When I was traveling in UAE, I was shocked to see some people actually using bicycles for food delivery. In China, electric motorcycle support the extremely large food delivery market, and in most cities, the streets are lined with delivery riders’ e-motorcycle and bicycles. Later, I heard that China’s Meituan has also started food delivery services in Dubai. I expect this model to expand to global markets as electric motorcycle become more widespread.

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logicchains 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

>When I was traveling in UAE, I was shocked to see some people actually using bicycles for food delivery.

Many of those delivery workers are much poorer than even Chinese delivery workers, so are less able to afford ebikes. Because they come from countries with significantly lower GDP per capita than China.

	▲	irjustin 2 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> so are less able to afford ebikes Many countries with gig economies where the individual can't afford to own the actual method of transport, a rental market pops up to enable people to be able fulfill orders. This usually does mean they're the first ones to get squeezed. But lesser known who gets squeezed is the rental operator/provider as well. Because many times they don't own their own fleet. They can't charge higher prices like normal car rentals and own the fleet because the individual gig driver is very price sensitive. It doesn't take too many vehicle losses to really upset the delicate math. It's just rentals all the way down.
	▲	arjie 2 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		In San Francisco, I noticed that many of the delivery drivers' e-bikes and e-scooters were labeled HMP. The natural structure for these is that you rent the bike from the provider and you keep net earnings post rent. And sure enough, when I came home and Googled there is precisely such a structure: https://www.hmpbikes.com/pages/rental-page
	▲	yanhangyhy 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Indeed. I’ve noticed a large number of Pakistani taxi drivers and Southeast Asian service workers. But considering the income of food delivery riders(most of the time > avg salary in the city china. not sure in UAE, but the service like Uber is pretty expensive), buying a not-too-expensive electric scooter seems to be a fairly good investment.

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RamblingCTO 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Pretty standard in europe. Easier to manouver, to park and you get away with more. Also cheaper.