
Ofo Beats a Retreat From the Dockless Bikesharing Battle - danso
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/08/the-great-dockless-bikesharing-shakeout/566891/
======
jpatokal
It's similar here in Sydney, where Mobike is the last company standing on the
wreckage of ofo, Obike and ReddiGo. The local lunacy is not $50 fees per bike,
but a requirement for cyclists to wear helmets or get slapped with $300+
fines, which is just not compatible with dockless share bikes.

Some personal bloggage on the topic:

[https://gyrovague.com/2018/05/19/mofobikalypse-mobike-is-
syd...](https://gyrovague.com/2018/05/19/mofobikalypse-mobike-is-sydneys-last-
bike-share-still-standing/)

[https://gyrovague.com/2018/02/19/mofobike-a-personal-
compari...](https://gyrovague.com/2018/02/19/mofobike-a-personal-comparison-
of-sydneys-bikeshare-programs-and-why-theyre-all-doomed/)

~~~
anitil
I have an honest question, I hope it doesn't offend. Why use one of these? Is
it because you don't want to take a bike on a train to Town Hall? How would it
compare to getting a foldable bike/skateboard/scooter?

In my travels I can't see how to justify using them seeing as I got my bike
for maybe $350 including locks, lights and helmet.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
They’re a godsend for visitors. I recently attended the OpenStreetMap
conference in Milan and used Mobikes to get around - so much easier than
fussing with bus and metro, let alone packing my own folding bike into a
suitcase.

------
blhack
In Phoenix, ofo was basically a madsive donation of bikes to the homeless
population. There even seemed to be a cottage industry pop up of people who
could break the locks off.

~~~
peatmoss
I’m pretty sure this has been the case in many places. I can’t help but feel
that this is a positive externality.

I sure hope someone doing research with homeless populations has begun to look
into questions of whether or not the flood of bikes into markets has improved
conditions for homeless folks. Social services can be hard to get to, and I
could imagine these bikes serving a valuable purpose.

I also wonder if the flood of trivially thefted bikeshare bikes has reduced
theft of other privately owned bikes. Presumably at least some bike theft is
to satisfy a transportation need. If there are limitless Ofo bikes that nobody
gets too fussed about when they go missing, perhaps someone is less likely to
go prowling a garage?

~~~
burger_moon
Every tent camp in Seattle has at least a few of these bikes sitting around so
I guess it's helping them get around the city if that's what you are
wondering.

~~~
peatmoss
Yeah, I’ve seen that too. I’m more curious if anyone has done or is doing more
principled research into the effect more bikes has had.

------
chanind
Even in China Ofo is failing. In Shanghai there are unused ofo bikes
everywhere. The problem is that they took the approach of spamming the market
with large numbers of super cheap bikes, so their bikes are really shoddy. I
use Mobike and Hellobike constantly, but with ofo every time I try to use
their bikes here I find they're broken in some new and exciting way. I don't
know anyone who uses ofo except as a desperate last resort if all the mobikes
and Hellobikes are gone. The rumor I keep hearing in Shanghai is that ofo is
going to go out of business.

~~~
vorg
Mobike is a lot more user-friendly because the bike unlocks itself when you
scan the code or trigger the bluetooth signal, whereas the Ofo app sends you a
numeric code which you must punch yourself to unlock the bike. Ofo is like the
half-generation of bikeshare between 1st-gen docked bikes and 2nd-gen dockless
auto-unlocking ones.

~~~
sewer_bird
To be fair, most Ofo bikes in Shanghai have the same auto-unlock feature in
later Marks... maybe about 75% of the ones I've tried.

~~~
vorg
I'm in Wuhan. I don't use Ofo but I keep an eye out and have only noticed a
single Ofo bike in a hundred over the last few months with an auto-unlock.

Obviously, the bikeshare companies roll out their newest stock in Beijing and
Shanghai. I'd guess most Ofo bikes in all of China still use the manual
unlock, and will do so for a while yet.

------
bfuller
In Dallas people unhappy with the eyesore of littered dockless bikes have
started vandalizing them en masse like they did in Paris. These ofo bikes were
by far the easiest to steal (the locking mechanism could be removed with a
screw driver). I am personally a fan of the dockless bikes if they have the
side effect of making our city more bikeable.

------
baybal2
In Kazakhstan, somebody managed to steal _all of their bikes, to the last
one_. That probably took them months.

------
prawn
Would the bike companies be nervous about the scooter companies? I can
appreciate that bikes have a health component, but the scooters take up less
room parked on streets, easier to carry down a flight of stairs, less likely
to arrive sweating, etc.

------
02thoeva
The only people I see using these in the UK are drug dealers, who have smacked
off the lock with a brick.

