The Bike-Share Oversupply in China: Huge Piles of Abandoned and Broken Bicycles

[Ross]

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/ ... es/556268/

[Ivanerrol]

Some one in my area removes the saddle from any bike share bike left around.
Instant rubbish.

[Lan Wing]

Fascinating photo-story on the link you attached, Ross. Anyone who only loo pics in this forum should have a closer look.
Thanks for sharing.

[twowheels]

Fascinating photo-story on the link you attached, Ross. Anyone who only loo pics in this forum should have a closer look.
Thanks for sharing.

Great tip, agreed.

[BJL]

I'm trying to figure out what happened to the companies who own these bikes? Surely if you manufacture a few thousand bicycles, put them out to be used for a small fee but many end up impounded by the authorities after very little use, you're going to lose money. Someone must be losing a lot of money over this.

[AUbicycles]

I think the investment just keeps it rolling but the waste is horrendous.

For world citizens there should also be a conscience question, is the brand of share bike operating ethically? When they are just making more junk, are there competitors with better practices?

[Ross]

I'm trying to figure out what happened to the companies who own these bikes? Surely if you manufacture a few thousand bicycles, put them out to be used for a small fee but many end up impounded by the authorities after very little use, you're going to lose money. Someone must be losing a lot of money over this.

Not worth paying the fees to release them, and then repair them?
I've heard that thje bike share companies make their money from interest off the holding deposits and also from data mining /reselling personal details of hirers (not very reliable sources, sorta like friend of a friend's second cousin's uncle's nephew heard from a bloke at the pub!)

[Jmuzz]

The data mining is just a hater conspiracy.
As if anyone cares that 100 million Chinese a day ride them between residence and subway station. WeChat (their Facebook, but even more since they use it for payments, voice messaging, SMS, email, web browsing) already has them mined anyway, not to mention the great firewall monitoring.

The deposit pays for two bikes and they know that for the most part nobody will ever claim it back, and if they go bankrupt well they are bankrupt and the money is gone.

Not all the broken piles are bad, some are shops repairing them. Remember these are city's with Australia's population in a 20km radius, a shop with thousands of repairs a week is to be expected.

They do suffer the same problem as here. A lack of formal bicycle parking spaces and no rules on where a bicycle can be parked so they get knocked over and property owners/security throw them out of their frontage and carparks.

[Howzat]

The business model here is to make a "disruption!" play with investors money, and top keep that investment flow coming in as long as they can with. Data-mining, apps, first-mover advantage, "we're the Uber of bicycles" - what ever you need to say. It's unlikely to work out long term, but the guys running these businesses don't need it to last. They're not looking at the operating income.

[trailgumby]

The business model here is to make a "disruption!" play with investors money, and top keep that investment flow coming in as long as they can with. Data-mining, apps, first-mover advantage, "we're the Uber of bicycles" - what ever you need to say. It's unlikely to work out long term, but the guys running these businesses don't need it to last. They're not looking at the operating income.

A two-wheeled Ponzi scheme, in other words.

[Ross]

Because abandonded share-bikes are the problem...

https://news.sky.com/story/vw-emissions ... s-11308274

Dramatic aerial pictures show row after row of diesel VWs and Audis sitting in the baking California sun, awaiting either repair or destruction in their desert graveyard.

This is just one of 37 storage areas the firm has around the US, housing almost 300,000 vehicles.

In addition to the pictured site in Victorville, other facilities include a disused suburban football stadium in Detroit and a former Minnesota paper mill.

The German company needs plenty of space because it has spent more than $7.4bn (£5.3bn) buying back about 350,000 US vehicles, following the scandal over software that switched engines to a cleaner mode when they were being tested for emissions.

https://e3.365dm.com/18/03/750x563/skyn ... 0329143029

https://e3.365dm.com/18/03/750x563/skyn ... 0329144857

(can't seem to hotlink these pics)

[MichaelB]

Imagine if your job is to get a specific car from the lot for repair !!!

[Cheesewheel]

The business model here is to make a "disruption!" play with investors money, and top keep that investment flow coming in as long as they can with. Data-mining, apps, first-mover advantage, "we're the Uber of bicycles" - what ever you need to say. It's unlikely to work out long term, but the guys running these businesses don't need it to last. They're not looking at the operating income.

A two-wheeled Ponzi scheme, in other words.

A "bicycle economy" is an economy that crashes when it stops moving forward

[Jmuzz]

Easy if they keep the records organised, block 14x23 space 12x2
A basic GPS plot app would only take a day to make it even easier and there are asset tracking apps which do good enough off the shelf.

[trailgumby]

Imagine if your job is to get a specific car from the lot for repair !!!

Just take the key and press the button as you walk. The one that responds is the one that's yours.

[marty_one]

I'm trying to figure out what happened to the companies who own these bikes? Surely if you manufacture a few thousand bicycles, put them out to be used for a small fee but many end up impounded by the authorities after very little use, you're going to lose money. Someone must be losing a lot of money over this.

One thing I read is that make their profits off the deposit (via interest or investment) you have to pay before you can rent the bike. It probably doesn't matter to them if people end up riding the bikes or not as they have already made their profits.

[Patt0]

In Phuket atm. Plenty of unlocked mofo’s around. Got two parked outside.

[Tequestra]

In Phuket atm. Plenty of unlocked mofo’s around. Got two parked outside.

Remember to 'precautionize' yourself before Songkran next week. #1: Wrap phone in plastic.

Ko Phuket is an island, and that made me think about islands, and there is an island not more than 20km west of here called 'Rottnest', which is translated from the early Dutch title, "Rats' Nest" and if I was asked to translate from Dutch to Thai I'd call it 'Ko Noo Bahn' or 'The Island Home to Small Rodents', and that fits because any large marsupial that ever made it over to Rottnest in prehistoric times was eaten for dinner, and the rats referred to by the Dutch sailors are little harmless quokkas, and visitors don't drive big cars on Rottnest Island either. They hire comparatively small bicycles.

I used to build the bikes that went to the Rottnest Bike Hire and they were yellow too in the late 1980s. There was always a rumoured problem with people leaving hired bikes behind and forfeiting their deposit, but it was quite rare, nowhere near the amount shown in some of the photos in the linked article.

A ruthless and capitalist as this comes down to when the hip-pocket runs dry, the fatal mistake of the Chinese shared-bike plan might have something to do with the deposits being too low, or something related to that. I suppose that the Rottnest Bike Hire being staffed by humans would also have played a part in it. Time is indeed money, but then on the other hand, life costs money, so maybe it would have been wise to pay someone to attend to the pickup and dropoff locations to make sure most people took their bikes back to retrieve their deposit.

The sight of those poor worthless bikes all piled up in heaps like that is really bad Karma IMHO.