In Santa Monica, the city attorney’s office filed a nine-count misdemeanor criminal complaint against Bird and Mr. VanderZanden last year for operating a commercial scooter rental business without a mobile vending business license and for failing to comply with citations. The company pleaded no contest and paid a settlement of $300,000.

Those who work for Santa Monica’s city government even went so far as to reach out to other towns to caution them about electric scooters.

“My brother and sister legislators from Santa Monica warned me that that phenomenon has hit their cities,” said Aaron Peskin, who is on San Francisco’s board of supervisors, the city’s legislative branch. Referring to the scooter start-ups, he added, “These people are out of their minds.”

Even other scooter companies don’t seem to like each other much. When Mr. VanderZanden recently announced a pledge for scooter start-ups to sign that promised responsible growth and revenue sharing with cities, he did not get much of a response. “We’re still waiting for others to sign the pledge,” he said.

Mr. VanderZanden also feigns ignorance about all the controversy he has caused.

“Anything any city’s asked us to do, aside from shut down, we do,” he said.

And even though Bird is handing out helmets, he said the requirement that scooter riders wear them is absurd unless all pedestrians have to wear helmets because cars are the real danger.

“We’re not going to be happy till there are more Birds than cars,” Mr. VanderZanden said.