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From the end of the article, Uber explains why they recycled the old bikes not transferred to Jump in the sale, > But given many significant issues - including
by cbuq 6y ago
From the end of the article, Uber explains why they recycled the old bikes not transferred to Jump in the sale,
> But given many significant issues - including maintenance, liability, safety concerns, and a lack of consumer-grade charging equipment - we decided the best approach was to responsibly recycle them.
Unfortunately seems to most responsible way to handle these bikes. I see the charging issue being a major problem. Trek just switched their rentable bikes to electric in my city, I wonder if they face the same fate.
And settle down everyone, they are being recycled, not dumped in a hole.
- jrace 6y ago>And settle down everyone, they are being recycled, not dumped in a hole. Recycling is only slightly better than throwing away. There is no conceivable reason these could not have been re-sued. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - is in that order for a good reason.
- deelowe 6y ago> There is no conceivable reason these could not have been re-sued. These seem like fairly conceivable reasons to me: maintenance, liability, safety concerns, and a lack of consumer-grade charging equipment
- labster 6y agoWhy sell people a product when you can offer them a service and make even more money? Reduce and Reuse are bad for business, making Recycle the only economically viable option. EDIT: @downvoter, can you tell me how our business climate doesn't suck this way?
- xenocyon 6y agoCorrect, and furthermore the environmental gap keeps decreasing with each step to the right: in terms of impact, recycling is much closer to landfilling than it is to reusing.
- WalterBright 6y agoWhy on earth would a bike battery need some special charger?
- voldacar 6y agoYeah I thought that was weird too. All you need for a DC source is a few diodes and a capacitor, after all
- mhh__ 6y agoCharging batteries is usually a bit more complicated than pumping DC into them. In this case one assumes the battery itself isn't odd, but it uses a different type of cable or similar (Don't know what the capacity is but I assume it would be high enough to need serial and sense lines on the charging cable)
- mdorazio 6y agoYou need actual charge control logic for a modern rechargeable battery so that it doesn't overheat or malfunction, but you can get multi-amp Li-ion/LiPo chargers online for ~$25 if you're able to find and attach the right connectors. This also seems like a situation where the maker community could easily open source replicate whatever the custom connector to the bike requires.
- deelowe 6y agoYou can't just hook up any lipo charger. They need to be able to charge and balance the cells individually, which could be simple or extremely difficult depending on the arrangement and connector.
- deelowe 6y agoLIPO chargers require logic because they have to switch from constant voltage to constant current. Also, while required, you probably want to monitor temperature as well both because charging when it's too cold will damage the battery and LIPOs have a tendency to thermally runaway when they start to fail.