Inside Bird’s Scooter Economics

Electric scooter rental service Bird told prospective investors in June of this year that it was on pace to generate around $65 million in revenue annually. At the time, Bird was operating in roughly 10 markets and has since launched service in almost 100 more cities domestically and abroad. The company is now on pace to generate hundreds of millions of dollars annually in gross revenue, said a person briefed on the matter.

Those early revenue numbers compared favorably with Bird’s main rival Lime, which told investors as of April that it was on track to generate $25 million annually based on its business at the time. Lime, which operated in many more markets with both scooters and bikes, projected its revenue would climb to a pace of $500 million by the end of the year, according to Axios. Lime had an existing bike-sharing business, so the figures probably would not be an apples-to-apples comparison with Bird, which only rents scooters.