I think the advantage of rental is the ability to drop off or pick up anywhere -- you can ride a scooter to the office, walk or bus to a restaurant after work, then rent a different scooter home. Or you might take a scooter from work to the restaurant, and you don't need to worry about parking the rental scooter securely or carrying it around with you.

But that only works if scooters are ubiquitous enough that you can find one when you want one.

This model works with cars (e.g. ZipCar) but with scooters I don't see how this is possible, unless the entire city is quite literally littered with scooters.

If I have to walk 5-10 min to the nearest car which I can unlock from my phone and then use to drive 5 miles somewhere then it's great, but if I have to walk 5-10 minutes to the nearest scooter pickup so I can scooter somewhere for 5-10 minutes then it sort of defeats the whole point.

If you have to walk 3 blocks for a scooter, then they really aren't "ubiquitous", I'm not a scooter user, but they seem to litter the sidewalks around here, so it's usually only a 1 or 2 minute walk.

As you said, if it's much longer than that, then there's no point -- I don't think I'd want to ride a scooter more than a mile or so anyway, so if it takes me 10 minutes to find one, I may as well just walk the whole way.

Even in LA which has a huge number of scooters, there's been times where I've scooted someplace then when I turn around to leave someone unlocked it.

If it's getting later in the day most of the scooters you find are going to be scattered in all sorts of very strange areas, many times in gated apartments, and/or with not enough charge to get you home. Or maybe you have to settle for that scooter with the screen dangling out of it by the wires and the handlebars at 45* relative to the wheel that everyone else was just not desperate enough to use.

> unless the entire city is quite literally littered with scooters.

This is certainly true for the hire bikes in London (scooters don't seem to have gotten permission for many areas yet).

The thing is, there's no reason why my wife can't take the scooter with her, into the office. It's not like she's riding a moped, or even a bicycle!

The ones you can buy actually fold down in half and are barely bigger than a yogamat. Very practical for office and subway.

Even with that napkin math, the value to not have to own the asset, insure it against theft, or carry it around constantly is still worth it to some consumers. The spontaneity of "hop on and ride, then forget about it" is the appeal.

You’re right about that value add, but it’s probably not a value add for anyone using an electric scooter as a daily means of transportation.

One of the biggest detractors is that you could ride a scooter to work and when you go to leave, realize the nearest scooter is half a mile away.

Then in that hypothetical you just pay a little more for an uber/lyft. That's the benefit of not being locked into an asset.

This. A friend of mine bought one but still rides some from times to times when its practical. He also owns a car but still rides uber from times to times.