Chinese bike-share startup targets US
RAPIDLY growing bike-sharing startup Mobike already has 100 million users in China. And it is now looking to the US and Europe in the hope its unique “dockless” system can disrupt the industry.
Mobike this week took a handful of the brightly coloured two-wheelers to showcase at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado.
While many major US cities already have bike-sharing programmes, Mobike co-founder and chief executive Davis Wang said he wanted municipalities to take a look at his company’s new concept.
“If you look at traditional station bikes, it’s like a desktop PC,” he said. “We are more a smartphone. You just use it.”
Wang told the conference that the startup, which launched in April last year, decided that “the dock and the station had to be eliminated so people can use the bikes more easily”.
With no bike stations or docks, travellers are not restricted in their trips. Users unlock the bikes with a smartphone app.
The custom-designed, aluminiumframe Mobike bicycles have a drive shaft instead of a chain, disc brakes and tubeless tyres, which make them virtually maintenance-free.
They have built-in GPS and riders recharge the battery.
In 15 months, the company has expanded to more than 150 cities, and has put about six million of its connected bikes on the road, claiming to be the world’s largest bike-sharing company.
“We are transporting more than 20 million people a day,” he said, making the bicycle more important than the taxi in some Chinese cities, offering rides at the equivalent of 50 US cents (R6.45).
Mobike last month announced it had raised $600-million (R7.7-billion) led by Chinese tech giant Tencent, the largest ever for a bike-sharing firm, giving it a reported valuation of more than $1-billion (R12.9-billion).
It launched last month in two British cities including Manchester and is also in Singapore and Japan.
“We want to be global,” Wang said at the conference.
The company hopes to be in 200 cities worldwide by the end of the year, with its eyes on the US and Europe.