How to make money charging electric scooters

Electric scooters are a New and trendy way to get around cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, DC

They’re not yet legal in New York City, where I live, but they’re all westerns, where electric motorcycle startups like Bird and Lime are based. When I visited LA in March, I couldn’t leave without taking a round – and trying to make some money.

I met Harry Campbell, founder of The Rideshare Guy blog and podcast, who experimented with a number of side jobs, from driving for Uber and Lyft to delivering food for Postmates and DoorDash. Most recently, he made extra money by charging electric motorbikes.

Campbell, who has been charging scooters since the program launched in 2018, scooter-sharing companies rely on “an army of independent contractors” to locate scooters that need water fruit, charges overnight and ships the next morning by 7am.

“If you can charge a smartphone, you can charge a scooter,” he added.

He got me on a “Bird Hunting” evening in Santa Monica. Here’s what happened.

To get started, you must register to be a “Bird Charger” or a “Lemon Juicer”. Since I do not live in the city where either company operates, I cannot register.

However, if you live in a city with scooters, the registration process is simple: Using the same app that you use as a consumer, you provide your personal information and your bank account information to be able to receive direct deposit. “You may not be approved immediately if there are too many chargers in your city,” Campbell said. In that case, you will be added to the waiting list.

Once you’re approved, the company will send you three sets of charging supplies, including a wall plug and a power brick. “At first, that’s your limiting factor,” says Campbell. “The more supplies you have, the better.”

Over time, you can get more supplies if you set yourself up with a suitable and reliable charger. Campbell has six, “not a ton,” he says, but it fits his situation like a more casual charger: “I don’t want to make 100 scooters a night.”

We get to Campbell’s SUV around 9pm, which is when Bird releases most of the scooters on the map. We’re specifically looking for Birds tonight, but you can collect and charge Lime scooters at the same time.

We use the map on the app to locate scooters near us. They’re priced between $3 and $5. I find the closest $5 scooters, point Campbell towards them, and we stop when the map says we’re on one. Spotting black scooters isn’t always easy at night, and they’re not always parked in conspicuous locations. We found a person lying on his side behind a trash can in an alley.

The show starts off like a treasure hunt.

To add to the fun, there’s a pressure: We’re not the only chargers out there. Right before we got there a scooter should be, it disappears from the map. That means there’s another Birdhunter nearby, Campbell told me. We change direction, find another scooter, and as we are loading it into the trunk, another charger pulls out behind us. He was too late.

“It can get a little competitive, in a friendly way,” says Campbell. “I’ve been to a scooter before and someone else ran ahead of me to get it.”

To capture a scooter, you scan the QR code located on the handlebar bar.

Loading the 30-pound movement into your car requires more effort, especially after you’ve collected a few. “It’s like a Tetris game trying to take it all in,” Campbell said.

How many you can fit “really depends on how much you like your car,” he added. “If you don’t mind scooters sticking out the windows and seat covers, you can fit amazingly well into even just a regular sedan.” He estimates his SUV can hold 12.

In about 30 minutes, we picked up five scooters – four $5 scooters and one $4 one – and went to Campbell’s house to charge them. He has an efficient setup in his garage and doesn’t even have to unload the Birds: The charger, which plugs into his garage wall, extends to the scooters that sit in the trunk of his car. him, so we plugged them in and closed the car door over the wire.

When it comes to creating space to charge, “you have to be creative,” says Campbell. “There are companies popping up to try to make space for chargers, but I think, for sure, space could be a limiting factor.”

A Los Angeles-based startup, Perch, is building charging centers in high-density scooter markets where you can rent pods and suites that come with power and pricing help. Thomas Lord, co-founder of Perch, tells CNBC Make It.

If you’re charging at home like Campbell’s, keep in mind that you’ll have to pay for electricity: One Bird typically costs between $0.08 and $0.25 for a full charge, depending on local electricity rates. yours, the website notes. Performance contract also requires ordering miles on your car and paying for gas to get around.

Scooters take four to six hours to charge, so if you have more scooters than supplies, you can switch them out at midnight. However, if you do that, you run the risk of losing some of the first batch of batteries of the first batch of scooters.

Campbell likes to let them drink overnight. In the morning, he takes them to designated release points called “nests”, which you can request in the app and reserve in 30 minutes.

Bird asks you to release them in a trio. After dropping them off, you’ll be paid the full list price for each. Your payouts may be reduced if you issue them after 7am or when the battery is below 95%.

“In the morning, what happens is, a lot of good nests will be captured. So if you wake up too late, you might have to go further away from home,” says Campbell.

Plus, late releases can make it harder to secure more charging material from Bird: “They just want to give you more power supplies if you’re constantly charging and playing.” on time.”

Picking five scooters netted us $24. Not bad for 30 minutes of work. But you can earn more. “The super chargers, have complicated setups that allow them to charge 50 to 100 scooters a night, and can really make more money,” Campbell told me.

Ryan Feldman, a 32-year-old software engineer who used to charge scooters on the side, can “stuff up to 45 scooters in my pickup at once,” he tells CNBC Make It. He has 50 chargers, catches both Birds and Limes, and makes an average of $150 a night. His biggest drawback is, he says, “the number of scooters that I can safely fit into my truck.”

Scooter collection at night “takes between an hour and four hours,” he said. In the morning, “to pay about 45 scooters will take 90 minutes: That includes stacking my truck, returning the car and [the] drive home. “

Here’s how Feldman’s charging setup looks like:

And here’s another ad set up, from a super charger, who asked to remain anonymous:

Feldman, who stopped squeezing when the payout dropped and it became less than worth his time, says he made $210 on his best night.

Campbell told me that chargers used to be able to do so much more. The pricing structure has changed: The amount you earn used depends on how much juice you pour back into the scooter, “but now it’s just a flat fee.” And the minimum you take home for each scooter has dropped: For Bird, “It used to be a $5 minimum payment for a charger per scooter, and now their minimum is 3 dollars.”

Competition has also become intense. “The last two nights I charged, there were multiple shows up when I went to pick up a scooter and three to four other vehicles were there to do the same thing,” Feldman said.

“Wages have fallen a bit over the past few months, but there is still opportunity,” says Campbell. Like any side hustle, “this job won’t be perfect for everyone,” he writes on his blog, “but it’s surprisingly flexible and I can imagine lots of different situations where Uber and Lyft drivers would work for Bird or really anyone looking to make extra money.”

To make the most of the side hustle, Campbell offers three tips:

1. Work with a team. There’s a lot of moving parts when you’re looking for a scooter: You’re constantly checking the map for the highest value Bird, navigating to different locations, and then trying to spot the scooter , visible or hidden.

That’s why working with at least one other person can be helpful, says Campbell: “One can drive, while the other is looking at a map.”

Plus, “especially in LA, it’s hard to find a parking spot,” he said. However, if you’re working in a team, the driver can double park and wait in the car while someone else grabs the throttle.

While you will have to split your earnings by group, you will also be able to find more efficient scooters.

2. Invest in the right equipment. Attaching a magnetic phone to your car is a game changer, says Campbell. It allows you to safely look at the screen while navigating, and when you need to scan a QR code and capture a Bird, you can easily remove the phone from the holder.

He also recommends bringing a flashlight to help spot the scooter at night, and if you’re looking to charge it multiple times, bring a surge arrester.

3. Get out at the right time. You can choose the scooter at any time of the day, but the optimal time is between 9 and 10 pm. That’s when “Bird drops most of the scooters and they’re available to catch, so that’s when you want to get out,” Campbell said. “If you go out in the middle of the day, it can be a lot harder.”

The more you charge, the better you understand which areas of your city have the most scooters to pick up. You will also discover them better. On several occasions, Campbell was able to see the scooter from his car, while I struggled to find them even out of the passenger seat.

“There’s definitely a learning curve,” he said, adding: “It’s not like rocket science, but if you go out and do it one night [for the first time]You might say, “God, this job sucks.”

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