Not really, it'd remove them from the company that bought the newer ones. I suspect liability really is a concern, particularly for scooters full of lithium ion batteries and being charged by Joe Experimenter at home.

All it takes is one person who does something stupid and burns down their house with a used scooter to negate any benefit from selling them. Not because that person would automatically win, but because Uber would have to defend.

Weren't the scooter companies paying random people who signed up to go charge the scooters themselves at their homes? Surely that's far higher liability.

Plus, if this was a concern how on earth is the used car market able to survive? I just don't think liability factors in here at all. My guess is that scrapping them is easier and nets about the same amount of money as selling them. Selling that many scooters off piecemeal would take quite a bit of time & effort, plus costs to store them in the meanwhile.

Scooters yes, e-bikes no. The e-bikes have much bigger batteries. More energy = bigger boom. They also probably only had a fraction of chargers compared to the number of bikes, and sourcing more would probably take a lot of extra time and expense. It would have been better if they could find another bikeshare operator to sell to, but I can understand why they didn't sell to consumers.