Bird, an electric scooter ride sharing company recently announced the expansion of scooter sharing service in San Francisco, San Jose and Washington DC.
The dock less electric scooter company based in California raised fund of $ 100M, on March 13, from Craft Ventures and 5 other investors. This funding enabled the company to explore new territories for business. Earlier the service was available at Los Angeles, San Diego and Santa Monica, Calif. The company said that it has broader plans for future and wants to enter into 50 markets in 2018 to grow the business.
As Bird is California based startup, Travis VanderZanden, Chief Executive of company, said that “Californians hate sitting in traffic and care passionately about the environment”. While talking about past experiences and future plans, he said, “Operating these past months in Southern California, we have helped thousands of people avoid the traffic and carbon emissions that come from driving a car. We are thrilled to expand north and help the people of northern California take those last-mile trips without a car, and we are thrilled to take Birds to our nation’s capital.”
Along with expansion the company pledged for “Save Our Sidewalks”. It announced the initiative through tweet. “As Bird expands to San Francisco, San Jose, and Washington, DC this week, we’re issuing a ‘Save our Sidewalks’ pledge with three pillars: daily pickup, responsible growth, and revenue sharing”, the company tweeted. As part of “Save Our Sidewalks” commitment, Bird is offering to remit $1 daily for each of its scooters. Company said that it will give $1 per vehicle per day to the cities where it operates. Bird prices its rides at $1 to rent the scooter and 15 cents per minute traveled.
The Bird is encouraging other scooter sharing services like Spin, Mobike, Limebike and Ofo to join the initiative. The commitments include the collection of vehicles every night and repositioning them to meet morning demands of customers. The company needs to provide regular maintenance.
