
It’s not about the bike: The real story of oBike and what it can teach us - unicornporn
https://cyclingtips.com/2018/08/lessons-learned-from-the-real-story-of-obike-or-why-we-cant-have-nice-things/
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danpalmer
I tried oBike in London last year because it seemed like it would be more
convenient than the "Boris Bikes" that the government provide (TfL to be
precise).

I used one once and it was probably the worst bike I've ever ridden, it was
like cycling through treacle. I thought it might have been just that bike so
tried once more and it was the same on a different bike.

The route I take home takes me 17 minutes on a Boris Bike (which are built
like a tank and not at all a fast bike to ride), and I typically finish
feeling like I've exercised but not feeling out of breath for more than a few
seconds. The oBike took 25 minutes and I came off feeling like I'd had a very
tough workout. They are just not good enough quality.

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jaclaz
The article is very nice, but I have to disagree with the "absolving the
citizens/users" part.

It is not like these bikes self-dump themselves in rivers, not Obikes in
Melbourne, nor Mobikes in Manchester [0] or in any other place.

That the Obike is (was) a sort of get money quick scheme or not and that the
bikes were not particularly comfortable/easy to use is not a valid reason for
the amount of vandalism reported.

Surely it is nothing "uniquely naughty" about the Australians, but it is
something "universally naughty" that shouldn't be IMHO dismissed so easily or
simply considered a "new normal" of some kind.

[0]
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manche...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/16/manchesters-
bike-share-scheme-isnt-working-because-people-dont-know-how-to-share)

~~~
patall
I agree that there is a vandalism problem with such a service but that has
also a lot to do with the users. I first noticed these bikes not because of
their bright colors or because I heard about them but because they repeatedly
blocked my pedestrian walkway. We have a lot of bikes around here but none of
them are parked like these bikes that the last customer just wanted to get rid
of and I more than once got the feeling that I should just throw that bike
down into the water to get rid of the obstacle (and what kept me from doing
that was only that than the city would still have to get rid of it). However,
I have never had any problems with any of the bike-sharing services that offer
fixed stations were you get and return your bike and I think a lot of people
do so. So in my perspective, it has nothing to do with "universal
naughtiness", just that some of these companies are ass-hole, law ignoring
ponzi schemes.

~~~
scarejunba
The part that gets me about the sentiment expressed in posts like this are
that there are loads of people who will angrily just do things that make my
life worse. They think they're stopping the asshole law-ignoring company but
in truth they're just law-ignoring assholes themselves.

So they perceive some war between them and some company and impose that cost
upon me - an innocent third party. I don't care if there's a scooter or bike
by the side of the road because it isn't even an inconvenience, but when
you're throwing it onto the street or into a water body, you're not a hero. To
me, you're a worse villain than the company.

Now you have the restraint to not do this but there is a véritable plethora of
morons who do not.

~~~
patall
Did not see this before but have to reply anyways:

> there are loads of people who will angrily just do things that make my life
> worse.

But unfortunately, those are especially the users of those companies. I do not
care if there are bikes parked at the side of the road (and do the same
everyday myself) but a user who does not own said bike and is not forced to
park it in a sensible way will, more often than not, just drop it whereever it
is the most convenient, often in the way of others. I have seen people with a
stroller walk on the street because someone parked their rented vehicle
(especially cars are prone to this) at the next free spot that was free for
exactly that reason.

I do not and never planned to obstruct anyone else path with a bike because it
obstructed my path (and can honestly not understand why you would think
anything like this from my comment as I especially point that out), but the
users of these services do and I feel helpless against those everyone-but-
themself ignoring humans (and to cite you, those are the people 'that make my
life worse').

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jillesvangurp
Obike failed because of bad execution. Bikes were malfucntioning, hard to
find, and they upset the locals. A few of their competitors seem to be doing
better. I've tried out a few in Berlin before settling on Mobike. Obike has
all but disappeared here. But Mobike seems to be pretty popular and is very
similar conceptually.

Part of the attraction is flat fee subscriptions. You can either pay like a
euro for half an hour, or just get a flat fee subscription and grab a bike
whenever you need one. I'm currently on a 20 euro for 3 months plan with
mobike; which is really good value. I grab one a few times per week. Multiple
times on some days. I'm saving a ton of money on public transport. And I get a
bit of good exercise (these bikes are hard work).

Financially, this makes a lot of sense. They are getting reliable revenue from
me and probably a couple of thousand users plus some less frequent revenue
from maybe 10-20k users. To keep the money flowing, all they need to do is
make sure that they have enough bikes distributed around the city.

These bikes are not that expensive. Probably they cost around 100-150 each.
Maybe less. Very sturdy, not a lot of parts that can break, etc. So, Mobike
did the obvious thing: flood the city with bikes. From what I understand they
have at least around 5000 bikes on the streets here and are planning to deploy
even more. Whatever it is, the end result is that I can find a mobike whenever
I need one with relatively little effort.

At 100 euro per bike, we are talking half a million of investment for 5k
bikes. With thousands or tens of thousands of users, this becomes meaningful
revenue pretty quickly. In my case, if I keep on paying their flatfee, I'll
end up paying around 80 per year. Only a few thousand people like me means
they earn back their investment in a year. I imagine there's other cost as
well but probably the per bike expenses are pretty modest. Ballpark, they
should be making money.

From what I can see most of their competitors are trying to compete with far
less bikes and failing. The trick is having enough bikes on the street to keep
users hooked and doing that in as many big cities as possible. That's more or
less what Mobike and their VC funded competitors are doing.

------
robotmay
We have nextbike in Cardiff and they've been a huge hit. There's static points
to return them to, which most people seem to do, and the pricing is very
sensible. There's no security deposit like with oBike, and they've rigged up
some deals with the local council and universities to get more people using
them. The quality of the bikes is alright, and I just carry a keyring with a
few utility allen-keys on it in case anything needs tightening (though they
are prompt at fixing broken bikes, it's handy to be able to tighten something
up if you're in a rush).

[https://www.nextbike.co.uk/en/news/another-27-nextbike-
locat...](https://www.nextbike.co.uk/en/news/another-27-nextbike-locations-
have-been-announced-for-cardiff/)

Now if only our council would design cycle lanes that weren't massively
fucking stupid, we'd be golden.

Sidenote: I was sat in a bar having locked one of the nextbikes up outside
(lock through the wheel, on its stand), and got a very entertaining 5 minutes
watching a woman and her partner try to steal it. They didn't seem to
understand that it was locked. They're also fecking heavy, so I'm not sure how
far they'd have gotten with it if they had the brainpower to move it in the
first place.

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_nalply
Where I live there's Velospot (velospot.ch), and it works rather well. The
differences: using a RFID card, not dockless, an organisation in the city
itself and cooperation with the local jobless employment institution, a yearly
fee and usage fees for usages above one hour.

However, in a neighbouring city a competing bike sharing company also failed.
They misdesigned the locks and after a security hole went public all their
bikes got stolen.

It seems that bike sharing is really difficult!

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frabbit
Bike sharing schemes were widely predicted to fail in Australia due to their
compulsory helmet laws for cyclists. The argument was that few people would
want to put on a shared helmet, and that preparation involved in having to
bring a helmet would deter casual use -- which is the whole point of such
schemes.

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CydeWeys
I don't disagree with the overall thrust of the article, but the author
doesn't know what venture capital is:

"Assuming oBike were gunning for a deposit from a user base one-tenth the
population of Sydney and Melbourne – that’s still just under one million
users. If each of them paid $69.99, you just amassed nearly $70 million in
venture capital, from an operation where your fleet cost perhaps $120,000, at
most."

Money your users pay you is _revenue_ , not venture capital. This mistake
repeats several times throughout the article. The author seems to think that
the point of a startup is to get "venture capital" in the form of revenue from
customers, when it really exists to get venture capital in the form of
investments from VCs.

~~~
antpls
I think the author is aware of the difference. His claim is specifically that
the whole enterprise wasn't made to provide a bike-sharing service, it was
made, or evolved, to use the user's deposits as a fund for something else (on
the users behalf).

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leoedin
I hope we can find a sustainable model with these bikes. They are really
useful in the cities they're in. I've used them in the UK in London and
Bristol, and it really feels rather magical when you stumble across a bike,
realise it's by far the fastest way to get where you're going, and within
minutes you're riding off.

Perhaps the solution is a hybrid of the fixed dock cycle schemes which are
really capital intensive to install, and these completely free-floating
schemes. Maybe some docks with only RFID chips and no active electronics. Make
the docks steel frames which are just bolted to the ground rather than cast in
concrete, and maybe installation is affordable.

~~~
ar0
There exist quite a few attempts at this and most work pretty well in my
experience:

\- Publibike in Switzerland (publibike.ch) operates your idea of cheaper
docks: they are just a metal sign next to parking space with some (bluetooth-
like) electronics in them to communicate with the bikes. You can only return
your bike at one of these parking spaces. At the same time, they avoid the
cost of installing fixed docks for each bike. They had some problems with
their locks on the bikes not working properly, but these seem to be resolved
and otherwise they work really well IMO.

\- INDIGO weel ([https://www.indigoweel.com/](https://www.indigoweel.com/)) is
a free-floating system, but not totally free floating: you can only return
your bike in GPS-fenced "allowed areas", which should be bike parking spots,
avoiding the chaos of completely free-floating bikes. As GPS fences are quite
broad, this doesn't work perfectly but it helps. Some of the schemes operated
by Nextbike in Germany also work like that (they also operate with fixed docks
in some cities, though).

I prefer these dock- or semi-dock-based systems to the totally free-floating
ones, as if you know where the docks are its much easier and more reliable to
actually find a bike there. Especially if you are travelling in a group, it
will be a challenge to "collect" enough bikes with a free-floating system
(unless you have so many bikes standing around on the streets that they become
a public nuisance).

Nevertheless, I do not think judging free-floating systems by oBike is a good
idea: oBike was uniquely bad in many respects (the quality of the bikes, the
lack of local staff and support, the lack of GPS on the bikes, the need for a
deposit etc.) and other free-floating schemes such as Limebike seem to work
quite well.

~~~
stevekemp
The docks, here in Helsinki, are integrated well with the bus & tram API/app.
That means you can see how many bikes are sat at each dock-point around the
city, in real-time, which is pretty good.

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RufusJacksons
It was a weird few months seeing the bikes everywhere, but only ever seeing
them ridden by groups of young kids. I asked a group of Sudanese boys how they
liked them, and they showed me how they jimmyed the locks and then rode them
for a while until ditching them. Poorly planned system from a hardware
perspective - the venture capital idea makes sense to me

------
mianos
One rather long creative wiring essay on why it's actually O-Bike's fault
delinquents dumped their bikes in the creek? Conspiracy theories? Shady
tactics about collecting data by lending bikes without GPSs? This one has
everything but sense.

~~~
vorg
The whole _point_ of these bikeshare services is that each bike has a GPS and
the central system can livefeed the guaranteed location of nearby available
bikes to a user's phone. If O-bike didn't have GPS, then it wasn't a real
bikeshare service.

I wouldn't trust Mobike to be more about the bike than O-bike was, though. A
few months after joining Mobike in China earlier this year, they decreased the
default scale on the location map in their app when you first open it. Within
a few months, the usual number of nearby bikes had noticeably decreased, but
this was obscured in the app map because of the smaller scaling. It seems like
they changed the app map scaling _because_ they were planning the decrease in
bikes in the local area. Perhaps they had collected enough deposits in this
district, and moved the bikes in bulk to another district of the city with
fewer signups to make it look like bikes were always available there, thus
encouraging people there to pay deposits.

