The Uber-For-Bikes Startup Is Now Officially Part of Uber (qz.com)

Uber's first acquisition under CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is of Jump Bikes, a startup that rents out shared electric dockless bikes in San Francisco and Washington DC. "The deal comes two months after Uber partnered with Jump in San Francisco to make bike rentals available through the Uber app," reports Quartz. From the report: TechCrunch reports that the deal was valued at close to $200 million. Jump, which launched in 2008 as Social Bicycles, had raised about $15 million in funding. In January the company became the first in San Francisco to receive a permit for a dockless e-bike program. Jump's team will stay "independent and focused on growth vs. integration," with CEO Ryan Rzepecki reporting directly to Khosrowshahi, Uber's CEO told his company in an email this morning (April 9). In a post on Medium, Rzepecki said Khosrowshahi's leadership made Jump feel more comfortable with the deal. "We could see the shift in the company once Dara was named CEO as he began leading with humility and in a way that we felt reflected our values," Rzepecki wrote.

Comments

"shared electric dockless bike"

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain exactly what this means to a non-hipster like myself?

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[A10Mechanic]

I see lots of electric rental bikes in Europe. They all have a dock, so they can get charged up. Dockless bike = dead battery?

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[Anonymous Coward]

Uber, which has never generated a penny of profit and is losing money at the rate of a billion dollars a quarter, just spent $200 Million of investor's money on a pointless, worthless company because . . . . because fuck you, that's why.

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[OrangeTide]

dockless is like Mountain View where there are little yellow bikes laying around everywhere. You can even find them in the local creek

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's a glorious Chinese invention that is now being copies by the west, much like paper or compass once.

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[ShanghaiBill]

It's a glorious Chinese invention that is now being copies by the west, much like paper or compass once.

99% of the shared-bikes in China are not electric. They are pedal powered.

There are some battery powered e-bikes, but I have no idea how they get charged. I have never seen one in a "dock", and have never even seen a dock for them. They are just parked randomly on the street like the pedal powered Ofo and Mobikes. Maybe someone comes in the middle of the night to charge them.

The pedal powered bikes seem way more popular, most likely because of the price. One RMB (15 cents) for 30 minutes. You use your phone to scan the QR-code sticker on the bike, and then your phone displays a four digit code that unlocks the bike. You ride it anywhere, get off, re-engage the lock, and walk away.

The bikes are everywhere. There are dozens or even hundreds on every block in Shanghai.

So how do the bike companies make money renting the bikes for so little, while dealing with theft, damage, maintenance, etc? Anwer: They don't. Both Ofo and Mobike are losing millions trying to crush each other out of the market. Once one of them goes out of business, or (more likely) they merge, the price will go up.

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[fahrbot-bot]

I see lots of electric rental bikes in Europe. They all have a dock, so they can get charged up. Dockless bike = dead battery?

Dockless bikes get their batteries charged while the users pedal.

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[HornWumpus]

Cheaper rate for one with a dead battery?

Cheaper still for dead battery and bottom of hill?

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[110010001000]

The company swaps out the battery every few days or when they get low.

Re: "shared electric dockless bike"

[Nidi62]

Still better than the literal mountains of bikes dumped outside large businesses in China.

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[Applehu Akbar]

Can someone explain exactly what this means to a non-hipster like myself?

Gladly! What happened is that Uber execs in California see bicycles whizzing around them all day blowing signals and stop signs, and the thought formed, "Hey! These guys are already thinking the Uber way!"

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[ShanghaiBill]

Cheaper rate for one with a dead battery?

Cheaper still for dead battery and bottom of hill?

Possibly. In China, shared-bikes are sometimes cheaper or free if you are going from an area where they have accumulated to an area where they are scarce.

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[HornWumpus]

You'd have to pay, kids might make a little extra money. I bike that won't roll on the flat isn't helping you get around.

People fat enough that they should be charging all day, will be the last to consider it.

Re: "shared electric dockless bike"

[javaman235]

What exactly is electric about them? Just some cellphone like gadget that says where they are?
Pedal assist would be cool, but that's too much juice to get charged that way. Tho I gotta say a self driving trike would be cool, and who cares if it crashes.

Re: "shared electric dockless bike"

[OrangeTide]

I guess you haven't tripped over them trying to navigate the movie theater parking lot at night. If it were a huge pile of bikes at least it would have been consolidated and out of the general walking traffic.

Re: "shared electric dockless bike"

[Nidi62]

Luckily I live in a soulless, polluting, sprawl of a suburb. Biking is very impractical here

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing probably weighs 50+ pounds just by virtue of needing to be sturdy enough to survive the abuse it's naturally going to receive from random fat assholes and then you're going to kill the performance even more by adding batteries and sucking up pedaling energy to charge them?

Pretty sure I'd rather walk.

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[TheRaven64]

They're bikes that you can rent for a short term. The dockless bit means that you can leave them anywhere. They were rolled out here a while ago by a Chinese-owned company. You install their app and can then use it to unlock any bikes you find (they also have GPS and send their location periodically, so you can see where the nearest ones are), then you pay a small amount for as long as the bike is assigned to you, and then you leave them.

They're more expensive than just buying a cheap bike if you cycle a lot, but if you're just visiting then they're a fairly convenient way of getting a bike. Unfortunately, unlike the docked versions that are common in big cities, the lack of well-defined locations means that you may find that you want one and the nearest one is miles away. They also are left in silly places by their last rider, so they clutter up the area a bit. Oh, and they're usually ridden by people who don't cycle regularly and so you need to give them quite a lot of space because the odds that they're about to do something dangerous are pretty high...

Re: "shared electric dockless bike"

[OrangeTide]

I live in San Jose. I have to visit Mountain View to get out of the soulless, polluting, sprawling suburb. SJ is a million people and a tiny downtown and many square miles of suburbs and cul-de-sacs. Mountain View was a nice little town with a cute downtown area, but now Mountain View has become a buffer zone around the Googleplex.

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[boundandgaggedwomen]

Can someone explain exactly what this means to a non-hipster like myself?

Lots of stolen bikes followed by the eventual shutdown of the company! It has been tried before and has failed everytime due to theft!

Re:"shared electric dockless bike"

[boundandgaggedwomen]

Uber, which has never generated a penny of profit and is losing money at the rate of a billion dollars a quarter, just spent $200 Million of investor's money on a pointless, worthless company because . . . . because fuck you, that's why.

Nothing to really add to this but I agree 100%!

smoke and mirrors?

[Sporkinum]

How the hell does a broke company buy another broke company? Guess I need to tune into this week's Silicon Valley to find out.

Re:smoke and mirrors?

[Anonymous Coward]

They just need to find an I.T. closet cleaner who can provide a few pennies of financing.

Re:smoke and mirrors?

[fahrbot-bot]

How the hell does a broke company buy another broke company?

It's research for a new movie, "Broke Bike Mountain View".

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

$200 MILLION sounds like a LOT of bike rentals

We'll make it work as soon as we figure out this little car rental thingie.

It's not Uber for Bikes

[rsilvergun]

The "Uber for" moniker is used to describe gig economy stuff where you're workers are paid piecemeal instead of in wages & benefits.

Re:It's not Uber for Bikes

[fahrbot-bot]

The "Uber for" moniker is used to describe gig economy stuff where you're workers are paid piecemeal instead of in wages & benefits.

So we can now refer to prostitution as "Uber for Dates".

Re:It's not Uber for Bikes

[ShanghaiBill]

The "Uber for" moniker is used to describe gig economy stuff where you're workers are paid piecemeal instead of in wages & benefits.

There is no "gig worker" for a bike rental. The company owns the bikes, and they are serviced by W-2 employees.

Re:It's not Uber for Bikes

[eepok]

Agreed. It's a bikeshare system. Someone pays a base level (or gets it sponsored) to get the bikes in an area. People get memberships to use the bikes and most often pay a fee for going over a certain time.

I've never even read/heard it called the "Uber for bikes".

Re:It's not Uber for Bikes

[eepok]

This is 100% correct. It's best described as an automated, membership-based bicycle rental service (contrary to what all the bikeshare systems told the angry bike rental companies when they hit the scene in the late 2000s/early 2010s).

E-bikes, LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

E-bikes are for fatties and weaklings. You Amerifats should pedal your own bikes so maybe you're not so fat, weak, and diseased.

Obligatory...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck Zuck! He is the suck! Zuck is the Suck!

Sweet.

[HornWumpus]

Gonna make me a 'home rolled' electric car.

How many ebike batteries will I have to loot and pillage to outrun a 100D? How much is the cash rental cost/bike?

Re:Sweet.

[110010001000]

I've used them just because I've never used a e-Bike before and was curious. It is $2 for 30 minutes.

Re:Sweet.

[HornWumpus]

Prepaid CC? $2 for a nice big battery is a screaming deal.

Any idea on voltage and amps?

Re:Sweet.

[110010001000]

Why prepaid CC? I just use a CC. You get $10 credit when you sign up, so you don't have to pay anything. I have no idea about the bikes. They are just electric assist ones.

Re:Sweet.

[HornWumpus]

I'll bet they will charge the CC# for any missing batteries.

Someone is going to get them, the only question is what % do I get?

Re:Sweet.

[110010001000]

Why would you want to steal a $50 battery? Are you a crack whore?

Re:Sweet.

[HornWumpus]

I don't want to steal one. I want 400. Because I'm a geek and can put them to good use.

I doubt they're only $50. How much did you spend on batteries last year?

Re:Sweet.

[110010001000]

You do realize these a cheap low power e-Bike batteries, not AA batteries, right? You can get them for $50 shipped from China. Even crack whores aren't dumb enough to steal these.

Re:Sweet.

[HornWumpus]

We'll see about that.

Truth is it wouldn't be worth the trip for me, even if I could score 400 in one trip. No way this survives long enough to get near me.

Post me a cite for that price for these batteries. Because I can easily hold $50 worth of Chinese LiPos in one hand. They won't get me far on a bike.

NO:smoke and mirrors

[ElitistWhiner]

Dysillusioned beyond reason, UBER-think is a ' too big to fail' dystopia in-wait. Lehman Brother's $639B Chapter 11 would be the USDollar value-at-risk target to beat. It is in a race for bragging rights to the take down the USD when it files for chapter 11. We have a ways to go before this ride is over

Chinese inventions stolen by Silicon Valley

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese inventions stolen by Silicon Valley: high-speed rail, mobile payment, bike sharing, and e-commerce.

It's sad that America no longer innovates. The 21st century belongs to China.

Uber in Decline

[Anonymous Coward]

Paying $200 million for a company that is losing money and has only raised $15 million is utter madness.

The real action, as anyone who walks the streets of San Francisco can see, is in dockless electric razor scooters from Bird and LimeBike. Those things are everywhere now and are hella good.

$1 to unlock then 15c per minute to use. Faster and cheaper for getting around downtown than an Uber ride.

Re:Uber in Decline

[HornWumpus]

Just wait until my rental pulse jet powered roller blades hit market!

I'm waiting for someone to start...

[Anonymous Coward]

...an Uber for vaginas.

fuck you chris!

[Anonymous Coward]

There you are spamming amazon and youtube affiliate links with yet another fake account, you revenue stream hogging disgusting fat sexist tube of lard, Christopher Dale Reimer!

You can be sure I will be watching this fake account too. I know this is you because you told me you were working on your freepass 11 file server and you are so dumb that you can't even masquerade yourself properly.

Now, I told you I was out of meds last week and you didn't even care to contact me you lazy fucker.

How many times do I have to express the emergency of the situation??????

The python click script you wrote for my pheromone revenue stream web site suddenly stopped to work!!!!!!

You fucking incompetent python script writer!!!

When it works, I get 4000+ clicks a day on my pheromone revenue stream web site but only 5 or 6 without it!!!!

Now, it seems like you dont care and that you have abandoned me you heartless fucking pig!

Bonus:
Here is a story that creimer told me when convincing me what a hard life he had:

The tree was him and the tree knot was his butt hole!

So, his uncle packed his fat ass with lard and with his cock! Not that it makes much of a difference but anyway, there it is!

Signed:
Ethell, The girl that used to love you and now hates you, burn in hell where you belong you sexist pig!

Re:fuck you chris!

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound bitter, nipple dick.

Sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking of making an uber for cars...

Wow Medium is still around

[Anonymous Coward]

Who knew!?

User carries battery

[khb]

https://momentummag.com/hopr-i... if that's TL:DR, when you sign up you get a battery. You charge it, you carry it, you install it. When done, take your battery.