and here we go. Not even a half day after I posted earlier today about how costly an ebike share business model is, Business Insider posts this article about City Bike having to YANK all of their electric bikes off the street, for who knows how long. PullEd from 3 cities is a LOT of lost revenue, and these sorts of mistakes can't keep happening for any of these ebike share businesses to survive. (P.S. Divvy bikes - regular style, non electric- bike share, uses drum brakes, and everyone complains they are too 'soft' (i.e. dont stop real quickly). Well thats by design, so no one goes over the front of the handle bars, and also drum brakes are enclosed, protecting from the weather, and dirt, and also much lower maintenance than disc brakes would be, or caliper brakes would be. So would you personally buy an ebike with drum brakes ???? No sireee. I wouldn't.
So what do you choose for brakes on a ebike, that can tolerate the abuse, the weather, be low maintenance, but we all know electrics will propel people faster than they can under their own power. The heavy, Divvy bikes, that are also single speed, just aren't going to be ridden that fast. So drum brakes are tolerable.
https://www.businessinsider.com/lyf...kes-off-streets-after-brake-complaints-2019-4
My forecast- Its going to prove not to be a tenable business model. (maybe will be done in controlled use environments, like campuses, or small resorts, but doubtful for big urban areas, which is really what the investors in this stuff are planning for - many many users so they can get big dollars.) The use factor (very short rides) simply doesn't justify electric, and electrics will never likely tolerate the renter mentality ("I don't own it, so I don't care") abuse, and regular weather and weather extremes without it being very costly. There are just so many little things like these brakes, that the business people trying these ebike share business models, haven't apparently contemplated, or addressed properly, (at least from the ebike shares I have seen) so its either going to eat them alive on costs, or they'll have to charge a lot more, and then people may not use them enough for the model to be sustainable.
Most electric bike users know to keep their ebikes garaged, and/or bring batteries in the house, and generally how to take good care of their ebikes, without abusing them. They work fine for personal use. But for public share use, its going to require an entirely different, and likely more expensive design. and the trade offs might not be enjoyed by the renters. Until then there (as always) are enough (naive) VC's willing to through big money at this sort of thing.
