Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's an electric bicycle.
No one has ever uttered these words. But it's time they should, as you can now get access to shared electric bikes and EV vehicles with an app called Bird.
Better still, you don't have to find a phone box. You can track down a bike or electric vehicle in over 100 cities worldwide straight from the app on your smartphone.
Bird selected for New York City trial
Bird announced that it had been selected to take part in the Big Apple's first e-scooter trial in the Bronx.
The pilot comes after three years of experiments with several local organizations, including Mid-Bronx Desperadoes and transportation activist group Blood, Sweat, and Gears.
The NYC Department of Transport pilot will see Bird introduce their latest advanced e-scooters and four-wheeler electrics from e-mobility partners, WHILL.
The pilot scheme also features a range of pricing structures, such as Global Ride Pass and Community Pricing, to help ensure no one gets left behind.
● Go car-free with Bird's all-electric transport options
● Over 100 locations worldwide
● Ideal for short journeys and commutes
● You can use the app with our alternative transportation providers
● Partnerships with several universities
● It helps users reduce their carbon footprint and congestion
The Bird app is versatile as it also works with several other companies' vehicles, including:
● Brum
● EVIKES
● Glow
● Lava
● Scroll
● Sherpa
● Skootel
● YoYoWay
● Wolf
Bird bills itself as the convenient and car-free method to explore cities and make short trips around your local community. And help in the battle to reduce climate-changing CO2 emissions.
Bird is keen, too, that users `fly responsibly' and have drawn up a set of rules of the road to keep users safe and on the right side of the law.
As well as providing means to go green on your short journeys, Bird also offers employment opportunities.
You can get a little side gig going by becoming a bird flyer. This entails keeping Bird's e-scooters and vehicles fully charged and ready to go for customers. You can find more details on flyers. Bird.co.
● Free to download
● Simple to use
● Support multiple languages
● Limited availability; mainly in the US and Europe
The Bird app is available from Google Play and Apple's App Store.
There's not much to it once you have downloaded the app and topped it up with some credit.
To get started after installation, you need to:
● Create an account
● Load it up with credit
● Find a bike or vehicle and scan its QR code
● You are then good to go
● Ride or drive responsibly to your destination
● Park up, taking care not to cause an obstruction
● End your ride
The Android app requirements vary by device but need Android 5.0 as a minimum.
iOS users will need to part with 218.8 MB of storage space and run iOS 11.0 or later. The iOS app is only available for iPhone and iPod touch.
