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Comment by yoavz | Hacker News Reader

Does the price point of $2 for 30 minutes seem a little high to anyone? Ofo is 4x cheaper at $1/hour [1] in Seattle... even when taking into account the high COL in SF and the extra benefit of electric bike, this seems excessive. A uber pool with the express option can be $3-4 for a short bikeable ride, I think I'd rather default to that in a majority of cases.

[1] https://seattle.curbed.com/2017/8/15/16153622/ofo-bike-share...

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$1/hr seems pretty VC-subsidized. Assuming that the costs for one bike are $900/year (including broken motors, lost bikes, theft, docks, rent for docks, broken chargers, etc) that's 3 hours of trips needed per day... which might not sound like a lot, but with 10 hours of daylight a day that's a pretty large amount of usage IMO.

I live in the Netherlands, where everyone owns their own bikes. The biggest bikeshare program is run by the national railways, with bikes available at any station for €3.85/24 hours. They're non-electric, so probably cost about $200 per bike in bulk. I wish there were smaller rental periods available though.

[edit] googled bike costs out of curiosity, and apparently ofo builds their own non-electric bikes in China, which cost only $36 each (!).

Ofo offered monthly pass of 1 yuan per month in Beijing for some time last year and even if you don't have a monthly pass, you can ride at a fee of 1 yuan per hour.

Mobike offers seasonly pass of 5 yuan per 3 months in Beijing.

Both of them are heavily subsided by investment. Sooner or later, people will get used to low price or no price, and I don't think they will finally generate profits after the fierce competition between them ends.

In many parts of SF, an electric bike will be quicker than an Uber

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