Bird, one of the largest e-rental companiesscooter, now offers a monthly rent of 25 euros.
If you use an app on your mobile phone to locate a nearby e-scooter (or an electric scooter) to rent, the Bird now offers monthly rent for a flat rate of €25. The company is available to deliver the scooter to your door and will pick it up when you are done.
The problem is that Bird does not work so far in Greece and that the monthly rent only works in San Francisco and Barcelona. The new monthly rental service starts only in these two cities, and although everything goes well, the company expects to extend the package to other later. Given that Bird has already announced its expansion to 50 European Cities for this spring, without having yet to name what they will be.
Currently, going to San Francisco or Barcelona, users can open the Bird app and enter information such as where and when they would like their Bird e-scooter delivered (home, work, elsewhere). After completing your order, a Bird representative will confirm the details and arrange for the delivery of a Bird electric scooter, its charger and a lock. When the rental period ends, the company will come to your home to pick up the vehicle, charger and lock.
The price sounds particularly advantageous since current prices are global from all companies, 1 Euros for unlocking and 0,10-0,40 cents per minute. Greece charges 0,15 cents per minute, which means that for half an hour you will be charged 1 euro + 0,15 X 30 minutes = 5,50 euro as a whole.
But this is not a special offer. The San Francisco made a law which prohibit all e-scooter companies (except two, Scoot and Skip) from leaving e-scooters on sidewalks without first seeking permission from the city. Actually it is one control of the unlimited number of e-scooters available for rent, scattered in the center of the cities. This policy came into effect in August 2018, and was believed to target Bird and Lime (Lime operates in Greece). Bird, with its door-to-door delivery system, avoids the hassle of getting a city permit to operate a scooter-sharing service on payment.
