Bird wants you riding its e-scooters all day

Instead of searching for an electric scooter wherever you may be when the urge to scoot hits, Bird wants you to already have a scooter with you. All. Day. Long.

It may seem like the inverse purpose of a scooter-share program, but e-scooter company Bird revealed its new strategy on Thursday with its new Bird Delivery option.

Once it rolls out to U.S. cities in the coming weeks, you can order a Bird scooter that is delivered to your chosen location by 8 a.m. As of now, there’s only an online waitlist to sign up for the service.

You then have access to that scooter all day — just you and the Bird. No one else can ride it. It’s yours. No more scrounging on the app to find one nearby.

If it seems like you should just buy your own scooter at this point, I’m with you. But renting does come with its benefits: Bird will maintain and charge the scooter and you don’t have to store the scooter overnight.

As Lyft and Uber’s Jump have started to introduce e-scooters on the street in some cities, the all-day option seems like an attempt to keep riders loyal to Bird and prevent users from jumping from one scooter company to the other.

Pricing will be announced soon, but a Bird spokesperson couldn’t say when exactly. A regular bird costs $1 to unlock and 15 cents per minute, so who knows how an all-day rental will be priced.

Along with the new rental option, Bird unveiled its new custom-designed scooter, Bird Zero.

Made with Chinese scooter company Okai, the new scooter moves away from the lighter, sleeker frame of Bird’s previous scooter, the modified Xiaomi Mi, and Segway models. 

Instead the Zero is more rugged, with wider, bulkier tires and a wider riding deck to make for a more stable ride to combat all those potholes since you most certainly are not riding on the sidewalk, right??? This model looks a lot more like a Lime e-scooter, but it’s still distinctly branded as a Bird and the tech on the handlebars is sleeker than that of the older versions.

The battery also lasts 60 percent longer, Bird says.

The Rideshare Guy blog tested out the new Bird and noted it’s much heavier than earlier models, but feels more secure and safer to ride. The blog is calling it “The Tank” because it’s so much bigger than other Birds.

For the community-based charging network the heavier, bulkier Birds will make charging more painful due to all that loading and unloading. It’ll also take longer to charge due to bigger batteries.