I'm in China and use Mobike a lot. I've said it before and I'll say it again. MoBike totally nails it. In terms of bike sharing they blow everything out of the water. The bikes work, the unlocking via app is quick, the prices are reasonable, and you can park anywhere. To anyone who says China can't innovate, this will take the wind out of your sails. I think they will be the first Chinese startup to become a consumer juggernaut on par with Airbnb or Uber.
Germany had the best tank in WW2. The "royal tiger". But the Russian T34 was much cheaper. They outproduced Germany.
MoBikes are expensive and heavy. They look over-engineered for the problem they are trying to solve. Compare this with the yellow bkes ofo. They seem to be much cheaper to produce and are much lighter (no GPS positioning system, location is saved by last cyclist during checkout).
What are these bikes like, and how much do they weigh. They often remind me of the Bicycle Shaped Object's I had as a kid (and probably are just as heavy). Then again similar Mamacharis haven't been 'disappointing'.
the entire bicycle manufacturing industry is being wiped out thanks to Mobike and its competitor ofo (each has about 50% of market share). one of them ordered 5 million bikes a couple months back, according to the files submitted to the Chinese regulator, the manufacturer building those bikes are making less than 1.5 USD per bike - you don't need to be smart to imagine the conditions faced by those workers actually building the bikes.
bike shops around the country are being shutdown as people no longer buy/upgrade/repair their own bikes, they rent one for 6 USD cent each ride. you see less fun/cool/stupid/crappy bikes on street, they all look the same now.
do they reduce emission? well, rather than walking to the metro stations to catch metro people now ride a mobike/ofo to catch the metro, I don't see any reduced cars on street. There is no stats to back the reduced emission story at all - otherwise you'd be seeing them pointing to those figures jumping up and down on daily basis.
do they make cities better? well, see photos below, remember - they don't clean up their mess, they just deploy their tens of millions cheap bikes onto your streets.
"the entire bicycle manufacturing industry is being wiped out thanks to Mobike and its competitor ofo"
If fewer bicycles are being produced due to higher usage per bike, that's good for the environment, right? Even if reduces the size of the bicycle manufacturing market.
"manufacturer building those bikes are making less than 1.5 USD per bike - you don't need to be smart to imagine the conditions faced by those workers actually building the bikes."
I don't see how the profit made my bicycle manufacturers affects worker conditions. These are determined by the overall labour market, as these workers aren't bicycle specialists.
"I don't see any reduced cars on street."
The effect would have to be huge in order for you to be able to notice it. (I'm assuming you didn't actually collect data.)
"do they make cities better?"
Yes. The subway journey from my place to work is unacceptably long, due to the long walk at one end. Mobike has solved that problem. Three-wheeler electric tuktuks riding the wrong way down the service lane are less prevalent now, too, which is a bonus.
Gaode map traffic data show that driving users within 5 km of travel accounted for more than 30%, travel accounted for the largest proportion. From the shared bicycle travel mileage data, more than 90% of the shared bicycle travel scene concentrated in less than 5 km, which shows a short distance travel, sharing the bike instead of driving a large potential.
Compared with the first quarter of last year, first-tier cities driving users within 5 km of short-distance travel accounted for has been reduced and relatively obvious decline in Beijing, driving within 5 km by 3.8%, Shanghai 3.2% reduction, this phenomenon may be associated with the emergence of shared bicycles A short distance driving trip.
It definitely reduced my frequency in driving to work. I had to walk for 30 mins on my way to work, so I preferred driving. Now it's reduced by 2/3--a ten minute bike ride. Instead of being caught in the traffic with a full bladder, I now get more exercise and get to read books on the train, even though it's packed and sweaty. I don't think my use scenario is particularly special.
The real issue is that there's no recycling strategy and these companies don't know what to do with worn/broken bikes, seemingly choosing instead to throw them all on a big pile.
> the manufacturer building those bikes are making less than 1.5 USD per bike
That sounds like stupidity on side of the bicycle manufacturers. I've heard anecdotally the opposite, that the new ride sharing schemes have revitalized the bicycle industry.
I was in Beijing 4 years ago, and all of the famous bicycles were gone. The bicycle lanes were used for cars. Now they cleared the lanes again, and people are riding.
I'm not sure the current details are sustainable, but the idea in general has potential to be a game changer.
The bicycle industry is the least of the workers' worries. Automation will be a bloodbath. I'm reminded of that factory which "shed" 90% of its workforce a year ago.
People are talking about Mobike being innovators, and their business sounds like it's doing really well, but bike sharing is a concept that's been around for a while.
Melbourne Bike Share[1] was founded in 2010, though apparently the bike sharing concept was around in Europe since the 60s[2].
People suggest Melbourne Bike Share was largely unsuccessful due to mandatory helmet laws in Australia making them a bit inconvenient. I'm sure there will be idiosyncrasies in certain places which make the concept less appealing.
In saying that though, I really wish there was a service like this when I lived in Guangzhou. I think it's a great fit for very dense cities.
The sharing schemes in Europe and MoBike are completely different. The dockless nature of MoBike, Ofo, Obike etc is an order of magnitude game changer. I pick up a bike from below my block, ride it anywhere and just leave it there. I use it many times a day. When I lived in Europe I never once used the docked bike sharing services.
The melbourne scheme failed not because of the helmet laws, but because of its poor coverage. How many streets in inner city suburbs had those shared bikes stations for pick up/drop? Quite often you use those bikes for 10 minutes and then had to spend the next 15 minutes to find the location where you can drop it - that is after another 15 minutes spent earlier to pick up your shared bike.
I would love to introduce this to my country, Germany. I think in large cities it might work well, especially for the last meters after public transport, but also in university towns. We already have rentable bikes, but Ofo and Mobike proved that you don't have to have overengineered docking stations and complicated locks. If you let people just leave the bikes where they want, it works surprisingly well.
Problems are:
- I have no capital, and you'd need a high investment upfront. Even the simplest bike is not going to cost less than 200-300 €, and those are not the most durable. Also, in Germany you require light. However, I think Ofo has proven that you do not need GPS or electronic locks (initially), and you don't need docking stations.
- Germans sometimes hate new things. It is my gut feeling that I'd get a lot of resistance. Especially after the first accident, or the first bike gets thrown into a river. One problem is that in Beijing, apparently there is an Ofo graveyard. I haven't seen it myself, but broken Ofo bikes are piling meters high. You just need one bad competitor who creates a mess, and the whole idea is in danger.
But:
- As a renter, you are not obliged to get insurance for the riders AFAIK.
- Bike infrastructure is good already.
- It should be possible to make a sustainable business, but you'd have to reach a certain scale.
Don't you have Callabike in your city? It's exactly the same concept, the lock isn't complicated and it all works like a charm. Use the app to find one, ride to wherever you want to, leave it there and log out.
Then there's Nextbike, which I haven't used yet but works similarly and stuff from local public transportation companies like MVG Rad in Munich which has stations but allows you to leave the bike also in a certain area. How does Mobike provide more than these offerings?
Mobike and other sharing bicycle competitors has been in a fierce fight for three months.
From sometime this April to two to three weeks ago, it is not only free riding a Mobike, but there is also a chance of random amount of cash gift, known as Hong Bao. I have personally earned about $40 of cash by riding Mobike, the amount of which almost reaches the deposit for renting the bike.
because they are both backed by major investors with access to unlimited cash. they don't invest in those bikes, your deposit covers that, they don't manage those bikes, what else to spend their cash on?
well, they picked the easiest way - they pay their users to use their services.
Governments should be forcing these operators to place the bike deposits in a trust account, rather than using the money for capital to fund expansion. I paid $50 USD as a "deposit" for oBike, however in the future when one of these companies fails, they will take millions in deposits with them. Especially if the bikes are getting stolen or wrecked.
Mobike is innovative, however, the competition is becoming so fierce with at least 10 major copy cats here in Shanghai. The unit economics of this model is being destroyed by the follower mindset in China's tech scene.
[+] [-] IIAOPSW|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jk2323|8 years ago|reply
Germany had the best tank in WW2. The "royal tiger". But the Russian T34 was much cheaper. They outproduced Germany.
MoBikes are expensive and heavy. They look over-engineered for the problem they are trying to solve. Compare this with the yellow bkes ofo. They seem to be much cheaper to produce and are much lighter (no GPS positioning system, location is saved by last cyclist during checkout).
[+] [-] colordrops|8 years ago|reply
Also among their competitors they have the name most likely to work in Western countries, compared to competitors such as "Ofo".
[+] [-] maimaiml|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dis-sys|8 years ago|reply
bike shops around the country are being shutdown as people no longer buy/upgrade/repair their own bikes, they rent one for 6 USD cent each ride. you see less fun/cool/stupid/crappy bikes on street, they all look the same now.
do they reduce emission? well, rather than walking to the metro stations to catch metro people now ride a mobike/ofo to catch the metro, I don't see any reduced cars on street. There is no stats to back the reduced emission story at all - otherwise you'd be seeing them pointing to those figures jumping up and down on daily basis.
do they make cities better? well, see photos below, remember - they don't clean up their mess, they just deploy their tens of millions cheap bikes onto your streets.
http://img.mp.itc.cn/upload/20170327/3e5e188412ef46ca892d20f...
http://s2.imbiker.cn/201705/22/b25b38ba8cda6df9c686657044f48...
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|8 years ago|reply
If fewer bicycles are being produced due to higher usage per bike, that's good for the environment, right? Even if reduces the size of the bicycle manufacturing market.
"manufacturer building those bikes are making less than 1.5 USD per bike - you don't need to be smart to imagine the conditions faced by those workers actually building the bikes."
I don't see how the profit made my bicycle manufacturers affects worker conditions. These are determined by the overall labour market, as these workers aren't bicycle specialists.
"I don't see any reduced cars on street."
The effect would have to be huge in order for you to be able to notice it. (I'm assuming you didn't actually collect data.)
"do they make cities better?"
Yes. The subway journey from my place to work is unacceptably long, due to the long walk at one end. Mobike has solved that problem. Three-wheeler electric tuktuks riding the wrong way down the service lane are less prevalent now, too, which is a bonus.
[+] [-] ttflee|8 years ago|reply
https://translate.google.com.hk/translate?hl=zh-CN&ie=UTF8&p...
Quote from the link above:
Gaode map traffic data show that driving users within 5 km of travel accounted for more than 30%, travel accounted for the largest proportion. From the shared bicycle travel mileage data, more than 90% of the shared bicycle travel scene concentrated in less than 5 km, which shows a short distance travel, sharing the bike instead of driving a large potential.
Compared with the first quarter of last year, first-tier cities driving users within 5 km of short-distance travel accounted for has been reduced and relatively obvious decline in Beijing, driving within 5 km by 3.8%, Shanghai 3.2% reduction, this phenomenon may be associated with the emergence of shared bicycles A short distance driving trip.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] schuke|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teknologist|8 years ago|reply
http://oi63.tinypic.com/e19s7t.jpg
[+] [-] captainmuon|8 years ago|reply
That sounds like stupidity on side of the bicycle manufacturers. I've heard anecdotally the opposite, that the new ride sharing schemes have revitalized the bicycle industry.
I was in Beijing 4 years ago, and all of the famous bicycles were gone. The bicycle lanes were used for cars. Now they cleared the lanes again, and people are riding.
I'm not sure the current details are sustainable, but the idea in general has potential to be a game changer.
[+] [-] Bakary|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skbohra123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netheril96|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beefsack|8 years ago|reply
People suggest Melbourne Bike Share was largely unsuccessful due to mandatory helmet laws in Australia making them a bit inconvenient. I'm sure there will be idiosyncrasies in certain places which make the concept less appealing.
In saying that though, I really wish there was a service like this when I lived in Guangzhou. I think it's a great fit for very dense cities.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_Bike_Share
[2]: "Runde Sache". Readers Digest Deutschland (in German). 06/11: 74–75. June 2011.
[+] [-] rorykoehler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dis-sys|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netheril96|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] captainmuon|8 years ago|reply
Problems are:
- I have no capital, and you'd need a high investment upfront. Even the simplest bike is not going to cost less than 200-300 €, and those are not the most durable. Also, in Germany you require light. However, I think Ofo has proven that you do not need GPS or electronic locks (initially), and you don't need docking stations.
- Germans sometimes hate new things. It is my gut feeling that I'd get a lot of resistance. Especially after the first accident, or the first bike gets thrown into a river. One problem is that in Beijing, apparently there is an Ofo graveyard. I haven't seen it myself, but broken Ofo bikes are piling meters high. You just need one bad competitor who creates a mess, and the whole idea is in danger.
But:
- As a renter, you are not obliged to get insurance for the riders AFAIK.
- Bike infrastructure is good already.
- It should be possible to make a sustainable business, but you'd have to reach a certain scale.
[+] [-] sveme|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rorykoehler|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttflee|8 years ago|reply
From sometime this April to two to three weeks ago, it is not only free riding a Mobike, but there is also a chance of random amount of cash gift, known as Hong Bao. I have personally earned about $40 of cash by riding Mobike, the amount of which almost reaches the deposit for renting the bike.
[+] [-] dis-sys|8 years ago|reply
well, they picked the easiest way - they pay their users to use their services.
[+] [-] wellinever|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owens99|8 years ago|reply