or other electronics), ride where you want and
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There are working structured bike share systems in the U.S., consider Boston's BlueBikes.* Unstructured sharing (no depots), and no strings attached like Ant Bicycle and Bird bikes and scooters are another matter.
* Interestingly, this is actually a multi-municipality government-lead project that's been running for 15 years https://www.bluebikes.com/about [bluebikes.com]
Can these bikes be scavenged for batteries? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Can these bikes be scavenged for batteries? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can these bikes be scavenged for batteries? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yanking the battery will probably disable the GPS tracker. The order of operations matters, sure (first disassemble and disable, then cart it away), but them's just details.
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Find out who the creditor is, ride then to outside the creditor's place, pull the battery and then watch hilarity ensure when the finance department tris to reconcile the stock.
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An interesting idea, but you can probably just do it outside the local impound lot, that could also lead to some interesting results.
However I suspect that reclaiming all the vessels would require more money/effort than it's worth.
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Right reasoning ; wrong answer.
All that fiddling around on the street is likely to attract attention. Find a large-size conducting-material bag, drop it over the vehicle, then lift the whole lot up into the back of a van. The bag needs to work as a Faraday cage to keep the GPS satellite signals out. If it also uses WiFi network access points to check location, you might need to check they're blocked by the bag too.
Ins
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If you're going to involve a van, then the bag is just an annoying extra. But you might want to re-park before the disassembly step.
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probably - make sure you disable the GPS tracker though. Those bikes are going to end up being owned by some creditor that's going to try to reclaim as much of their money as they can.
But the time they pay any fees for storage i doubt much will be left.
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It's Portland, so they've all been stolen and converted into IVcoin
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How many years have these things been outside already through summer and winter heat cycles?
I am sure these scooter companies only use the finest of components in their construction and totally wouldn't have battery packs that are ready to pop within a few years of outdoor conditions, wildly inconsistent charging cycles and general "rental car" style abuse.
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How many years have these things been outside already through summer and winter heat cycles? I am sure these scooter companies only use the finest of components in their construction and totally wouldn't have battery packs that are ready to pop within a few years of outdoor conditions, wildly inconsistent charging cycles and general "rental car" style abuse.
Not to mention the regularly logged maintenance cycles with follow-up safety checks prior to being released, like you'd expect from your local bike shop. /s
Seriously, I don't understand how anyone can take safety seriously using that sidewalk clutter.
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We had a local bikeshare program go under and they were auctioning off the bikes for $5 each. Made me wonder if it would be possible to make an EV auto battery out of a bank of bike battteries.
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Solvable issues, but non-trivial.
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If there are SIM cards on them maybe you can use them to max out on torrents as well.
county will take ownership will they be able DMCA (Score:2)
county will take ownership will they be able to bypass the DMCA to reuse them if they wanted to?
I know how to fix this (Score:2)
Develop a scooter with a built-in automatic locator beacon and which still works after it has been submerged in water.
Clutter of late-stage capitalism (Score:2)
Good riddance.
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Might have to agree with you. In places, yuppies on those damn rented electric scooters are a fucking menace. I was driving along and had a pack of 5 zoom out in front of me, not even looking.
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....and to think, I used to hate the idiot tourist groups on Segways in the Seattle tourist district. I was a pedestrian on a really narrow sidewalk and just kept walking when a column of ten of those slobbering lazy morons wanted to pass. Fuck them all with a rusty rake. The scooters are far worse. Maybe a monkeypox-laden pitchfork for them.
I think they are relocating to EU. (Score:1)
Re: I think they are relocating to EU. (Score:2)
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Bolt is an Uber-ish, app-based taxi-ish company in Europe. Popular here in Portugal. I don't think it has any relation to the US Bolt.
This idea has not been shown to make money (Score:3)
It always seemed to me like a kinda neat thing that could come in handy in certain areas & situations, but which would also require a huge amount of labor to properly support and would therefore need to be priced accordingly. Of course, this would restrict the size of the market, and we can't have that, now can we? It's always the moon or nothing these days.