RIDEGURU
I am starting to see them all over the place, and I hear there is already a fierce competition in the US market. They are dockless, they lock and unlock themselves, they are equipped with GPS and are distributed across the cities, carefully placed in places they are needed.
The funny thing? So many of these rental bikes are in the same cities together. I am loving the turf war. They are always bright colors too.
- Lime Bike
- Uber's Jump
- Mobike
- Motivate
- Ofo
- Spin
So my question to the drivers. Are you threatened by this? Bikes are for shorter trips, I get it. Will this affect the UberX and Lyft drivers?
Comments
I LOVE IT. Do you know why? We HATE short trips anyways. Those 1/4 ~ 1/2 mile trips are deadly to us drivers, where I am pretty sure we are losing money off of them. Remember, we drive more than that to come pick you up, so we have our overhead/expenses to just get to you, and then we drive you for minimum fee.
If people start taking these bicycles or electric scooters or whatever, they'll cut down on those wasted trips. So we WELCOME it.
It's a win-win. Save the environment too. Everyone's happy.
I was thinking the same thing. I was in the camp of thinking this will be disruptive, but if it'll get me out of super short trips and super lazy people, I am all for it.
Give me those cross town trips!
In NYC, an average taxi trip is 2.6 miles. If you can ride your bike at 10mph, I can do 2.6 miles in 15 minutes.
So, if these bikes become rampant in NYC, they can surely eat into the place of UberXs, right? Just do the math.
I dunno im threatened. how much is this service/ I downloaded the app but i dont care enough to create an account.
here you go: https://ride.guru/lounge/p/how-much-are-these-gps-enabled-dockless-rental-bikes-are-they-cheaper-than-uberx
It's like $1.00 for 30 minutes. enough to go like 3~4 miles.
Wow, that's dirt cheap.
well, it is a bicycle.
but with the locking mechanism, battery, and gps, I hear they cost around $5000 each.
No, I am a driver, and it doesn't scare me. I feel as though this is completely a separate audience. These are the people who wanted to walk but decided to ride a bike. These aren't the people who are hopping on cars.
Uber users go much farther, often in groups, and they want to get there faster. It's comparing apples and oranges.
Plus these bicycles won't magically appear at your location. You have to go hunt them down. (but I assume you can see their location on GPS.)
Oh, dude. Don't get me started. In San Diego, there must be 10 of them competing, and some are city provided. It's getting ridiculous. Soon, we will have their staff (those who carry the bikes to places) start vandalizing and yelling at each other on the streets.
Oh, man. I wasn't threatened by them until I saw this post. Thanks!
I will not blame these bicycle companies, but I guess now that Uber will start offering it, I feel a bit slated. Yes, that will be a direct competition.
I mean, this Bike option will be inside the Uber App, right? Eventually?
The bike option is already available on the Uber app! Right now I think it's only in a few locations, but it seems to be growing. It's supported by JUMP.
https://ride.guru/content/newsroom/what-is-uber-bike
You forgot Jump and Bird.
They are slightly different though. Those are electric scooters. Dockless, GPS-enabled and all that, but they are powered.