I have recently had my G2 stolen, which made me question whether there are enough features on the bike to deter thieves.
Either the thief will find it difficult to sell a registered stolen bike and dump it, or they have found some way to extract residual value. The options for residual value are:-
I would have thought there are relatively easy ways to cut off both of the above options.
I would be very interested for a Gocycle representative to comment on these options. I imagine some could be implemented with a firmware update
I stupidly had not yet insured my Gocycle, so have taken a big hit. I image most people insure, so the customers and gocycle are not super motivated to push for greater security. However, every theft is fueling criminals, so I think there is a moral obligation to further deter theft of these valuable bikes.
Either the thief will find it difficult to sell a registered stolen bike and dump it, or they have found some way to extract residual value. The options for residual value are:-
- People can be found who will knowingly buy a stolen bike and accept that they won’t be able to pair it to their phone. My understanding is that the immobilizer feature only kicks in when they connect it to the app.
- There is resale value in some of the parts.
I would have thought there are relatively easy ways to cut off both of the above options.
- Surely it should be easy to have a firmware option for the bike to immobilize itself after “x” days of not being paired with the app. Your phone could remind you when the next pairing is required. Pretty much everyone is glued to their phone now. So an occasional pairing is not onerous.
- I guess the battery is the component with the largest residual value. I would have thought it would only add a couple of dollars to add a Bluetooth LE microcontroller integrated into the battery module, so that it’s ID is also registered with the app.
I would be very interested for a Gocycle representative to comment on these options. I imagine some could be implemented with a firmware update
I stupidly had not yet insured my Gocycle, so have taken a big hit. I image most people insure, so the customers and gocycle are not super motivated to push for greater security. However, every theft is fueling criminals, so I think there is a moral obligation to further deter theft of these valuable bikes.
