9 ms·

How 'dockless' cycles flooded China and are heading overseas

81 points by oska 10y ago

aphextron 10y ago
I'm not sure how well this would work out in the US. Any standard parts would be stripped off those things instantly. Have you ever seen what happens to a bike after being locked somewhere for more than a couple days? It disappears piece by piece until nothing but the frame is left.
- wapz 10y ago
  It's the unfortunate thing about the US. Although I don't think it's impossible, having any decent quality bike would definitely get stripped like you said. The only way I can imagine this being implemented is if there are bike lockers that completely enclose the bike. Unfortunately, that would raise the cost of the rentals to probably more than people are willing to pay.
  - trevyn 10y ago
    There are plenty of bikeshares in the US -- the bikes are just built to be nearly theft-proof.
    - wapz 10y ago
      I've seen several bike shares in the US in tourist areas and they were all awfully expensive (I want to say something like $5/hour or ~$15 for the day?). They also required you to park at one of the docking stations which wasn't too bad because they had them near the tourist spots. Having the freedom of China's seems a little farfetched for the US in my opinion.
      - rtpg 10y ago
        based off of related comments in here, it seems like the freedom isn't really working in China either... I think $10 a day is reasonable if you're moving around. It's a bit more than a movie ticket, and if you rent in the morning you get a full day's usage. Though to be honest I don't know many US cities that would be fun on a bike...
        mattkrause 10y ago
        Most of these bike-share services aren't really meant for fun all-day rides. In fact, most of them limit you to 30-45 minutes before you have to return the bike to a dock. The hope is that these short 1-2 mile rides replace car trips and extends the territory covered by a bus or metro line.
      - trevyn 10y ago
        This is actually how it works with Breeze bike share in Santa Monica: $99/year membership Includes 90 minutes free ride time each day ($7/hr after that) Many well-placed pods, but can leave anywhere in the city for a $2 fee
- JimmyAustin 10y ago
  The US has a per-capita GDP is close to 5x higher then Chinas. Why would theft be exclusive to the US instead of China?
  - sremani 10y ago
    Many reasons.. but it ultimately comes to one thing, Cops do not give hoot to bike theft, so the rist-reward in bike theft is favorable.
    - imron 10y ago
      So no different from China then?
    - drozycki 10y ago
      Can you speak to how much the authorities in China care about bike theft?
      - sremani 10y ago
        Cannot comment about China, but again from anectodal personal experience in India, the component of street justice in some places cannot be totally ruled out. If you are caught by a mob while stealing .. brace for Impact! edit: The broader point being "risk" component of theft in certain places is sometimes inhibitive in spite of apathy from authorities.
      - imron 10y ago
        The authorities in China care nothing about bike theft. The best theft-prevention mechanism in China is to have an old, rusty, broken looking bike.
  - beatpanda 10y ago
    In the case of the US per capita GDP just means that we are a country containing many rich people, not a rich country. Income inequality is extreme. When the government or private industry refuses to redistribute money downward, poor people will just take it.
- ganfortran 10y ago
  Unless you have a national identity tracking system and register with every mobile phone, which in China's case, it does. If someone steal the bike, they will be sorted out immediately.
- ganfortran 10y ago
  Unless you have a national identity tracking system and register with every mobile phone, which in China's case, it does. If someone steal the bike, they will be sorted out immediately.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  Would there be a black market for bicycle parts if you could pick a bike up off the street and ride it for next to nothing? What would be the price of a nut or half a chain or a handlebar handle in a market where there are so many bicycles? Why commit a crime to purchase a bicycle, when they can apparently be shipped to your city assembled for about 50 bucks?
- jlarocco 10y ago
  I think what you meant to say was, "That would never work in my city". We don't all live in the ghetto.
erikig 10y ago
There is a version of this in the automobile space - Car2Go - in a bunch of US cities. I used this a few times in Miami where they had Smart FourTwo's scattered across the city. As a member, you could walk up, unlock it and drive it anywhere. Once at your destination you'd just park it at any public Miami parking lot. Too bad the service is no longer in Miami - it was pretty awesome.
- pimlottc 10y ago
  There is a similar scooter-based startup in SF called Scoot. There are official docking spaces with chargers in a number of garages but you can also leave them in the street within designated zones within quite a large portion of the city - they're marked in blue on the vehicle map [0]. Being able to go point-to-point and not having to think about paying for the time you're at your destination is very convenient. They added a pilot program with a handful of mini two-person electri "quad" cars as well. Seems to be a partnership with Nissan. I haven't gotten to try out any of those yet, they are not usually available when I've checked. 0: https://scoot.co/locations/ https://scoot.co/locations/
- ricardobeat 10y ago
  Car2Go is quite popular in Amsterdam, several friends use it as their main mode of transport for rainy days / long distance. Being able to park them for free, in a city where parking is extremely limited and expensive, is a big plus.
jogjayr 10y ago
They used to have these on the Georgia Tech campus. The company was called viaCycle[1]; IIRC they have now shut down. I borrowed one of the bikes once. Because all the tracking infrastructure and battery for the electronics were all on the bike (at least I think that's how the tech worked) the bike was quite heavy. At least I think that is the reason it was heavy. Not very fun to ride at all. I'll also confess I wasn't in great shape at the time. I liked the concept though and I really wanted it to work out for them. I'm a bit skeptical of bike share programs unless they're in high-density areas. The already-existing Bay Area Bikeshare is really expensive unless you're making <60-minute trips between 2 docking stations. I haven't tried any of the bikes but they look much heavier than the average $300 hybrid bike. Being out all the time can't be good for keeping them in top condition. [1] http://www.viacycle.com/howitworks/ http://www.viacycle.com/howitworks/ [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/smart-bike-sharing-startup-is-looking-to-blaze-a-new-path-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/smart-bike-sharing-startup-is...
- ezzaf 10y ago
  They're also deliberately heavy to make them harder and less attractive to steal. Not an issue in a flat city, but much less fun on hills. Hopefully in the long run electric assist is practical to implement on these bikes which should ameliorate their weight.
  - algesten 10y ago
    Barcelona has electrical assisted (docking) bikes.
    - lovemenot 10y ago
      Tokyo too
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  I imagine most of the weight is from the frame. Lightweight materials tend to be more expensive than their heavier (and more durable) counterparts for these sorts of things.
cstrat 10y ago
My only experience with this sort of thing was in Paris and it was very fun being able to ride around Paris, but in the end it was a complete pain. My travel credit card had 200 euros put on hold, twice (two bikes). Which didn't clear up for about a week. We hired bikes twice, so I had 800 euros in limbo while travelling. Not sure if this is a fault of the hiring system (not refunding or clearing the block quicker) - or my bank (not recognizing the clearing or block earlier). Anyway as a tourist this was a huge inconvenience... hopefully we come up with better ways to address this. I just realised this is not really a helpful comment, but just some personal context to hiring bikes :)
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  I think they keep the hold for a few days after your usage expires, so if somebody reports the bike as damaged they can still charge you. I don't think with our current financial system (i.e. credit cards), there is really a much better way.
awongh 10y ago
I wonder what the actual economics of a business like this are? What are the real rental rates at which these companies make a profit? Because at $0.15 an hour it seems like well below what the cost of running the service might be. (also including the cost of buying and maintaining the bikes) To what degree does the business model rely on becoming the dominant player? What is the scale you have to reach to be profitable at $0.15 an hour? How many bikes do you need and how many trips need to be taken? From what I understand about the habits of people with the nyc bike share program, the movement of bikes needs a lot of human intervention to remain effective, and the bike locations balanced. Are they just hoping that the pure density of bikes in the system helps them overcome this? I would think that manual rebalancing of the system is quite costly. (A driver has to track the bike down via GPS and pick it up, vs. a dock system where the drivers know where to find the bikes)
- got2surf 10y ago
  It sounds like they don't do too much maintenance on the bikes, so that cost is probably fairly low. And I wonder if bikes would need to be rebalanced manually? Presumably with enough bikes in the system, the bikes would be distributed around population centers pretty well.
- ezzaf 10y ago
  Perhaps the economics are buy really cheap bikes and hope on average they are ridden for enough hours to cover the cost before they end up broken / lost / stolen.
- jakob223 10y ago
  Perhaps you can charge more for moving bikes in the "wrong" direction - i.e. if bikes always end up in manhattan then if you bike to brooklyn from manhattan it's cheaper than vice versa?
- gpvos 10y ago
  In the Dutch bike-share system OV-fiets, a bike costs €3.65 per day, so that it similar. It is subsidized though (but I don't know how that works out percentage-wise). On the other hand, things are still a little cheaper in China, I think.
imron 10y ago
Here are a couple of good article on the effect these startups have had in China: http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/01/24/shanghais-mobike-mania-invites-competition http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/01/24/shanghais... http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/02/22/ofo-rental-bikes-are-getting-owned http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/02/22/ofo-renta... Expect to see piles and piles of unused bikes littering the streets. Another poster was worried about theft, when the market is saturated by venture-backed bicycles a greater problem for most people will be lack of theft.
- drozycki 10y ago
  Oh the humanity. Seriously though those scenes seem fine except for the one with the big pile of bikes. That is avoided by having a credit card on file and charging the user who couldn't be bothered to lock the bike when he was done. The benefits include less vehicle and transit congestion and all the health that comes with exercise.
  - rahimnathwani 10y ago
    "That is avoided by having a credit card on file and charging the user who couldn't be bothered to lock the bike when he was done." The bikes are locked only to themselves, not to a railing. So even a locked bike can easily be loaded onto a truck if the city decides it's cluttering up the place.
    - imron 10y ago
      Exactly. The whole point of these bikes is that they aren't docked to anything and can be left anywhere. You can happily leave the bike parked correctly and in good condition, but there's nothing to stop a random stranger/group of drunk students making piles of bikes for shits and giggles.
      - lucaspiller 10y ago
        I wonder if a simple alarm system based on movement would help deter the nuisance behaviour. It has GPS, so you could set an allowed range so people could still move them a few meters if, for example, the bikes are blocking their entrance.
crdb 10y ago
There is a PR explosion of these stories at the moment (e.g. [1]). So I thought I'd give it a try here in Singapore. Neither Mobike nor Ofo were installable on my Xiaomi ("not available in your market" - maybe they should have unlocked the app before the press release!), so I went with the "local" option of Obike (actually a HK outfit). The interesting part were rules clearly designed to curb certain undesirable behaviour. You get docked points for things like parking the bike somewhere private, and losing half your initial points increases the 15 minute rate from $0.5 to $50. You gain points for rides and reporting broken or missing bikes. The first 7 bike locations I checked had no bikes (including 2 locations sandwiched between 4 universities). I reported the last 5 and heard nothing from customer service (also, did not earn any points). I decided to try clusters instead and lo and behold, finally some bikes. The rest worked fine as expected, presumably because it does not involve humans, although my parked bike had moved 137m when I checked the map 5 minutes later - clearly there are teething tracking issues. It seems that people are taking the bikes home and not getting penalised for it, perhaps due to a desire for higher usage numbers for investors. Absent customer service also indicates a swamped team. Someone on Facebook pointed out that the Ofo bikes use a number code which does not change, and some users claimed to have taken the Ofo home after their first ride and used it for free thereafter. Still, this is a great idea which works relatively well. I wish the best to these companies. [1] http://www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/2080837/chinas-mobike-takes-ofo-singapore-bike-sharing-competition-heats http://www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/2080837/chinas-m...
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  "Someone on Facebook pointed out that the Ofo bikes use a number code which does not change, and some users claimed to have taken the Ofo home after their first ride and used it for free thereafter." There are a lot of these 'stolen' Ofo bikes in Beijing. They usually have an additional regular lock to prevent other Ofo users from unlocking them using the code (which the app will provide, so long as the bike isn't reported as currently being used).
  - crdb 10y ago
    I read about it on one of the other commenters' links and immediately thought that somewhere, a product manager was told to "move fast and break things" and "get it launched next month no matter what".
drsim 10y ago
The company behind Copenhagen's docked bikes has gone bankrupt [0]. In a city where it's inexpensive to hire a standard city bike from a shop, the scheme decided to go for expensive electric cycles with GPS map displays. [0] http://cphpost.dk/news/business/company-behind-copenhagens-city-bike-program-going-bankrupt.html http://cphpost.dk/news/business/company-behind-copenhagens-c...
- 1zee 10y ago
  Docks make no sense in Copenhagen, where most everyone knows how to properly park their wheel-locked bikes in a non-intrusive way. Also, most people have their own bikes.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
Does anyone know how these work technically? Does the bike have a mobile data connection, or does the app give you a code to unlock the bike? How does the economics of it work? What does it cost to manufacture a dockless bike, and can they reasonably make it back in fees. Or is this all fueled by VC money?
- contingencies 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure they're all embedded low-power processors with GSM + SMS unlocking and small simple batteries which recharge when cycled. (There is a visible delay between people scanning the codes and the locks releasing.) GPS is usually not included, instead it uses the GPS location of the phone of the last person who hired it and reported locking it when done. ("Sometimes users search for a bike and it is not where their smartphone says it is") For a redesign, it would be theoretically possible to do the unlock from the consumer app via wifi, bluetooth or NFC and eliminate the mobile connection entirely, using an embedded cryptographic approach similar to banking devices. Yes, it's all VC money.
lorenzhs 10y ago
My city in Germany, Karlsruhe, has had dockless cycle rental and it works great, despite what the armchair experts in this thread say about how this could never work in the Western World. It's 1€ per 30 minutes, 9€ for the day, or 48€ per year for unlimited 30 minute trips. Since 30 minutes suffice to get just about anywhere in the city it's basically unlimited use, and you can just drop off your bike and take the next one a few minutes later if you do get close to the limit.
- danbruc 10y ago
  Still available in 11 cities such as Berlin, Munich, and Cologne. [1] Not sure if their are any competing providers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_Bike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_Bike
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    Karlsruhe switched to Nextbike, their solution is less high-tech but works fine, too.
smacktoward 10y ago
Seeing those piles of abandoned bicycles reminded me of an episode from American history, the great railroad over-building of the late 1800s. The Civil War had been an explosive period of industrial growth, and when it was over there was a lot of new capital sloshing around looking for someplace to go. Lots of it ended up going into the hot new transportation technology of the time, railroads, which led to a race between rail operators to grow as fast as possible in hopes of seizing a dominant market position and using it to muscle their competitors out of business. (A business plan which will be familiar to folks in the startup world.) All of which resulted in an absolutely enormous amount of track being laid, something like 200,000 miles between 1860 and 1915; which turned out to be much more rail capacity than anybody actually needed, even when rail was at its most economically relevant. But all that growth meant that the railroad sector had become the biggest employer of Americans outside farming, so the deflation of the rail bubble led to the original "Great Depression" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression) and labor turmoil more severe than anything any living American has experienced.[1] I look at all those bikes, all also built by speculative capital, and wonder: how many bubbles are waiting to pop in China? And what will happen when they do? [1] Such as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877) and the Pullman Strike of 1894 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike).
- contingencies 10y ago
  IMHO there are four bubbles popping in China: urbanization, real estate, automobiles and education.

81 points by oska 10y ago

I'm not sure how well this would work out in the US. Any standard parts would be stripped off those things instantly. Have you ever seen what happens to a bike after being locked somewhere for more than a couple days? It disappears piece by piece until nothing but the frame is left.

wapz 10y ago
It's the unfortunate thing about the US. Although I don't think it's impossible, having any decent quality bike would definitely get stripped like you said. The only way I can imagine this being implemented is if there are bike lockers that completely enclose the bike. Unfortunately, that would raise the cost of the rentals to probably more than people are willing to pay.
- trevyn 10y ago
  There are plenty of bikeshares in the US -- the bikes are just built to be nearly theft-proof.
  - wapz 10y ago
    I've seen several bike shares in the US in tourist areas and they were all awfully expensive (I want to say something like $5/hour or ~$15 for the day?). They also required you to park at one of the docking stations which wasn't too bad because they had them near the tourist spots. Having the freedom of China's seems a little farfetched for the US in my opinion.
    - rtpg 10y ago
      based off of related comments in here, it seems like the freedom isn't really working in China either... I think $10 a day is reasonable if you're moving around. It's a bit more than a movie ticket, and if you rent in the morning you get a full day's usage. Though to be honest I don't know many US cities that would be fun on a bike...
      - mattkrause 10y ago
        Most of these bike-share services aren't really meant for fun all-day rides. In fact, most of them limit you to 30-45 minutes before you have to return the bike to a dock. The hope is that these short 1-2 mile rides replace car trips and extends the territory covered by a bus or metro line.
    - trevyn 10y ago
      This is actually how it works with Breeze bike share in Santa Monica: $99/year membership Includes 90 minutes free ride time each day ($7/hr after that) Many well-placed pods, but can leave anywhere in the city for a $2 fee
JimmyAustin 10y ago
The US has a per-capita GDP is close to 5x higher then Chinas. Why would theft be exclusive to the US instead of China?
- sremani 10y ago
  Many reasons.. but it ultimately comes to one thing, Cops do not give hoot to bike theft, so the rist-reward in bike theft is favorable.
  - imron 10y ago
    So no different from China then?
  - drozycki 10y ago
    Can you speak to how much the authorities in China care about bike theft?
    - sremani 10y ago
      Cannot comment about China, but again from anectodal personal experience in India, the component of street justice in some places cannot be totally ruled out. If you are caught by a mob while stealing .. brace for Impact! edit: The broader point being "risk" component of theft in certain places is sometimes inhibitive in spite of apathy from authorities.
    - imron 10y ago
      The authorities in China care nothing about bike theft. The best theft-prevention mechanism in China is to have an old, rusty, broken looking bike.
- beatpanda 10y ago
  In the case of the US per capita GDP just means that we are a country containing many rich people, not a rich country. Income inequality is extreme. When the government or private industry refuses to redistribute money downward, poor people will just take it.
ganfortran 10y ago
Unless you have a national identity tracking system and register with every mobile phone, which in China's case, it does. If someone steal the bike, they will be sorted out immediately.
ganfortran 10y ago
Unless you have a national identity tracking system and register with every mobile phone, which in China's case, it does. If someone steal the bike, they will be sorted out immediately.
microcolonel 10y ago
Would there be a black market for bicycle parts if you could pick a bike up off the street and ride it for next to nothing? What would be the price of a nut or half a chain or a handlebar handle in a market where there are so many bicycles? Why commit a crime to purchase a bicycle, when they can apparently be shipped to your city assembled for about 50 bucks?
jlarocco 10y ago
I think what you meant to say was, "That would never work in my city". We don't all live in the ghetto.

erikig 10y ago

There is a version of this in the automobile space - Car2Go - in a bunch of US cities. I used this a few times in Miami where they had Smart FourTwo's scattered across the city. As a member, you could walk up, unlock it and drive it anywhere. Once at your destination you'd just park it at any public Miami parking lot. Too bad the service is no longer in Miami - it was pretty awesome.

pimlottc 10y ago
There is a similar scooter-based startup in SF called Scoot. There are official docking spaces with chargers in a number of garages but you can also leave them in the street within designated zones within quite a large portion of the city - they're marked in blue on the vehicle map [0]. Being able to go point-to-point and not having to think about paying for the time you're at your destination is very convenient. They added a pilot program with a handful of mini two-person electri "quad" cars as well. Seems to be a partnership with Nissan. I haven't gotten to try out any of those yet, they are not usually available when I've checked. 0: https://scoot.co/locations/ https://scoot.co/locations/
ricardobeat 10y ago
Car2Go is quite popular in Amsterdam, several friends use it as their main mode of transport for rainy days / long distance. Being able to park them for free, in a city where parking is extremely limited and expensive, is a big plus.

jogjayr 10y ago

They used to have these on the Georgia Tech campus. The company was called viaCycle[1]; IIRC they have now shut down. I borrowed one of the bikes once. Because all the tracking infrastructure and battery for the electronics were all on the bike (at least I think that's how the tech worked) the bike was quite heavy. At least I think that is the reason it was heavy. Not very fun to ride at all. I'll also confess I wasn't in great shape at the time. I liked the concept though and I really wanted it to work out for them. I'm a bit skeptical of bike share programs unless they're in high-density areas. The already-existing Bay Area Bikeshare is really expensive unless you're making <60-minute trips between 2 docking stations. I haven't tried any of the bikes but they look much heavier than the average $300 hybrid bike. Being out all the time can't be good for keeping them in top condition. [1] http://www.viacycle.com/howitworks/ http://www.viacycle.com/howitworks/ [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/smart-bike-sharing-startup-is-looking-to-blaze-a-new-path-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/smart-bike-sharing-startup-is...

ezzaf 10y ago
They're also deliberately heavy to make them harder and less attractive to steal. Not an issue in a flat city, but much less fun on hills. Hopefully in the long run electric assist is practical to implement on these bikes which should ameliorate their weight.
- algesten 10y ago
  Barcelona has electrical assisted (docking) bikes.
  - lovemenot 10y ago
    Tokyo too
hkmurakami 10y ago
I imagine most of the weight is from the frame. Lightweight materials tend to be more expensive than their heavier (and more durable) counterparts for these sorts of things.

cstrat 10y ago

My only experience with this sort of thing was in Paris and it was very fun being able to ride around Paris, but in the end it was a complete pain. My travel credit card had 200 euros put on hold, twice (two bikes). Which didn't clear up for about a week. We hired bikes twice, so I had 800 euros in limbo while travelling. Not sure if this is a fault of the hiring system (not refunding or clearing the block quicker) - or my bank (not recognizing the clearing or block earlier). Anyway as a tourist this was a huge inconvenience... hopefully we come up with better ways to address this. I just realised this is not really a helpful comment, but just some personal context to hiring bikes :)

lucaspiller 10y ago
I think they keep the hold for a few days after your usage expires, so if somebody reports the bike as damaged they can still charge you. I don't think with our current financial system (i.e. credit cards), there is really a much better way.

awongh 10y ago

I wonder what the actual economics of a business like this are? What are the real rental rates at which these companies make a profit? Because at $0.15 an hour it seems like well below what the cost of running the service might be. (also including the cost of buying and maintaining the bikes) To what degree does the business model rely on becoming the dominant player? What is the scale you have to reach to be profitable at $0.15 an hour? How many bikes do you need and how many trips need to be taken? From what I understand about the habits of people with the nyc bike share program, the movement of bikes needs a lot of human intervention to remain effective, and the bike locations balanced. Are they just hoping that the pure density of bikes in the system helps them overcome this? I would think that manual rebalancing of the system is quite costly. (A driver has to track the bike down via GPS and pick it up, vs. a dock system where the drivers know where to find the bikes)

got2surf 10y ago
It sounds like they don't do too much maintenance on the bikes, so that cost is probably fairly low. And I wonder if bikes would need to be rebalanced manually? Presumably with enough bikes in the system, the bikes would be distributed around population centers pretty well.
ezzaf 10y ago
Perhaps the economics are buy really cheap bikes and hope on average they are ridden for enough hours to cover the cost before they end up broken / lost / stolen.
jakob223 10y ago
Perhaps you can charge more for moving bikes in the "wrong" direction - i.e. if bikes always end up in manhattan then if you bike to brooklyn from manhattan it's cheaper than vice versa?
gpvos 10y ago
In the Dutch bike-share system OV-fiets, a bike costs €3.65 per day, so that it similar. It is subsidized though (but I don't know how that works out percentage-wise). On the other hand, things are still a little cheaper in China, I think.

imron 10y ago

Here are a couple of good article on the effect these startups have had in China: http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/01/24/shanghais-mobike-mania-invites-competition http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/01/24/shanghais... http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/02/22/ofo-rental-bikes-are-getting-owned http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/02/22/ofo-renta... Expect to see piles and piles of unused bikes littering the streets. Another poster was worried about theft, when the market is saturated by venture-backed bicycles a greater problem for most people will be lack of theft.

drozycki 10y ago
Oh the humanity. Seriously though those scenes seem fine except for the one with the big pile of bikes. That is avoided by having a credit card on file and charging the user who couldn't be bothered to lock the bike when he was done. The benefits include less vehicle and transit congestion and all the health that comes with exercise.
- rahimnathwani 10y ago
  "That is avoided by having a credit card on file and charging the user who couldn't be bothered to lock the bike when he was done." The bikes are locked only to themselves, not to a railing. So even a locked bike can easily be loaded onto a truck if the city decides it's cluttering up the place.
  - imron 10y ago
    Exactly. The whole point of these bikes is that they aren't docked to anything and can be left anywhere. You can happily leave the bike parked correctly and in good condition, but there's nothing to stop a random stranger/group of drunk students making piles of bikes for shits and giggles.
    - lucaspiller 10y ago
      I wonder if a simple alarm system based on movement would help deter the nuisance behaviour. It has GPS, so you could set an allowed range so people could still move them a few meters if, for example, the bikes are blocking their entrance.

crdb 10y ago

There is a PR explosion of these stories at the moment (e.g. [1]). So I thought I'd give it a try here in Singapore. Neither Mobike nor Ofo were installable on my Xiaomi ("not available in your market" - maybe they should have unlocked the app before the press release!), so I went with the "local" option of Obike (actually a HK outfit). The interesting part were rules clearly designed to curb certain undesirable behaviour. You get docked points for things like parking the bike somewhere private, and losing half your initial points increases the 15 minute rate from $0.5 to $50. You gain points for rides and reporting broken or missing bikes. The first 7 bike locations I checked had no bikes (including 2 locations sandwiched between 4 universities). I reported the last 5 and heard nothing from customer service (also, did not earn any points). I decided to try clusters instead and lo and behold, finally some bikes. The rest worked fine as expected, presumably because it does not involve humans, although my parked bike had moved 137m when I checked the map 5 minutes later - clearly there are teething tracking issues. It seems that people are taking the bikes home and not getting penalised for it, perhaps due to a desire for higher usage numbers for investors. Absent customer service also indicates a swamped team. Someone on Facebook pointed out that the Ofo bikes use a number code which does not change, and some users claimed to have taken the Ofo home after their first ride and used it for free thereafter. Still, this is a great idea which works relatively well. I wish the best to these companies. [1] http://www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/2080837/chinas-mobike-takes-ofo-singapore-bike-sharing-competition-heats http://www.scmp.com/tech/china-tech/article/2080837/chinas-m...

rahimnathwani 10y ago
"Someone on Facebook pointed out that the Ofo bikes use a number code which does not change, and some users claimed to have taken the Ofo home after their first ride and used it for free thereafter." There are a lot of these 'stolen' Ofo bikes in Beijing. They usually have an additional regular lock to prevent other Ofo users from unlocking them using the code (which the app will provide, so long as the bike isn't reported as currently being used).
- crdb 10y ago
  I read about it on one of the other commenters' links and immediately thought that somewhere, a product manager was told to "move fast and break things" and "get it launched next month no matter what".

drsim 10y ago

The company behind Copenhagen's docked bikes has gone bankrupt [0]. In a city where it's inexpensive to hire a standard city bike from a shop, the scheme decided to go for expensive electric cycles with GPS map displays. [0] http://cphpost.dk/news/business/company-behind-copenhagens-city-bike-program-going-bankrupt.html http://cphpost.dk/news/business/company-behind-copenhagens-c...

1zee 10y ago
Docks make no sense in Copenhagen, where most everyone knows how to properly park their wheel-locked bikes in a non-intrusive way. Also, most people have their own bikes.

TorKlingberg 10y ago

Does anyone know how these work technically? Does the bike have a mobile data connection, or does the app give you a code to unlock the bike? How does the economics of it work? What does it cost to manufacture a dockless bike, and can they reasonably make it back in fees. Or is this all fueled by VC money?

contingencies 10y ago
I'm pretty sure they're all embedded low-power processors with GSM + SMS unlocking and small simple batteries which recharge when cycled. (There is a visible delay between people scanning the codes and the locks releasing.) GPS is usually not included, instead it uses the GPS location of the phone of the last person who hired it and reported locking it when done. ("Sometimes users search for a bike and it is not where their smartphone says it is") For a redesign, it would be theoretically possible to do the unlock from the consumer app via wifi, bluetooth or NFC and eliminate the mobile connection entirely, using an embedded cryptographic approach similar to banking devices. Yes, it's all VC money.

lorenzhs 10y ago

My city in Germany, Karlsruhe, has had dockless cycle rental and it works great, despite what the armchair experts in this thread say about how this could never work in the Western World. It's 1€ per 30 minutes, 9€ for the day, or 48€ per year for unlimited 30 minute trips. Since 30 minutes suffice to get just about anywhere in the city it's basically unlimited use, and you can just drop off your bike and take the next one a few minutes later if you do get close to the limit.

danbruc 10y ago
Still available in 11 cities such as Berlin, Munich, and Cologne. [1] Not sure if their are any competing providers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_Bike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_Bike
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  Karlsruhe switched to Nextbike, their solution is less high-tech but works fine, too.

smacktoward 10y ago

Seeing those piles of abandoned bicycles reminded me of an episode from American history, the great railroad over-building of the late 1800s. The Civil War had been an explosive period of industrial growth, and when it was over there was a lot of new capital sloshing around looking for someplace to go. Lots of it ended up going into the hot new transportation technology of the time, railroads, which led to a race between rail operators to grow as fast as possible in hopes of seizing a dominant market position and using it to muscle their competitors out of business. (A business plan which will be familiar to folks in the startup world.) All of which resulted in an absolutely enormous amount of track being laid, something like 200,000 miles between 1860 and 1915; which turned out to be much more rail capacity than anybody actually needed, even when rail was at its most economically relevant. But all that growth meant that the railroad sector had become the biggest employer of Americans outside farming, so the deflation of the rail bubble led to the original "Great Depression" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression) and labor turmoil more severe than anything any living American has experienced.[1] I look at all those bikes, all also built by speculative capital, and wonder: how many bubbles are waiting to pop in China? And what will happen when they do? [1] Such as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike_of_1877) and the Pullman Strike of 1894 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike).

contingencies 10y ago
IMHO there are four bubbles popping in China: urbanization, real estate, automobiles and education.