I have done some pencil math about the unit economics of these scooters a few times but I have to guess at usage rates, attrition, permit fees, and labor costs. I want to write out my reasoning here so I can share my thinking.

I assume the cost of a scooter when factoring in shipping is around $300, but you have to add the cost of modifications (GPS, stickers, software) and shipping to the final destination so lets call it $400 because that's round but probably a little low. How long does it take to earn back that $400?

The ride-rate is about 5 times a day with lets say a $2.50 price tag on average https://qz.com/1325064/scooters-might-actually-have-good-uni...

There are costs to keeping the scooters active. Bird pays $5 a scooter minimum to charge them every night and I would estimate another $2 per scooter per day in permit fees based on Bird offering $1 a day.

That's (5 rides/day * $2.50/ride - $7/day) * x days = $400 or about a 73 days for a scooter to earn back it's cost. Anything on top of that pays overhead. 1% attrition per-day (a guess) would mean a 100 day life-span, so $150 profit on a $400 investment in under 3 months.

My model starts to indicate they'd lose money when the ride-rate drops, daily labor costs rise, or the attrition rises, but I basically guessed at all of those.

You can play with the variables but it is easy to see how the scooters can make money, or how they can fail.

I also think if the scooters really catch on, people will buy them like bikes and put pressure on the price of rides.