Electric scooters have taken much of the world by storm in the last few years, in large part thanks to the rise of dockless sharing networks run by companies like Bird and Lime, which allow users to find and book scooters via smartphone app and leave them anywhere within a designated area. Now, Bird has unveiled the latest addition to its personal mobility lineup—and for the first time, you can take one home and keep it there.
The Bird One, as it’s called, is a newly-designed electric scooter the company says has been designed from scratch to be both durable and comfortable. Thanks to a 473-watt-hour battery, the One can travel up to a claimed 30 miles before it needs to be recharged—farther than most other battery-powered two-wheeled scooters, and, let’s face it, quite a bit farther than most people would want to ride a standing scooter in a single day. (It also tops out at 19 miles per hour, which is probably as fast as any sane person would seek to go when facing the prospect of their head falling six feet onto asphalt in an accident.)
The custom-designed steel-reinforced aluminum chassis is made to handle a full year of the rough life that comes with being part of a fleet of shared scooters, while tubeless tires are fitted to better handle the bad terrain often found in urban environments. And in order to make sure nobody runs off with your own personal Bird—accidentally or otherwise—each One can be digitally locked with an app, and tracked via GPS should it disappear.
Bird One will be found in the company’s fleets of shared scooters, but if you’d rather not have other people’s mitts on the handlebars you use every day, you can purchase one for $1,299. Admittedly, that’s a lot pricier than many other battery scooters—the folding Glion Dolly that can go 15 miles on a charge is currently listed on Amazon for $500, for example—but given the Bird One’s range, features, and apparent level of build quality put it in a different league than the fleets of cheaply-made generic scooters out there, comparing it to them seems a tad unfair. (The One’s price does put it right on par with many quality e-bikes found today, however.)
The company is taking pre-orders now at its website, with buyers able to choose between three colors at launch—Rose Gold, Jet Black, and Dove White. That said, Bird claims there will only be a “limited number” of Ones available to purchase, so if your heart is set on owning an electric scooter that matches your iPhone XS in both price and color, don’t wait too long to plop down your order.
