Bike sharing gains tremendous popularity in China. Here is a video from one year ago that describes how it works. Compare to traditional biking sharing in the United States, there are four key differences. First, these bikes don't required you to return the bike to a bike stand. When you finish the bike, you can just lock it in any available area. Second, the quantity of these bikes is massive. As long as you are in the city, you will have a least one bike available for you to use within 100 feet. Third, every bike is GPS embedded and has a QR code in the back. The unlock process will take less than 20 seconds once you register yourself with the app. Fourth, the cost of renting these bike is extremely low. When the companies competing for the market in 2017, they offer as low as 30 cents for a month after you put down around 40 dollar deposit. Right now, they offer 5 dollar a month or 16 cents per hour.
Since the quantity of the bikes getting massive, many bikes can not dispose of correctly. The enormous amount of bikes become a burden to the public traffic. You will see these bikes jam the sidewalk and road in some highly populated area. Below is video describes the situation.
Great Blog Post! Sounds like a great idea. I question what would happen if someone took the bike home? Or are the allowed to do this?
ReplyDeleteGreat description. Just want you know that Mobike already came to the U.S. market in 2017. https://mobike.com/global/blog/post/mobike-dc
ReplyDeleteThe disposal is a problem because maintaining those bikes is more expensive than building new bikes. So companies prefer to dispose old or broken bikes than fix them. http://www.xinhuanet.com/fortune/2018-01/18/c_1122275190.htm