Hey, I tried to do this! I was CTO of a little student startup called A2B Bikeshare for a while. We called it "stationless" though :)<p>We got a prototype working with a custom Android device with touch, 3g, GPS, and built in credit card swiper in Lansing MI, but ultimately we b it off more than we could chew. The team collapsed in mid 2015, and the company was just recently completely shuttered. It's validating to see a more skilled team put together a solid product, but damn it would have been fun to be that team haha.<p>Best of luck!
Hello HN! I'm Euwyn, one of the co-founders of Spin (also, 2x YC alum). We're excited about bringing the dock-less bikeshare model to our home city of SF.<p>I've lived in SOMA for years, and have always wanted to bike around, except: (a) it was always a hassle to deal with a bike after going around town, because I would inevitably end up Uber-ing somewhere after my first stop and (b) my bikes would get stolen :(<p>Would love to hear any questions you guys had about the business, and look forward to you guys riding our bikes soon.<p>ps. If you want to follow along or have any questions about Spin or startups in general, I'm 'euwyn' on Whale and Snapchat.
For those interested: over here in China (specifically Shanghai) is a massive bike sharing war being fought, where the two largest incumbents have been given well over $200m in investment money over the last year. The leading brands are Mobike and Ofo, with around 4 other small competitors creeping in.<p>Mobike was started by an ex-Uber China manager, launched in Shanghai - whereas Ofo had been developed as a bike sharing scheme in universities.<p>Mobike has GPS enabled, QR unlocked bicycles. Where as Ofo are not GPS enabled and are unlocked with a simple analogue pin code bike lock.<p>If you want to know more, let me know.
The problem I've always had: what I want from a bikeshare is to be able to exit the train station, grab a bike, bike the remaining kilometer or two to work and drop the bike. Later in the day I want to do the same in reverse.<p>That only works in a hub program if there's a dock next to my office building. (You can count on a dock being next to the train station.) Or I could pay for all-day rental of the bike, when I'm only using it for two ten-minute periods.<p>In a dockless system, does it actually get any better for my use case?
This has been available in Germany for 17 years, run by the rail company (DB):
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_Bike" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_a_Bike</a><p>And some cities also have their own programs, such as Munich's MVG Rad (E48/year for 30 min per day):
<a href="https://www.mvg.de/services/mobile-services/mvg-rad.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.mvg.de/services/mobile-services/mvg-rad.html</a>
Nextbike a german company offers station less bikeshare, or at least a hybrid model, dockless within a central area and with stations outside.
<a href="http://www.nextbike.de/en/locations/" rel="nofollow">http://www.nextbike.de/en/locations/</a>
zoom in on "red" locations like Köln or Karlsruhe.
I would like to ask about what bothers me after trying such services in China (stationless bikes), in Shenzhen:<p>How will you address annoying parking?<p>I've noticed that people in China really quickly realised how free is "stationless" and you would see those bikes parked in middle of roads, in middle of walking paths, dumped in bushes - just because you can. At one point I saw some foreigner (so not to say only Chinese do it) arrive at Starbucks, stop his bike just in front, lock it and go inside.<p>I found the idea really great but that kind of overtaking of shared space is quite disturbing.
<p><pre><code> Spin's bikes will be parked neatly all across the city
</code></pre>
<i>Where?</i><p>Have they arranged appropriate parking places / staging points on private property? Or do they play to just lock bikes to sign poles and streetlamps?<p>Imagine the visual pollution of thousands of brightly-colored bikes strewn around (or, worse yet, taking up capacity in bike racks that then limits their use for individually-owned bikes).<p>Many cities have banned random newsracks on public thoroughfares for exactly this reason (including S.F.).
As another user mentioned, this idea (stationless bike share/rental) has been white-hot in China since the past summer, with a lot of extreme incidents occurring in the past couple months. The article doesn't exaggerate about 10ft tall piles of bicycles. Vandalism is a major part of the competition between companies as well--it is a regular sight (in Shenzhen) to see bikes with spray paint over QR codes, falsely reported damage, missing seats, etc.<p>Overall, the system works extremely well and is super convenient, but Shenzhen has very good public transportation to begin with and most of the sidewalks in the city are very wide compared to those in San Francisco. Those are two of the key things that have enabled this type of service to emerge and take off in China--it's really just solving a "last-mile" problem of getting to a point that's too far from a metro station to comfortably walk but not far enough to take a cab.
How is this better than docking stations?<p>I tried bike sharing and gave it up because the bikes were poorly maintained and replaced with cheaper bikes (thanks Citibike). Bikes fail, sometimes missing brakes, other times a flat tire.<p>Why are docking stations important? Because a couple times a week I notice the company pull up with a trailer and maintain the bikes. They swap out the broken ones and fill the stations.<p>Is Spin going to drive around the city tracking individual bikes to replace them?
This reminds me of the April fools video Google put out about self-driving bikes. It would be neat if self-driving bikes could go to where they were needed.
We tried something similar a few years ago with Spokefly. We didn't own the bikes, anyone with an extra bike could participate, and we didn't put GPS on them. Users checked bikes in and out with their phone's GPS. There were numerous problems and the company failed.<p>The market for our service wasn't big enough. If you owned the bikes I think it would work better since sizes are consistent, they're easier to brand, etc. That said it's really hard to make money on it when you're competing with publicly subsidized bike shares and VC subsidized ride shares.<p>Phones <i>still</i> don't work well. It was too easy for the GPS location to be wrong or for users to have phone connectivity problems, causing a lot of frustration. Our service was popular at big events where traffic was bad (eg SXSW) but that's when cell service is the worst. If you rely on phones your users will have problems.
"In China, kiosk-free bikeshare programs have proven almost as problematic as they have popular. Riders have parked bikes in fire lanes..."<p>I've lived in China (Beijing and Shanghai) for 6+ years, and have never seen a fire lane.<p>"And in some cases, towering piles of bikes have cause Chinese cities major headache as they’ve blocked pedestrians, created an eyesore and a possible safety hazard. (Imagine a bike falling from a ten-foot high pile, and landing on your head?)"<p>What are they talking about? Are they suggesting that riders are parking bikes on top of each other? How did the last rider place their bike on the top of a "ten-foot high pile"? I haven't seen anyone tall enough to do that, in China or anywhere else.<p>This whole paragraph seems totally made up.
Hamburg, Germany has an interesting bike program where there are docks but you can also lock the bike up using a digital lock on the back wheel so if you need to stop somewhere and there isn't a dock close by or you just don't feel like returning it yet you can lock it up. I think this is a great option.<p>I wonder if cities will allow this competition among bike sharing. Some of these bike programs have big corporate sponsors and the cynical side of me imagines they might have an influence on whether cities allow new entrants to the market.
"The MTC previously struck an exclusive agreement with Motivate and Ford ... Disruptors who just enter the market without city approval would potentially violate that agreement."<p>How could 'Disruptors' violate an agreement to which they're not a party?
San Francisco seems like a terrible place to open up anything to do with bicycles. Everyone will just ride down the hill, park the bike, and get an uber later. Some poor asshole will have to take them all back up.
Check out <a href="https://www.rekola.cz/en" rel="nofollow">https://www.rekola.cz/en</a> - running on the same principle since 2014, might have some ideas ;)
There are already more Citi Bike docks in NYC than I feel like is necessary for the service to be convenient. Within one block of my apartment there are already 3!