April 22, 2018
Discombobulated Cities Wrestle With an Electric Scooter Influx 0
The line to speak wrapped around half the chamber, constantly replenishing itself, an inching microcosm of a constrained, complicated city. There were tech startup reps, disability advocates in motorized wheelchairs, a martial arts instructor making extra money through the gig economy, and plenty of concerned citizens.
“I think that these scooters run amok are actually a plot of the young people to kill off all us old farts so they can have our rent-controlled apartments,” community member Fran Taylor told the Board of Supervisors.
Maybe connecting ungainly electric scooters to a dastardly plot—even in jest, and to laughs—seems like nonsense. Or maybe you live in San Francisco, where a weekly meeting of the Board of Supervisors’ Land Use and Transportation Committee brought the disgruntled masses to City Hall on a Monday afternoon. The legislative body met to discuss a bill to give the city the authority to remove shared scooters without permits or parked in the public right-of-way, and penalize the companies that own them.
But the hearing felt like it was about something much bigger. These scooters are just the latest outgrowth of a growing conflict between cities and startups that have rushed to capitalize on a growing mobility marketplace. It started with Uber and Lyft. Then came the “microtransit” companies, like Chariot and Via. Then dockless, shared bikes from Jump, Ofo, Bluegogo, and Mobike. And now, it’s motorized scooters challenging the regulators who must determine how private companies can use their streets, and how they should go about it.
“I really want to send a message not only to these scooters,” said Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who co-wrote the bill in question. “It would be very nice if the tech bros could come in and ask in a collaborative fashion for permission rather than after the fact forgiveness.”
Some background: In mid-March, three electric scooter-share companies launched San Francisco services into a bit of a municipal legal loophole. By law, Bird, LimeBike, and Spin do not need business licenses to operate this kind of service, even though their battery-powered scooters can hit 15 mph and are stored on the sidewalk. That's the public, shared space where people on foot and in wheelchairs usually travel.
On Monday, supervisors were especially frustrated that they did not receive more notice from the companies before they began operations in the city. Supervisor Jane Kim, who wrote the bill with Peskin, said Spin had used deceptive language to wrongly make it appear that she had given them permission to launch. Peskin complained that Bird had sent a misleading news alert to the media, saying the city had activated an emergency procedure to ban e-scooters usually only used for earthquakes.
The committee unanimously passed the bill, and the full board passed the legislation today. Meanwhile, the city’s transportation agency is working to finalize a permitting process for e-scooters by late spring.
The scooters have generated frustration beyond San Francisco. In San Diego, Austin, and Washington, DC, coalitions of neighborhood, senior, disability, and pedestrian groups have pushed back against the quick introduction of scooter shares in their midst. They say the e-scooters, which users often ride on the sidewalk, block critical access to curb space and could be dangerous tripping hazards. City governments, finally ready to encourage non-car modes of transit, are caught in the middle. They say they hope to want affordable, environmentally-friendly travel choices that doesn’t aggravate growing traffic problems—and keep their streets safe and comfortable for everyone.
In San Francisco, the solution has been mostly the stick. While Monday’s hearing unfolded in City Hall, the City Attorney’s office dispatched a sheaf of cease and desist letters, telling the three scooter companies that they had broken California law by allowing customers to ride their motorized scooters on the sidewalks and without helmets, and by obstructing sidewalks without permission.
In statements, representatives for Bird, Spin, and LimeBike said they would continue to engage with public officials, but did not commit to halting service. Bird and LimeBike also said San Francisco users would now have to take and upload photos of their parked vehicles after riding, to ensure they are out of the way.1 The City Attorney’s office gave the companies until April 30 to rejigger their operations and explain how they no longer violate the law.
The city of Santa Monica, California, too, took a hard line, charging Bird for failing to procure the proper business license. The company eventually paid $300,000 in fines.
Others have been a bit more flexible. After initially impounding the e-scoots, Austin’s transportation chief has now proposed a fast-tracked permitting process for the companies, with a hard cap for the number of vehicles in operation and bonuses for those in areas underserved by transit. DC’s e-scooters fall under its broader dockless pilot program, which has allowed a number of companies to operate services in the city while authorities determine what sort of rules they should have to follow.
If the whole situation seems vaguely familiar, it’s because Uber’s “launch first, ask questions later” approach to municipal regulations left a foul taste in local politicians’ mouths. And after a year of the company’s spectacular, highly public conflagration, it feels more politically viable to oppose tech companies that even vaguely imitate the ride-hail company's strategies.
So in the midst of an opening statement calling the e-scooter share companies’ tactics “offensive and arrogant,” Peskin paused to do some hating.
“We’re told somehow that Uber is a public transit alternative that has decongested our streets even as we have hard data prepared by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority that shows at peak in some parts of the city they are adding 26 percent of the congestion,” Peskin said. (The study, which used scraped Uber and Lyft data, estimates that transportation network companies are responsible for 20 to 26 percent of trips in the city’s downtown and South of Market neighborhood during rush hours.)
No surprise that the e-scooter folks are out to prove they are the anti-Uber. During the hearing, residents of the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood, one of the most underserved by transit in the city, pointed out that LimeBike had engaged local community groups and hired locals. Bird “chargers,” who make $5 for each scooter they charge and then put back on the street, said the extra income helps in one of America’s most most expensive cities.
And on the other side, a mostly gray-haired group spoke of the challenges of getting around a place often not built for walking, or easy wheelchair access. The question, then, remains: Can San Franciscans—and urbanites everywhere—share not just their cars and bikes and scooters, but their space?
1 Updated 4/17/18, 9:25 PM EDT: This story has been updated to include comments from a LimeBike spokesperson.
More Mobility Skirmishes
- As shared scooters invade, cities decide who goes where.
- The bike-share wars heat up as companies raise new funding.
- LA looks to ride-share to build the future of public transit.
Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/discombobulated-cities-electric-scooters/
May 1, 2018
Mercedes’ Electric Maybach SUV Comes With a Built-In Tea Kettle 0
by MeDaryl • Cars • Tags: Electric Vehicles, Luxury cars, Mercedes-Benz, SUVs, transportation
The future of the auto industry is China. It’s the world’s largest auto market, it’s growing quickly, and its emissions regulations—among the strictest on the planet—are even pushing the world’s automakers to abandon the internal combustion engine. Chinese customer preferences have also led designers to increase rear seat legroom and offer in-car perfume systems. And now, China has gifted the world an electric Maybach SUV.
At the Auto China 2018 car show in Beijing today, Mercedes-Benz showed off the Vision Mercedes-Maybach Ultimate Luxury, a vehicle so stuffed with goodies you might even decide to overlook the questionable exterior design. Mercedes, which owns the Maybach brand, says the crossover is inspired by both a sedan and an SUV. But that tension is not necessarily a good thing: The car starts with an overly long hood (despite the absence of an engine to put in it), and the rear two thirds look as if they have been contracted and converted into some extra height. More pleasing exterior details include turbine-style, 24-inch wheels, and door handles that lie flush against the body, and pop out when in use, like the ones on a Tesla.
The four electric motors (one for each wheel) combine to produce a gargantuan 750 horsepower, enough to hustle this behemoth of a car up to 155 mph. The range from the 80-kwh battery pack is a less impressive 200 miles. By comparison, the Tesla Model X with a 100-hwk pack, which starts at $96,000, goes nearly 300 miles between charges. Startup SF Motors promises 300 from its forthcoming SUV. You can expect 200 miles from Jaguar’s I-Pace.
Whatever, your chauffeur can figure out where and when to charge the thing. You should be focused on the interior. Maybach, you see, stupendous luxury doesn’t cut it around these parts. The Maybach name intimates something greater: opulence. To complement all the fine woods and half a feedlot’s worth of the finest white nappa leather, the backs of all four seats are coated in ultra shiny, rose gold-colored aluminum. The seats offer massages too, of course, and in the back, come with calf supports.
The driver gets a pair of 12.3-inch screens, and the fancier folk riding in back get a tea set. Yes, the Vision Mercedes-Maybach Ultimate Luxury comes with a built in, heated ebony tray that holds a teapot and cups. Per the press release, this setup allows “exquisite tea-drinking enjoyment.” (Note to butler: Enough Lipton’s, please start buying exquisite tea.) Just hope the ride quality is smooth enough to keep you from staining anything.
The car is just a concept for now, but expect Mercedes to follow up with a production version of the car in the next few years; the Maybach as shown wouldn’t require any major changes to make it meet regulations. The exploding market for SUVs and regulators’ insistence that automakers selling cars in China ramp up their electric offerings makes this luxo-barge nearly ready to set sail. As long as you’re ready to pay for it.
Related Video
Fancy New Suspension Could Make Car Rides a Lot Smoother
It works sort of like noise-cancelling headphones, eliminating bumps with movement in the opposite direction.
Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/mercedes-maybach-suv-concept-photos/