
How 'dockless' cycles flooded China and are heading overseas - oska
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/22/bike-wars-dockless-china-millions-bicycles-hangzhou
======
jogjayr
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...](http://www.businessinsider.com/smart-bike-sharing-startup-is-looking-
to-blaze-a-new-path-2013-6)

~~~
ezzaf
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
Barcelona has electrical assisted (docking) bikes.

~~~
lovemenot
Tokyo too

------
imron
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...](http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/01/24/shanghais-
mobike-mania-invites-competition)

[http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/02/22/ofo-
renta...](http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2017/02/22/ofo-rental-bikes-
are-getting-owned)

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
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
"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
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.

~~~
Luc
I don't quite get it, since regular bikes are parked like that where I live,
legally. I haven't seen piles yet.

~~~
rahimnathwani
When you park your own bike, even a cheap one, you are somewhat careful about
where you park it, because if someone knocks it over or moves it, it affects
you directly.

The same is not true of a Mobike or Ofo, so people are more likely to park
inconsiderately (e.g. blocking the blind person's path, or the whole width of
a narrow pavement).

I was pushing a stroller recently and had to move off the pavement onto the
road, to avoid a line of dockless rental bikes that were blocking my intended
path.

~~~
imron
> e.g. blocking the blind person's path

To be fair, the braille paths in China aren't exactly blind-friendly in the
first place:

[http://www.scmp.com/news/china-
insider/article/1299761/beiji...](http://www.scmp.com/news/china-
insider/article/1299761/beijings-blind-criticise-poorly-planned-pathways)

------
crdb
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-m...](http://www.scmp.com/tech/china-
tech/article/2080837/chinas-mobike-takes-ofo-singapore-bike-sharing-
competition-heats)

~~~
rahimnathwani
"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
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".

------
cstrat
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
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.

------
lorenzhs
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
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
Karlsruhe switched to Nextbike, their solution is less high-tech but works
fine, too.

------
awongh
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)

~~~
gpvos
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.

~~~
algesten
That's quite expensive. In Barcelona the scheme is a fixed €47 subscription
per year though you can only use the bike for 30 mins per ride (after that
there's a surcharge).

~~~
mercer
I suppose higher wages in Holland play a role, but mostly the system is just
very different from Barcelona (or at least what I remember from being there a
few times a few years ago).

The OV-fiets is a bike you get at a train station (maybe some metro stations
too; not sure), and typically you'll use it to get from there to your
destination and then back to the train station.

The system in Barcelona (and most other cities too, I think) is more about
getting from A to B in the city and there are pick-up / drop-off points around
the city.

In the former scenario charging by day makes a lot more sense, I guess.
There's 1.3 bikes or so per Dutch person, so few people would have use for a
Barcelona-style approach.

It's similar with these car sharing services. The on we have across cities is
a bit like the OV-fiets: you pick a car up at a designated parking spot and
return it to the same spot, often as a 'supplement' to your longer-distance
public transport. Only in Amsterdam (AFAIK) we also have companies that allow
you to pick up a car nearby and leave it anywhere at your destination.

------
smacktoward
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
IMHO there are four bubbles popping in China: urbanization, real estate,
automobiles and education.

------
drsim
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-c...](http://cphpost.dk/news/business/company-behind-copenhagens-
city-bike-program-going-bankrupt.html)

~~~
1zee
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.

------
erikig
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
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/)

------
TorKlingberg
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
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.

------
aphextron
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.

~~~
JimmyAustin
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
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.

~~~
drozycki
Can you speak to how much the authorities in China care about bike theft?

~~~
sremani
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.

