Bird micromobility interview

On January 12, CEO of Escooter firm Travis VanderZanden sat down with Horace Dediu to kick off Micromobility World 2022 online.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the keynote session.

1) Micromobility Hasn’t Had its iPhone Moment but it will come

Durable, high-tech designs for a growing number of multimodal offerings is key, the industry has not yet reached the platform level that the Ihpone brings to the mobile phone market.

“I don’t think we’ve hit the iPhone moment yet in micromobility,” said VanderZanden, drawing a comparison on the massive uplift of quality that the Iphone brought compared to the current other market partipants including the Motorola Razr.

Bird’s CEO noted that shared e-scooters had proven an excellent product/market fit for cities of all sizes, with remarkable rider adoption that has led to community benefits like increased consumer spending at local businesses.

2) Parking Infrastructure Is Just as Important as Bike Lanes

Post COVID, many cities around the world invested in new bike lanes as well as adapting car parking adjustments. Encouraging naturally socially distanced transportation while also improving outdoor eating opportunities. (See our short youtube video https://youtu.be/JTdNlka-ZGE

“More bike lanes are a great start,” said VanderZanden. “I think now on the infrastructure side we really need to work with cities to get more dedicated parking.” Bird’s CEO advocated for one micromobility parking.

3) Beware of Outdated Micromobility Data

When asked by Dediu about the importance of Bird becoming the first micromobility company to list on the New York Stock Exchange, VanderZanden’s response focused squarely on how it validated micromobility as a whole.

“There are a lot of misconceptions about the industry based on outdated data,” Bird’s CEO said. “For our first fleet in 2017, I was ordering whatever was available on Alibaba. Going public was a great branding moment to show the incredible advancement of our vehicles and highlight important new data. The economics are positive, as we’re showing along with other operators.”

In 2021 alone, the safety and sustainability innovations to Bird vehicles including the all new Bird Three helped prevent an estimated 10K tons of CO2 emissions.