The DB bikes were pretty sturdy though - I typically referred to 'renting a tank'.
There were some rumours the Chinese bike rentals were only after their customer's data, since none of their models could've been profitable. Maybe they gathered enough and are on their way out?
I'm French and living in Germany, I laughed while reading this. The countries are close to each others but the culture is different, especially concerning vandalism/individualism. I have many examples like the cleanliness of public spaces to the state of public bikes (comparing Velib' v. StadtRAD, the German version works way better), the general feeling being that French people undervalue the impact of one's acts on a global community, leading to the situation described in the article.
Ask a German why do they pay more for health instances than in France and they will answer "Our debt is going down, our kids will not pay more than us and the system should work in the long term.", I had never heard that thought before moving outside of France.
In Munich, Deutsche Bahn has successfully operated a dockless bike sharing scheme for more than a decade. Last year, oBike dumped thousands of bikes in the streets, and these have been subject of quite a bit of vandalism. The reason is probably that the introduction was poorly managed. They literally dumped a huge number of bikes in the streets overnight, which was a bit of a nuisance and probably kind of invited vandalism.
A lot of people forget to refund their own deposit, and the rental company gets to keep a lot of money.