Let’s Talk About All Those Electric Scooters
Little vehicles are changing the landscape of urban transit as cities struggle with how to regulate the fast-moving technology.
Moving.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
In less than a year, a group of fast-growing electric scooter and electric bicycle companies have stocked U.S. city streets with lightweight, dockless, connected vehicles. To some, they’re a tech bro nuisance and yet another manifestation of Silicon Valley overreach; to others, a brand-new method of urban transit for the first, last or only miles of daily travel. Bloomberg Opinion’s Virginia Postrel and Nathaniel Bullard corresponded via email on the electric scooter craze; this is a lightly edited version of that conversation.
NB: Since you’re in Los Angeles: Given that the scooter business in the U.S. kicked off in Santa Monica, and that the city recently passed a pretty forward-looking pilot program, is there something uniquely SoCal about scooters? As opposed to, say, uniquely San Francisco (where Uber began)?