Uber scooters kickoff in California ahead of national expansion

So Uber is launching its first scooters and they're in Sta. Monica and they launched today. The scooters are being branded as Jump Scooters and Jump is a company that Uber acquired earlier this year that had a dockless bike rentals. And so now, they're moving into scooters. So everything is through the Uber app. And Uber's really marketing this as jump scooters exclusively for Uber. Uber is definitely catching on to this craze of being multimodal, having bikes, car rentals. And scooters, and scooters have really been this new craze that hit the United States very strongly about six months ago. The scooters aren't gonna be Uber branded, they're jump branded. So they're gonna be red and they're gonna say jump. And that's because this is the unit within Uber that runs the scooters and bikes. It's unclear how profitable scooters are, their actually pretty cheap. They're a dollar to rent and then it's $0.15 per minute. Uber is doing kind of different with its rentals, its having reservations. So people can look on the app and see if a scooter is available nearby, reserve it, and then they have five minutes free, where they don't have to pay that $0.15 per minute. And they can walk over and get the scooter. So cities all across the US have been dealing with scooters blocking sidewalks, people riding on sidewalks. And so Uber said it's really trying to work with city regulators as it rolls out its scooters. So that's why it's initially launching in Santa Monica. It's the first city where it got a permit to have scooters. And it says it really wants to work with regulators in various cities where it's launching. Uber says this is a natural progression for them. They really want to become as the CEO says the Amazon of transportation. So they don't only wanna be about ride hailing, they definitely are interested in bikes Scooters possibly integrating with public transportation. They really want to be multi mobile.