oBike

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
oBike
legal form GmbH in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
founding April 2016
resolution July 2018
Seat Singapore
Branch Bike rental
Website www.o.bike
As of July 30, 2018

Obike ( proper spelling oBike ) was a stationless bicycle rental system based in Singapore , which also offered its services in larger cities in Europe. Obike was founded in January 2017 and was available in 24 countries in mid-2018. The company filed for bankruptcy in Singapore in July 2018 and since then has not been reachable by the media or the responsible city authorities, the company website has not been online since the beginning of 2019. The company profile on Facebook was last updated in July 2018.

Obike parked in London

insolvency

In July 2018, Obike filed for bankruptcy in Singapore. As a result, the deposits made by the users could not be repaid because they were apparently used to finance ongoing operations. At the time of bankruptcy, Obike is said to have owed its customers the equivalent of around four million euros .

Some of the bikes in Europe were given to the Swiss company Umzug-24 in July 2018 as compensation for outstanding payments , which was initially only responsible for the maintenance and distribution of the bikes. In 2018 there were around 30,000 bicycles in Germany and the Netherlands , as well as 10,000 new bicycles in a warehouse near Hamburg . After bankruptcy, the rental company would have been obliged to make an orderly withdrawal including collecting the bikes, but this did not happen. In July, the first former rental bicycles were offered for sale on the Internet, others were cracked and repainted. A company offered the unused bikes from Hamburg for sale from August 2018 for 69 euros each. In Munich, the number of OBike bikes is estimated at 3,000 to 6,000, many of which are destroyed in parks, hanging in trees or standing on sidewalks. The city authorities were working on an ordinance to remove the bikes.

Since neither the media nor city administrations can contact the company, many customers worry about their deposit.

description

Obike rented its yellow-silver bicycles of the simplest construction in Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Spain and Switzerland. In September 2017, the price for 30 minutes was one euro in Germany. A one-time deposit of € 79 or € 29 for students had to be deposited with the registration .

The bikes could be booked in the app using the QR code . The app established a connection to the bike and its lock via Bluetooth . So the bike could be unlocked and locked. The position of the bike was transmitted from the smartphone to Obike's servers so that the locations of all bikes were displayed on a map in the app.

In January 2018, a technical cooperation was entered into with TRON . Obike customers could also pay with the crypto currency oCoins using an app .

To keep maintenance costs low, Obike bikes do not have gears . The wheels have solid rubber tires and are therefore heavier than corresponding wheels with pneumatic tires.

Availability

In August 2017, the company distributed 4,000 rental bikes in the Munich area . In mid-September 2017 there were almost 6,000 bikes. This led to considerable displeasure and complaints about wildly distributed and in some cases improperly parked bicycles, against which it was objected that this should not be a problem in a city with over 700,000 cars and up to two million private bicycles and that, according to a study, significantly more rental bicycles were actually necessary would be. Due to numerous cases of vandalism , the company announced in March that it would withdraw 6,000 of its 7,000 rental bikes in Munich and distribute them in other cities. In November 2017, Obike offered 500 rental bikes each in Frankfurt am Main and Hanover . In November 2017 Obike distributed 700 rental bikes in Berlin .

In mid-June 2018 it became known that Obike wanted to withdraw its bikes in Zurich at the end of June 2018. This took place after complaints about the condition of the bicycles and the aggressive market launch had been loud for some time. OBike also withdrew in Vienna, but without removing the bicycles. The city announced it would remove all unregistered bikes due to a new regulation and charge OBike for the cost of the removal.

privacy

While other providers only locate where their rental bikes are parked, each Obike saved the movement profile of its users. The extent to which the collected data was used is unclear, but the company appeared to be marketing it in an anonymised form. Roland Hösl from the Munich city council told Die Zeit that the company could have used the data obtained to show the city where new bike paths were needed. At least that was what Obike's Germany representative offered him in a conversation.

According to the company, data is "not passed on to third parties, but the data is used internally for the development of the app and the offer".

According to data protection advocate Thomas Kranig, Obike also violated the transparency requirement. What data the company recorded from its users and what is happening with it cannot be seen when the app is downloaded: “There is information that they create movement profiles and that they make these so-called affiliated companies available. But the user does not find out for what purposes this is done and also not what these affiliated companies are that are supposed to receive these movement profiles, ”says Kranig.

In November 2017, customer user data was temporarily freely available on the Internet, including telephone numbers, profile pictures and e-mail addresses. According to the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation , the social media functions of the smartphone app represented a weak point. The Bavarian State Office for Data Protection Supervision (LDA) confirmed to the BR that the data leak was a violation of the data protection law.

reception

The editor Jan-Keno Janssen criticized the sluggishness of the rental bikes on Heise online : “The parts are so stiff that walking costs less energy and time.” Together with the data protection problems, the controversial behavior point model and the scrap problem, the editor was disappointed from the company that, in his opinion, was sabotaging an “actually really great idea”.

Web links

Commons : OBike  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Official website
  2. ↑ a b c After Obike: Ofo too is slowly withdrawing , on mobilegeeks.de; accessed on July 30, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c OBike "no longer available". July 9, 2018, accessed July 30, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b heise online : Bike sharing: Obike is apparently broke. Retrieved July 30, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Emil Nefzger: Obike leaves debts and junk wheels. In: Spiegel Online . July 11, 2018, accessed July 11, 2018 .
  6. ↑ New O-Bike bicycles are being sold for almost 70 euros on www.bento.de, accessed on August 16, 2018.
  7. ↑ Munich scraps thousands of Obike rental bikes , Spiegel Online , September 13, 2018
  8. ↑ OBike: Trembling about the deposit. July 16, 2018, accessed July 30, 2018 .
  9. ↑ oBike's liquidators to find out company's 'intention to provide refund' to users . In: TODAYonline . ( todayonline.com [accessed July 30, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Llega a Madrid obike, un servicio de carsharing para bicis - El tio del Mazo . In: El tio del Mazo . September 27, 2017 ( eltiodelmazo.com [accessed October 25, 2017]).
  11. ↑ Obike brings station-less hire bikes to London , cyclist.co.uk, July 12, 2017.
  12. ↑ a b c d Thomas Jordan: Obike in the acid test. Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 15, 2017, accessed on September 18, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Price & deposit. oBike, accessed on September 18, 2017 .
  14. ↑ oBike partners Tron to launch its own cryptocurrency called oCoins for users to pay for rides businessinsider.sg.
  15. ↑ FAQ: Why don't oBikes have gears? Why are oBikes so heavy? In: www.o.bike. Retrieved July 11, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Rental bike madness in Munich: “It's a mess!” , Tz Munich, September 4, 2017.
  17. ↑ Are the 7000 Obikes bothering you in Munich - or not? sueddeutsche.de, September 11, 2017, accessed on May 9, 2018 .
  18. ↑ How many rental bikes does the city need? sueddeutsche.de, December 18, 2017, accessed on May 9, 2018 .
  19. ↑ Obike removes most of the rental bikes from Munich. sueddeutsche.de, March 26, 2018, accessed on May 9, 2018 .
  20. ↑ Rental bikes: Interview with . In: Frankfurter Neue Presse . ( fnp.de [accessed on November 22, 2017]).
  21. ↑ 500 rental bikes come to town. In: Göttinger Tageblatt, Eichsfelder Tageblatt, Göttingen, Eichsfeld, Lower Saxony. Retrieved November 22, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Asian bike sharing providers are pushing their way to Berlin . In: Gründerszene Magazin . ( gruenderszene.de [accessed on November 22, 2017]).
  23. ↑ O-Bike is taking all bikes out of circulation . In: 20 minutes . ( 20min.ch [accessed on June 22, 2018]).
  24. ↑ Distribution of rental bikes meets with resistance . In: 20 minutes . ( 20min.ch [accessed on June 22, 2018]).
  25. ↑ a b Bike madness in Munich: Singapore rental bikes flood the city - that's behind it. In: Focus . August 24, 2017.
  26. ↑ oBike lets Chinese bikes roll in Berlin. In: Deutsche Welle. Retrieved November 23, 2017 .
  27. ↑ a b BR covers data leak at the bike rental company oBike on Bayerischer Rundfunk , November 30, 2017.
  28. ↑ a b heise online: Comment: Obike, the rental bike from hell. Retrieved April 14, 2018 .