The future of bike sharing is electric.
You’ve probably seen them — neatly stacked yellow cycles on street corners. Or gathered together in a colourful abandoned heap, only to be collected the next morning and redistributed to places unknown. It’s the all-new earth conquering, billions-or-nothing industry. Welcome to the uber of cycling. Coming to a city near you will be cheap dockless bicycles that you can pickup and drop off virtually everywhere, all for roughly £1 an hour. Major bets are being made on the growth potential of this industry with the two market leaders, Ofo and Mobike, attracting $2.2bn in funding between them.
There’s logic somewhere in the puffed-up valuations — the market size for cycling has massive growth potential. As our roads clog up, people are looking to alternative modes of transport and in London it’s estimated that 8.17 million daily motorised trips could be replaced with cycling. Coupled with an ambitious plan to create more cycle friendly streets there’s clearly money to be made.
I’m sure having a bright yellow bike on the corner of every street is Ofo’s vision, after all the dockless proposition allows for theoretically limitless expansion into areas that government bike schemes simply won’t go. But cycle power alone will not be what takes bike sharing to the mainstream. The problem lies with cycling itself . From TFL’s report:
“The most significant barrier to realising this potential is that most cyclable trips are made by people that do not cycle at all — we need to encourage people who don’t cycle to start”
In London, 65% of the possible growth in cycling comes from motor commuters, children, the elderly, and families travelling together. Needless to say these are not the lycra brigade or hipster commuters. Dockless and cheap rides barely register on people’s top 10 reasons for not cycling. Their concerns are more obviously related to infrastructure and the problems with cycling itself — convincing the masses to take to our cold and dangerous roads will require behaviour change on a scale that pedal-power alone cannot provide.
The market for personal transport is wide open.
The vast majority of investment in transport disruption has focused squarely on battery power and autonomy. Uber’s $62.5billion valuation depends on it. But for all that autonomous electric vehicles are compelling, they’re still the same fundamental mode of transport. 4 wheels, moving multiple people over a distance more than a few blocks away (one hopes).
In the long run, autonomous cars will adapt into multiple formats from personal vehicles to larger busses — but whilst all the focus has been to innovate the automobile, cycling has yet to be disrupted. Why? Cycling, or more broadly ‘personal transport’ occupies a vast middle ground of transportation that offer the sustainable freedom of going places 4 wheels simply cannot, over both short and long distances. They can be stored and stacked away in tight spaces and occupy the smallest possible footprint on the road. Surely having a population scooting around on two wheels is a nirvana for local government?
Battery power will enable the behaviour change bike sharing needs
Having electrified personal transportation feels like the singular ‘killer’ feature that might trigger a tipping point to the mass adoption that bike sharing needs to become profitable. To the great satisfaction of our motorists, they take barely any effort to ride and can ply vast distances across the city especially when placed strategically on either end of our long cycle highways. They come in different shapes and sizes too. An electric scooter can be used for travel around the block, whilst a larger and more sedate dutch cycle can cross the city.
Most importantly for bike sharing, battery power is a far more compelling business model. Although unit prices will drop over time, maintenance and constant charging needs make ownership enough of a headache to make outsourcing the problem compelling. Battery power also opens up all sorts of interesting revenue streams; charging for distance, subscriptions, premium models, and even creating incentives for the community to help with battery charging. It’s even possible to imagine car sharing branching out or merging; Zip Car opening up a Zip bike for example.
Prove the dockless network and all else follows.
The key lies in proving that bicycles stay out the trash. If Ofo (or Mobike) can create a self-regulating community of people incentivised to keep bicycles working and safe at minimal cost, they should be able to gradually scale to battery power. The technology to make this happen already exists; quick mobile background checks, geo-fencing, mobile unlocking. It just requires large scale testing at a lower cost. To me, that’s the role of pedal power.
Bicycles are key to the sustainability of our cities. Whatever happens to bike sharing schemes — massive improvements to cycle infrastructure is needed to create a safe and smooth enough network to people to ride. To make this happen we’re going to need significantly more people hitting the streets around the country. Not just central London. It’s clear we’re stuck in a catch-22, one that bike sharing may be able to solve.
