Peddling a bright idea

Bike sharing has taken off in a big way, and one of the main players is expanding at a rapid rate

"China used to be the Kingdom of Bicycles," says Huang Xue, head of communications for bike-sharing app Mobike, referring to China's long-standing fondness for bicycles.

She is discussing the ambitious company's plans for expansion.

Having launched early this year in Singapore, the company has also been adding new cities in China to its roster on a near-weekly basis in recent months. With the addition of Fuzhou in February, it reached 15 cities on the Chinese mainland; by the time you read this there will probably be more. Cities with the biggest Mobike presence, such as Beijing and Shanghai, already have more than 100,000 bikes each.

Cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have more than 100,000 of Mobike's bikes each. Provided to China Daily

The company's success is due to a number of factors, but it basically boils down to being able to rent bikes with your smartphone without needing to spend a long time seeking out a bike station. One of the founders of Mobike, Hu Weiwei, came up with the idea in 2014 after working at a media startup focused on automobiles. Her work schedule involved traveling to and from work in a car, as smog swept both the streets and the news headlines. During a trip to France she used a bike rental service but found that the need to locate one of a limited number of stations for retrieving and depositing bikes was a big problem, particularly for travelers in a new city.

Mobike's bikes don't require a station, but can simply be parked and locked by the road. Huang emphasizes the "smart technology", which she says is crucial to the company's success, and is one of the key things distinguishing it from newer competitors that have popped up.

"If you don't have the smart technology, you can't even find the bikes," she says, adding that without this technology, the bikes may be left neglected outside for too long and could thus become more of a liability for local governments than a benefit.

The bikes come in two different forms - first there was a heavier model, identified by the five metal bars (inlieu of spokes) on the wheels, and later, a lighter model that has a basket made out of solar panels. The bikes were primarily designed for sturdiness, so as to deter vandalism and give them a long shelf life. This is part of the reason why the older model has no spokes or chain, which would increase maintenance requirements. The bikes also generate power, which is then used to power the smart technology and GPS.

So with all these high-tech components and quality designs, why aren't the bikes a popular target for thieves?

"They use non-standard parts. If thieves want to sell those, the bikes are useless to them," Huang says. Admittedly, this doesn't solve all the problems; sometimes, instead of leaving them in approved areas by the road, people take the bikes into their buildings or homes so they can use them exclusively. Huang says that police across China have been very helpful in these cases and, using GPS tracking and video cameras, have been able to recover stolen bikes.

The company is having a number of effects on transport networks. Aside from the explicitly stated goal of getting people on bikes to ease traffic congestion, Huang points to some interesting figures regarding usage periods. "We found people using them at 2 and 3 am in certain cities in South China. This is a period when there's basically no public transport and there are people working late shifts who need to get to and from work. There are illegal pedi-cabs at this hour, but we think our bikes are providing a safer alternative."

Part of Mobike's advantage comes from being the first - its subsequent rapid expansion helps ensure it has more bikes on the ground than competitors, making it more convenient to find and use. In order to fuel this expansion, it needs to be able to create a great many bikes. This is where its partners come in.

It needs the capacity to manufacture, at high speed, both the technology required for the GPS systems as well as the bikes themselves. A recent partnership with Foxconn, the manufacturing company perhaps best known for manufacturing iPhones, has doubled their ability to produce bikes and potentially reduced costs.

This is a significant development, as one of the key challenges the company faced related to the expense of the bikes. The first, heavier model was expensive to produce, which was reflected in the cost to rent it, especially when compared with those produced by rival services such as Ofo.

The new, lighter models are cheaper, but price is certainly still an issue. The partnership with Foxconn will not only provide new funding for the company, but also means the bikes can be produced more quickly and cheaply, thus fueling expansion.

Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com

TheWorld of Chinese

Word box

共享單車

gòng xiǎng dānchē

bicycle-sharing

共享單車app

gòng xiǎng dānchē app

Smartphone app for bike-sharing

騎行

qí xíng

Riding

掃碼騎車

sǎomǎ qíchē

Scan a QR code and ride the bicycle

公共交通

gōnggòng jiāotōng

Public transport

我能把單車停在哪里?

wǒ néng bǎ dānchē tíng zài nǎ li?

Where can I park the bike?

綠色出行

lǜsè chūxíng

Green travel or commuting, on foot or by bike

租自行車

zū zìxíngchē

Rent a bike