oday, Wednesday, November 22nd, marks the deadline the City of Helsinki has given to operators working in the city to collect all scooters from the streets, according to our insider sources at Bird Co. Dubs plays a crucial role in the hibernation plans of Bird Co., having partnered with them on a micromobility consulting project to store around 3000 EKS. The exact number will be clarified as the hibernation progresses and all scooters are retrieved from the streets.
Now that Bird reported their ridership results from summer 2023 this week, it is clear that this eco-friendly mode of transportation, hated by many but loved by the planet, is becoming a standardized transportation option within cities. Bird recently announced an impressive 16 million miles covered by its riders globally with 11 million rides taken, and while that’s the macro picture, we thought you’d be interested to know how the success has translated at the micro-fleet manager level.
The 2022-2023 off-season in Finland marked the first year in which the swappable electric scooters, Okai ES400D, popularly known as the Bird S, were put into hibernation. A surprising issue arose when, post-hibernation, a significant proportion of the scooters failed to reactivate. This predicament was universal to all ES400D scooters in Finland, and solving it became our challenge – a challenge that extended beyond merely getting scooters back on the streets.
At the heart of every successful micromobility business lies the crucial task of maintaining the fleet in optimal condition. This case study explores how we managed to significantly increase the number of deployed vehicles for a fleet of Bird electric scooters in Kuopio, Finland, by tackling offline issues with a methodological approach.