The Vergecast - The electric scooter revolution with Lime co-founder Brad Bao

Episode Date: April 16, 2019

Lime co-founder Brad Bao explains how the electric scooter revolution will evolve. The Verge's Nilay Patel and Andrew Hawkins discuss the seemingly overnight emergence of electric scooters in cities across the country. They explore the tension scooters can create and ponder the future of urban mobility. Vote for Vergecast in the Webby's! as well as The Verge's Why'd You Push That Button? and our wonderful YouTube channel Verge Science Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hey everybody, it's Neil I from the Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, Verge Senior Transportation Reporter, Andrew Hawkins and I sat down with Lyme, co-founder, and executive chairman Brad Bow.

You probably know Lyme. They're one of the big scooter companies that are taking over our cities with the little electric scooters. They're super fun to ride. I love them. We talked to Brad about why scooters, why they appeared so suddenly,

where they came from, how he's managing fleets of expensive hardware. in cities around the world. What's next for safety? What's next for the company? And importantly, when they're coming to New York. That's on the Vergecast interview episode. Check it out.

Okay, we're here with Brad Bow, who's the co-founder and executive chairman of Lyme. Welcome, Brad. Thank you. And great to be here. Very excited to talk about the future of urban mobilities. Yes, I'm very excited to ask you many questions about scooters because I love them. I love them unashamedly. And New York doesn't have them yet.

every time I go to a city with them. We're talking to them now, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So real quick, I just want to start at the very beginning. You were an investor at Tencent. You were in China. That's your background. And you came here and you started a scooter company.

Just walk me through the process of starting Lyme. Like, why scooters, why go from investor to being an entrepreneur, all of that? Give me the journey. Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, that the way I see myself is that I've been the entrepreneur all the time. So before Lyme, that I co-founded a venture capital fund as well. You know, different forms still a startup. And at Tencent that, I came over here to the Silicon Valley in 2003.

And I was the first and only employee for Tencent outside of China. So to me, it's a startup as well, backed by a big company that I started. And that gave me a lot of thoughts on what technology can do, right? I firmly believe that technology can be leveraged to improve our life, real life. not just a virtual in the cloud, but the real life we live in every day. And therefore, that it reflected in Lyme as well, that everything we do has a positive impact in the real life that we live and also has a opportunity that we can create for a user to connect better with each other, better with the neighborhoods, and better with the city they live in.

Every day we got stuck in the traffic. The congestion is getting worse. The pollution is getting worse. And there's no solution for it. For us as the user, there's not even an alternative. You either end up running or you end up like in Uber and stuck in the traffic. And that really triggers our passion about how we combine technology and provide a very affordable and accessible solution for the urban, you know, transportation. You know, in the U.S. is strikingly that in urban environment, that more than 50% of the traffic is less than 2 to 3 miles.

and 70% of the U.S. traffic is single occupancy. And you add up that together, right? There's no reason we have to travel a mile or two in a 4,000-pound car and produce the, you know, the pollutions and the congestions. And I really like one of the saying is that you're not in the traffic. You are the traffic. Yeah.

So the question here is that how do we change that, right? we can, you know, complain about traffic on a daily basis and still live our life the old way, or we can proactively change it. And that's how we started live. So you were saying right before we started that you actually started as Lyme Bike, and your first products were bicycles. Tell me about the shift to scooters. When did you see that scooters were actually more compelling, more interesting? It seems like there weren't any scooter companies, and now there are lots of them. How did you make that shift?

I want categorized as a shift, but rather a journey of exploring what is the best for the users. So we started a company as Lyme, not Lyme Bikes, but, you know, initially where we, the initial product we had was bikes, right? So we put a Lyme onto, you know, app stores and in the search, and it's just not search-friendly, that we show up like ranking 30,000 or 130,000. And we want to make it clear to the user, therefore, that we change it to Lyme Bike for, for the user, you know, discoveries. And then later on, that we launched the e-bikes and we launched the scooters. We're testing the EVs and many other more mode of modalities. And therefore, that the alarm bike doesn't apply anymore.

So we reverted into line. And that, yeah, that's how we came about. But when did you decide that you were going to do scooter? Because you're known for scooters. Was there a meeting where you all had a whiteboard? Someone said, I found this scooter. Or was it a more rigorous sort of discovery? It's a combination of both.

So before we start a company, I have a kind of like a pyramid of product, so product metrics. And the product matrix says this, the shorter the distance and the lower the price that should potentially have the broader user case, and which in that case is many pedal bike, and the longer the distance, which, you know, let's say a mile or two with power assistant and all that, little bit higher price. It will be e-bikes and potentially scooters. And longer than that, you know, somewhere between two to five miles, which covers mostly, most of the cities, it should be an electric vehicle. And that's still more affordable and eco-friendly. But the other side of that is really when we hear from the users that they feel they're not only just more free and also saves their more time, but also more importantly is that, you know, user tells us that

They're Superman. They feel they're empowered. But for Lyme, it's not about bikes or scooters or EVs. It's about how we concentrate on the product and the user need and developer services that really serve them better. Hey, Brian. This is Andrew. Hey, Andrew.

About specifically, when did you realize that you had a revolutionary product here? Because I don't think anyone initially thought that the scooters were going to catch on the way that they did. But then eventually it was very clear that this was going to be something that was really going to sort of take over cities in a way that hadn't really been done since perhaps Uber and Lyft came around. And so what was what was the point that you realized that this was more than just maybe a fun recreational way for people to get around, but was actually starting to have an impact on the way that people were sort of using transportation as a whole in cities? Was there like a specific point that you looked at this and said, oh, my gosh, this is

really a lot crazier than we thought it was going to be? Yeah, there's a series of moments that further enhance that and help us to, you know, understand that. But I would refer to a few moments. One is, initially, we have a really small fleet to test out of market. We only have like 20-ish, right, for the first batch on the first day that we increase. We increased. dramatically very quickly. But, you know, when we go into the street to deploy the vehicles, it's not similar to other services. You put on the street and you watch when the user walk up to it and wandering and picked up, right? We see users lined up and the scooter never touched ground. They literally just hand over to the users. So that popularity gave us a strong

hint that how, you know, welcomed the service could be. And the second part that to me personally is really the broader user base. We are committed to provide a service not just to a niche group, but rather a common transportation means for everyone. So the moment we saw that, you know, our female riders that start to pick up way more than a average like bike, you know, commuter in terms of female. And the, um, more senior citizens jumped up or, you know, like college kids jumped on the scooters. And that's the moment we realized it's beyond. It's just, hey, this is a niche market.

Some subgroup likes it and is a fat. Well, how do you differentiate from the other scooter companies? Because you're all using kind of the same four or five designs, mostly from Xiaomi, I think. And, you know, I think the lines are better because they have speedometers. But the product, I mean, the experience of riding a scooter, is fundamentally the same. How do you differentiate against a bird or whatever Uber's doing or the many other companies that exist? Yeah.

First, I need to clarify one thing that we're probably the only company that do vertical integration, meaning that we're entirely, similar to Apple, we tightly integrated with the suppliers with the design houses as well as manufacturers as well. So we have a dedicated team that which I built starting day one, roughly about 80 people right now, in China dedicated to the scooter designs, testings, manufacturers, as well as firmware development and quality controls. And what that gave us is we're actually probably one of the only that does not use Xiaomi or Naibah scooters.

All the scooters you see on the street today are designed by us and also manufactured by our exclusive manufacturing partners. So it's a little bit confusing, but if you look at our scooters, there's nothing like any others. And we don't use Xiaomi or 911 at all. Let me push you on that a little bit. So that obviously increases your cost, right?

I mean, if you're paying to develop the scooter, you're not taking the commodity one and rebranding it. Your cost per scooter has to be higher than your competitors. What is the return on that investment? Do you see people say, well, I like these scooters so much better? Are you measuring it? Are you thinking about it? Yeah, I said the few things that I wanted to share here.

That the philosophy of the company is that what we should focus on, right? We should focus on. And we made a determination that will focus on user safetys and user experience. And that's what we should focus on. And everything that we invested in there that will be, you know, making us a better company. And the second part is that in terms of the scooters, the scooter is a relatively short and new industry. So there's nothing called a heavy-duty scooter or shared scooters. There's no such a product is suitable for share at all.

And we have to create it by our own. And therefore, we went on the journey to work our own designs, do the iterations, and came up with new generations after new generations. And in this particular point, it's very interesting. I think, you know, a personal scooter that, like Xiaomi or Ninebaugh, which everyone else is using, that they're designed for personal use. They're not designed for longevity. They're not designed for abuse. They're not designed to be sit on the street 24-7. They're not designed to withhold the, you know, heavy kind of transport teams,

or sharing. And those things will gradually contribute to the two things we care the most. One is safety concerns. The other is the user experience. I don't have the number of our, you know, peer competitors, but my guess is that our cost is actually lower than them. And our longevity of the scooter life is X time longer. And that's just based on public available data. So you're saying you spend the money up front on engineering, your cost per scooter is higher, but they actually last longer and they have a better user experience. That's the bet. Actually, I think our cost is even lower.

Really? That's right. Yeah, if you think about Apple compare some other manufacturers, by retail is always the most expensive option you will have. How long are the scooters lasting right now on average? We don't disclose the details yet. We're still walking on that. Let me ask you this then.

I'll rephrase. I spoke with the same. CEO of Byrd, Travis Van der Zanen, recently, and he told me that they've determined that their scooters need to last on average around six months in order to break even. Would you say it's similar, less so, more so? How would you compare? I think that you are touching upon two questions. I will address them separately. The first thing is that we already have quite a few cities that profitable. So that gives you a hint that, you know, in terms of longevity of the scooter as well as our business model, that is not, we determine what we want to, right? We have. And the

second part, we are looking at some of our scooter fleet, which we have iterations after iterations that already achieved that. Six months? The later version will be even better. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Brad Bow from Lyme. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard. It can be really scary, too. So much work goes into this thing that you're not entirely sure will even work. But here's a better thought.

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We're back with Brad Bow from Lyme. Just going back to what you said about safety, I had a question and how Lyme approaches the safety issue, because obviously it is a concern. I don't think that there's really an easy solution to how you, sort of guarantee safety for a product that is supposed to be about convenience and availability. And obviously, the prices is attracting people based on how low it costs to use. So I'm wondering how your company is approaching the issue of safety.

And if there's any sort of innovative ways of looking at how you can sort of promote safety in a way that encourages people to use helmets, while also not sort of, you know, making it a less convenient service to use. It just seems like if the idea is to spread scooters everywhere so that people can just pick them up and use them when it's the most convenient and sort of on a whim, it's going to be really difficult to sort of have a safety issue go along with that. And I'm just wondering sort of how you sort of approaching this challenge. Yeah. Is it the, you're asking really, really great question. The safety is the number one thing for us as a company.

and I think that when it comes to mobility, that safety is the baseline. Without that, without that, nothing matters. And that's why that we focus so much on it. And also in the mobility space, I think the safety is a result of a combination of different things. And in this case, that we are not only doing our part, but also working very, you know, proactively

and aggressively with authorities, with cities, with, you know, urban planners, and also with community as well. I'll give you a few examples how we approach that. First of all, that when it comes to mobility, that no one can guarantee the safety, but it's a combination of things we can further improve it and make it much safer than any other means of transportation.

And that's what we're aiming for. On the hardware side, that's the reason that we, you know, build a very extensive team and working on the customized hardware and further improve on the hardware and also our own operation side. On the other hand, that we launched a, you know, respect the right campaign. We devoted over $3 million for the marketing outreach and education side,

and we gave away more than 250,000 helmets to help on improving the safety. And the other part, I think the interesting thing is that when we look at data really helps, when we look at some of the data that the safety concern and quite a bit of that also is a result from infrastructures that we are sharing, proactively sharing the data with the city. It helped them to do better place where that bike lane should be, right? How wide it will be.

And we can share them with the data that we have seen very positive change in many cities that we're working with. You know, Paris, Austin, Seattle, Portland, you name it. There are many cities has been leveraged the data we shared and started putting and improving infrastructures. And the other few things that I wanted to, you know, share here that on the technology side, with a service, a connected

service like ours, that there's so much more we can do. You know, working on drunk driving detections that we can just slow down the vehicle where we detect that irregular, you know, driving. Are you not like kind of a breathalizer? No, I think there are better ways to do it. Take one thing, for example, right? Our scooters have all kinds of sensors. One of the sensors could detect whether it's driving in a straight line

or whether it's like making irregular, you know, wobbling in terms. So you can tell if someone's impaired, if they're wobbling and you'll slow them down. That's right. We'll do the warning. We can slow the down. We're still working on it, not fully launch, but that's an example of many things that were improving right now. On the issue of data, I'm glad that you brought that up,

because as I'm sure you know that there's this issue going on right now in the city of Los Angeles where they're fighting a couple of the scooter companies on access to more data from based on location sharing and this concept around the mobility data specification. And I'm wondering, has Lyme weighted in on this at all? Because it's just for the uninitiated, it's about basically providing data to cities about where the scooters are being unlocked and then where they're being locked again. So it's about the pickup point and the drop-off point. And there are privacy people who have concerns that that's giving cities too much data about users. And so I'm wondering where Lyme comes down on protecting the privacy of your users while also providing enough data to the city so that they can make these determinations about bike lanes and things like that.

Yeah, totally. The data and privacy is another very key thing for us as a company. That's the responsibility we have for the users as well as for the cities and community as well. that, you know, we definitely weighed in and also working together with the city of LA on the data standards. I think there's always a balance we have to strike, right? The demand for the city side and the protection of the users. And what we think makes the most sense is that how we're going to utilize the data and what matters and what does not. In this case, for the urban planners and which we do share data with the city, that for urban

planning for monitoring the traffic that I think is very valuable that we share the data with the city and help them to further improve the urban transportation. In this case, that it's not one company or the city alone that can do this. It's a combination of things and a collaboration among us. We should share where the traffic patterns are and when and where that most of the trips happens, but we don't need to, and the city does not need to. to know who is the individual took those trips. So aggregate data that does help on urban planning side and help to fight the traffic

congestion, but that does not necessarily reveal the user, you know, privacy or identities. Well, that can be a little bit hazy, though, right? Because it's been shown that even with aggregated data, you can sort of pick out points and sort of still track certain people based on the number of, you know, times that they use a specific route, especially if they're, you know, picking up a scooter. that's right outside their home, for instance. How can you sort of guarantee that your user's privacy is being protected here?

On that particular front, this industry is relatively new. We and also city alike that we're exploring what's the best options, and we will take all that into considerations. And the second part, this is not that unique. Our cell phones knows exactly where we are and how that data is protected. Google Map, you use it every time, how that is protected. And that is some best practice at learning that we can have and apply that to the situation we have.

The key thing is that all about the future of urban mobility, if we know where it should be, and if we know that there are certain steps that we have to take together, including leveraging data to do a better planning, then we need to figure out a way that while protecting the user privacies and still make the data valuable and also available to, DIA stakeholders. So I think this gets to the big question, which is you're obviously very passionate about the future of mobility. The scooters are great. I mean, I do love them, but they're very controversial, right? I live in a city that just won't allow them. I was just in Austin for

South by Southwest, very controversial in that city. I was in Portland, very controversial in that city. How are you trying to figure out the balance between pushing forward your vision that you're obviously passionate about, along with, you know, people really like these products next to, well, there are scooters all over the streets and they're tipped over and people don't always take care of them. There's data tracking issues. There is people throw them in rivers for some reason, which is like the funniest trend. How are you managing that big controversy to push forward your vision?

Totally. That's a big and great question. One of the things that Lyme does things slightly different is I would say is obsessed. with the vision, obsessed with customers. And that means that when we think about, you should take a look at what the future looks like. And then we walk back, say, what is available today? What is missing?

Is the technology ready or not? And then step by step would build towards that. In this case, there are many things that I think anything new that it will be considered as some way of nuances and the result of, like, we as companies, we're still learning, right? How do we do proper parking? We try the many things. We keep on improving and experimenting things.

Like, you know, for example, we ask user to take a photo of their parking job. And then we will, you know, use image recognitions and other ways to validate that, right? That's one of the examples. And we have sense that we can detect whether the scooter is fell over or not. And that can help us address those questions. So technology is advancing. Our own product and service and operation is advancing. Those are the things that they help us to do a better job, not just provide a very convenient

right, but also take into consideration of the cities, the landscape, as well as the communities. And the second part, I think, is also we, I believe that we also carry the mission that not only just to serve our users, but also serve the city and communities. So the approach we take are in two folds, I would say. The first part is to gradually roll out, right? Not like say, hey, let's just bombard a city with like 100,000 scooters and caught it done. But that's how it feels. But I just wanted, that's really interesting you said that.

That is how a lot of people feel about the scooters, that they were bombarded with them. And that's how it started, too, it seems like, at least initially, until cities really sort of caught on and realized what was happening and then, you know, started confiscating and pounding the scooters and enforcing. And forcing the companies to, you know, agree to certain parameters and to receive permits and things like that. So it definitely started out that way where you just sort of bombard a city and then... So you're walking that back a little bit. New strategies. Let's take a look at a few things as the numbers that will probably speak the best for it. Let's take San Antonio, for example.

We roughly have about 1,000 to 2,000 scooters in the city. And because it's new, that it costs a lot of attentions, guess how many cars we have in San Antonio parking on the street? We have roughly about a million cars parking on the street. Every single day. And they're in different shape. Some are parked well, some are not, right, different colors, and they all make a lot of noise and give a lot of pollutions.

In that regard, is that really a number thing? a perception thing. So that goes to the second fold that is focused on a community outreach and education as well. That in the sense of like if the communities does not see this as a positive thing to the community that help to reduce congestions and pollutions, then I think we failed half of our mission. And that's what we also focus on with the, you know, respect the right campaigns and give out helmets and also community education, even. bad stuff we do. I think the thing that strikes me the most is even you put out a thousand or two thousand scooters, that's a thousand or two thousand pieces of hardware that you've deployed in the city. They have

batteries and wheels and they fall over and you got to charge them. And that means you need to have people who do that work too. Are you thinking about that group of people and making them, you know, actually part like I'm employees? Are you saying that's going to be distributed, crowdsourced work as well? Are you thinking about how to improve their jobs? Like just managing that, you know, many pieces of hardware. Vergecast listeners probably think about this all the time. Like managing that many pieces of hardware is difficult. And it's dangerous too sometimes. I've spoken to some of the... You guys call them juicers, right? Is that correct?

That's an incredible name. Yeah, which is perfect because it goes so well with, you know, lime. Yeah. But tell me about the life of a juicer. How do you improve it? Yeah, I think the, you know, what we have is we have dedicated folks about focusing on the safety issues and emergencies or, you know, the service level agreement that we have with the city and probably we were the first. I'm not sure it's the only or not, but we were the first to provide that and to ensure that all the vehicles are checked regularly and make sure they're safe.

And the, you know, you're right, right? As a new business that our service is more than just the hardware alone. It's an entire service layer behind it to support it. Make sure they are checked, make sure they're safe, make sure they're placed at the right place, make sure there's, you know, folks that pick up the schoolers when they show up the wrong places, make sure that we have come some support and support at the end, also insurances, many other things that goes into it. And when it comes to recharging so that, given the nature of the business, that they're so, let's say, distributed, and it will be

difficult to have a central operation to do that. I think Gigac economy is nothing new, and that's the same reason as why that, you know, food ordering deliveries that are utilizing the economy, Uber utilized the crowdsource drivers, since they're distributed, right? It's very different from a centralized service. And what we are working on is to help, you know, the juicing, we call it. The juicing work that more pleasant, safer, and also help them to engage and support each other. We have the team dedicated to support them. And what we were touched was the stories we heard about the life as a juicer. That if you think about the hour typical type of, you know, choosing, that it happens at night.

Right. So it's not competing with the day job. It's not competing even with Uber's or food order ordering deliveries that at a peak hour is really a flexible economic opportunity for a lot of folks. That's heartwarming. It is also some deeply cyberpunk shit, right? Like, it's a new thing, and the fact that they're called juicers is wild and someone sure read a novel about it. Give me an example of a concrete step you've taken to sort of make it better for the people

who are servicing all these scooters. Yeah. One latest thing that which is from the product side I'll share with you is very interesting. So what we found is that some of the conflicts, if we think about the juices, they don't really know each other in the real life. that the conflict is that a bunch of users are going after the same scooter, right? And to them is cash. Yeah.

That if you got a few folks that come in for the same cash, you got conflicts. And what we did is that we hear them, discuss with them, and then we launched a reserve feature. So the user can claim that scooter avoid that kind of like, you know, conflict on the street. And that's one thing we did. And the second thing that we did is that we have a dedicated. team that is supporting them. So, you know, users are our users either way. That we're not only making their, you know,

app experience match better and give them more accurate GPS locations, launching the service, the service and features that help them to do the juicing work much more efficient, but also we have a dedicated support team. And we have also a user community management that they feels they belongs to a group that's supporting each other. And they have a lot of things in common, right? that I think, you know, the economic opportunity we provide back to the community is we provide

it to every single local community we're operating in. And there are certain type of folks that found it really attractive. And in many cases that actually, without knowing each other, you know, directly or indirectly, that it becomes a competition, but with knowing each other a little bit more, that becomes a support group, if you would. Yeah. You said you had four generations of the hardware. What are the things you've improved?

What are the big changes? as you've started to iterate this product. Yeah, well, there's a lot, right? I'm also in charge of products, so the list goes probably 1,000 lines in terms of the improvement we make. But in a short, right, I think the few things, that one of them is safety,

that if you look at the latest version, Gen 3, that we just launched, that we increase the wheel size much bigger and much wider, and that's to fight back on the cracks and also pahos. that we often encounter in the city. And we add the suspensions to the vehicle, make sure that not only this is much better and smoother ride,

but also it's safer when it comes to like speed bombs or whatnot, and make the gravity, central gravity, much lower. So the right of which much more stabilized. So safety is number one. Number two is use experiments. And we add quite a bit things including status light, tell user from afar that whether a scooter is available or not, right? Whether it's out of battery or under maintenance.

And that's more focused on the user experience side. And the third thing that we add more advanced sensors. And that goes back to, you know, take into consideration that communities and the folks that does not use our scooter yet, how do we detect the scooter fail over? How do we know where it's parking at the wrong place? And the sensors will help us to do that and make our... operation better. And the last part is really durability. So we further enhance on the durability of our school, even though we're already much longer than the other folks, that we'll still keep

on improving that. I think to Lyme, the most important thing is not about us versus competitors or whatnot. It's we together that really promoting and providing the very affordable and available service to the users and also further educate the community-wide this is beneficial to everyone of us and then work with city to improve that. And it's more about how we improve compared to ourselves yesterday. So we'll keep on innovating, we'll keep on improving. The focus we should have is what a urban mobility will look like in the future. It has to be much nimble and smaller and a part-tailer to

personal travels, not a seven-seater-five-seater car that take one person across the street. It has to be shared in order to reduce the occupation of the public space, right? Much smaller and also shared, it has to be electric powered, and it has to be something that's not only very affordable, accessible, but also, you know, readily available. So that's reliable for all the users whenever they need it. And those are the things that we want to achieve, but we're still far away from that. So, Lime more devoted and dedicated all the time, keep on the innovating part, and they'll keep on working with cities.

Do you think this market's winner-take-all? I mean, you have competitors who certainly think it's winner-take-all, or there'll be a duopoly. There were a lot of car sharing services, and now there's two. There are a lot of scooter companies. Do you think there's always going to be a lot of scooter companies, or just one or two? I think the nature of the business does. It's so complicated. It will be hard for smaller player to really survive. And even today, that we are still. keep on improving on the durability of the scooters, the operating efficiencies, and all kinds of things, right?

So I won't say it will be a winner take-all, but I think there will be limited players that are going into the future that will be providing majority of the service. I think that also is good for the user as well, instead of, like, struggling, you know, which one to take, right? There's always a reliable and available service for them. But that is based on one condition that company itself has to have a very strong values that not to abuse the leadership position. We are the leader globally in terms of the scooter right now, but we'll keep on reminding ourselves and our entire team that what is the vision and the mission of the company and what are the values that we live by.

So I'm sure you just saw, but Bird just increased its per minute charge in a couple of key markets, Los Angeles, Detroit, and a few others. Is Lyme going to be looking at fluctuating some prices down the road as well, do you think? First of all, I said three things. Well, I always wanted to simplify things for folks too easy to remember. I said the three A's that for us as a company to focus on improving, you know, the first is availability, right? Whenever you need it, wherever, whenever and however you wanted. And the second part is accessibility.

And therefore, we launched like non-credit card payment, we launched non-smart phone unlocks, and all that things, for to increase accessibility. And the third thing that we committed on is to provide if affordable transportation means. So we'll keep on focusing on that. And does that mean that we will commit on the current price? I think we will do some experimenting as well. Since what is the right price, nobody knows today, right? We arbitrarily said, hey, 15 cents a minute, and everyone follows. And that's what we have today.

So I think finding the right balance is the answer. It could be higher, it could be lower, it could be dynamic, it could be based on the market. That I think the experiments is required, and data will tell us what it would be the right balance. But meanwhile, I don't think that we would ever change. that our mission to create a service that's affordable to the majority. I have a very important final question for you. And that is, why do all the scooter companies have four-letter names? Because we started with Lyme.

Oh, I see. And everyone just copied that. That doesn't make any sense. I'm just kidding. I think they are probably easier to pronounce or not that the, but we started definitely one of the earliest. I would start with Lyme. And it probably helps other folks to think through it.

But then we got also, you know, some of the names I want to even read into that. It's just like random to me. When you see the bird people at like conferences, are you, do you like stare them down? Are you friends? Do you knock over birds when you see them on the street? Definitely not. And that's one of the code. We as a company we have as well.

You have to follow the code. We will see that I can share with you. This is very interesting that I visit a lot of markets. And when we see the bird that was good or, you know, other companies, a scooter fare on the street or in the wrong place, we will move them to the right place and lift them up. And that is a culture that we at Lyme that are implementing into the entire company. That is about urban mobility and it's about how we make it the future better. Then it doesn't matter if a scooter is lying in the middle of the street. it's not good for the urban mobility.

It's not good for the future, and we will help to correct that. Of course, we will not go to all the way, do nothing else but do that, but if we pass by them, that we will correct them, and you will see that happen in every market. In the end, we are all juicers.

I think, again, that future mobility, if you look at it, right, it's not us will be able to do it alone. It's a combination of us, our peers together, pushing for the right vision, it's our collaboration with the cities, is the communities and even the non-users that they embrace this vision, they embrace that the city needs less cars, more shared mobility, that's greener, healthier, as well as less pollution. If they don't,

that it will be really difficult for us to get there. Are you going to bring these to New York because I'm dying? Yeah, we definitely are, but we are, again, that we work with city to plan the proper launch. So we're still working with City. On the New York City, we just launched, I think, one of the we launched in Hopoken. Okay. Which is the Sixthboro. Across the rim.

Yeah. I'm going to take a lime through the tunnel. That's going to be great. Through the battery tunnel? Yeah. Just go for it. You need a battery? RIPD. Oh, sorry. Do you have an ETA in New York? Initial discussion was around

the summer to do a pilot. But I think as you mentioned, right, there are regulations need to be changed before we can launch. And those regulations was, I believe, was established in the 1930s that for mopats, for gasoline mopats. And it's just outdated. And the city knows that. We knows that. It's just a process if you need to be go through to order to change that. It's not unique to New York. There are quite a few other places. Miami was like that. And they changed it last year. And similar to many other cities as well, countries that Germany is like that, but Germany is going to change it in July this year.

Well, actually, early than that, before the summer. Okay, so I'm looking for sometime late summer maybe in New York? I hope so. Yeah. Well, that's as good a place as any to end it. Thank you so much, Brad, for coming on. Really appreciate it at the time. Thank you for all the time you have, you know, with me and appreciate all the questions.

All right, that was Brad Bow, co-founder, executive chairman of Lyme. Thank you to Andrew Hawkins for joining me and asking better questions than me. I love having bird reporters in the show because they're all smarter than me. We love getting your feedback on these interview episodes to tweet at me at Matt Reckless. Tell me who you want to talk to you. Tell me what topics you want to cover. This is just an amazing chance to stretch out and really get into it with people. So love your feedback.

I want to go where you want me to go. So hit me up. I'm Matt Reckless. We've got the regular Vergecast coming up for you on Friday. Another interview episode on Tuesday. We'll see you.