Thoughts
For some reason the electric scooter rental companies decided that their ideal use case was young people commuting (with a helmet, on the
road), when it really should have been as a mobility aid to help people with difficulty walking travel a couple of blocks.
Scooters compete with walking. Why would you use a scooter instead of walking? The scooter companies answered that with "it's faster." This doesn't work for two reasons. First, you only plan on walking if it's a short distance. Second, finding, unlocking, and parking the scooter takes time.
Instead, the scooter companies should have answered the question "why not walk?" with "it's easier." Immediately, you're not renting scooters, you're renting chairs with wheels. Your target audience is people who are too lazy (or tired or old or whatever) to walk. This is great because they suddenly rely on your product. You're enabling them to move around and be active in the city when they couldn't be otherwise. This is an established solution; think of electric carts in the grocery store or the cart in the airport that gives rides to people with difficulty walking. And some of your users are older people, but it's also people who are drunk, pregnant, not physically fit, injured, obese, carrying a heavy load, etc. And notice, *none of those people can use an electric scooter.*
The only people that can use electric scooters are people that don't need them.