WHAT the Dutch call a step is known as a scooter in the US. Mainly because there is nothing to step. They have a battery and go over 12 mph. You rent them via a phone app, 15 cents a minute. For three dollars you have twenty minutes to reach your destination on the sidewalk. You leave the scooter outside, take a picture so the app knows where it is, and your credit card is charged four dollars, 3 + 1 for waking up the battery. Which is then recharged by someone else.
The oldest and most successful scooter company is called Bird. Seven years old, it grew faster than Uber or Lyft for a while, had sold 10 million rides after just one year. Bird ran into trouble because of corona, since people who stayed home didn’t use scooters, and its scooter future is uncertain for now.
But Bird’s creator, living in Santa Monica, was also an inventor of Uber and Lyft, so there’s no shortage of ingenuity as the guy ponders his future.
His name is Travis VanderZanden. The family hails from Dinther in Brabant.
