Joco almost died at launch. Now, it's a lifeline for e-bike delivery riders | Hacker News Reader

Joco almost died at launch. Now, it's a lifeline for e-bike delivery riders

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118 pointsPaulHoule58 comments

I find it really frustrating that the NYC DOT fought their original business model in order to protect Lyft’s monopoly. I had assumed that Lyft’s monopoly was on the right to use DOT’s street space for their program (which at least makes sense), but it feels like a bike rental service operating on private property should not be the DOT’s jurisdiction.

The argument was essentially “we need to give Lyft a monopoly because that’s the only way they would invest in the system”, but the fact that Joco had a structural disadvantage (no public space) and was still willing to enter the market is a sign that we could have a competitive market without giving it all away to Lyft.

I bet it's some bullshit like, "bikeshare businesses" have to display advisories on the app to tell people not to ride on the sidewalk and to use helmets.

> it feels like a bike rental service operating on private property should not be the DOT’s jurisdiction.

I’m not sure I see how the private ownership of docking spaces should be relevant to DOT jurisdiction specifically. Rental car services are regulated, and owning the land housing the pickup location doesn’t avoid that probably because the vehicles are obviously used on public roadways.

are bike rental services regulated as rideshare?

either way, it's sorta symptomatic of the kneejerk overregulation that is plaguing a lot of blue states. i can understand the impulse to want to regulate dockless bikes that can cause problems... but just any bike rental?

> The Cohens thought that placing Joco’s docking stations on private property would allow them to avoid both Citi Bike’s territory and the city’s regulatory eye. They were wrong. The NYC Department of Transportation promptly sued Joco for operating a bikeshare without prior authorization from the agency, forcing the startup to pivot away from offering consumer rides toward last-mile delivery.

Land of the free, where everything not mandatory is prohibited.

It’s super sad to see the US’s ills pinned on “unrestrained capitalism” or whatever, when in reality there are more and more impediments to new businesses and new lines of business than ever before.

The unrestrained capitalism here is citi bike using the government to step on the little guy. Don't confuse capitalism with free markets.

> Those cabinets, which Joco says are FDNY-approved, are a growing vertical for the startup, particularly in NYC where battery fires have run rampant due to unsafe charging practices, leading many buildings to ban e-bikes and e-scooters.

First off, there's no such thing as "unsafe charging practices." The chargers are completely automatic, and all ebike batteries, even the really cheap ones the couriers prefer, have battery management system boards that cut off the battery if it gets over[voltage/temperature/current].

Second, _not a single fire_ in NYC was due to an e-bike. Every single one of them was an electric scooter or "personal mobility device" ie onewheel, hoverboard, etc. But NYFD kept calling them "ebike fires" and this was not a "mistake" (see below) https://www.bicycleretailer.com/industry-news/2022/04/26/app...

Third, the NYC government has a long history of hateboners for ebikes. NYPD regularly would do "raids" and confiscate e-bikes from delivery workers, which they could get back for several hundred dollars - a fine greater than nearly any motor vehicle infraction there is. It amounted to a city-government-run-mafia shakedown of some of the city's poorest residents. This is just more of the same; NYFD are purposefully lumping in e-bikes with the devices actually causing fires, to push a narrative that eBikes are dangerous.

Yeah but why? Why hassle these guys so much? The delivery bikers take cars off the streets, they are serving people who are willingly paying, and an e-bike is less likely to kill a pedestrian. From the POV of fire and police, it’s much harder to commit crimes on e-bikes, and in absolute numbers I’m confident the fire department responds more frequently to incidents with cars. It seems like a win win for everyone in the community.

I understand why it’s a culture war. It violates beliefs. But is there truly any rational basis? I understand the aesthetics of a delivery biker violating a traffic law for cars looks bad, that it pisses people off. But brother… it’s an urban environment: it’s going to be chock full of shit that pisses you off. Why this?

If that's the case, why was at least one such ebike battery the subject of a CPSC recall?

https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2023/E-Bikes-Recalled-Due-to-Fi...

from: https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/11/21/ebikes-fires-lithium-ion-...

There definitely needs to be better regulation/inspection:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/us/nyc-ebike-store-fire-lithi...

but agree that a more even-handed approach to repair is warranted:

https://nypost.com/2024/03/03/us-news/more-nyc-fires-caused-...

and I'd be glad to be pointed to articles from independent sources which are impartial.

The Manhattan apartment building my son lives in suffered such a fire --- fortunately my son and his dog made it out safely, and his unit only had smoke damage, but he was out of his apartment for months of moving from one motel room to another every 30 days once his insurance kicked in.

That said, folks need to be more respectful of and careful with batteries in general --- my brother-in-law's home was damaged by a fire caused by a digital camera battery over a decade ago.

Regarding your second point, your own source says that none of the five fires -over a two day period- were not ebike fires. You’re making it sound like no ebike has ever caught fire at all. “none of the New York fires occurring April 20 and 21 involved an e-bike“

That article also says “Now, some fires certainly originate with e-bike batteries and some e-scooter batteries are probably safe.”

To your first point, there absolutely are unsafe charging practices, such as charging immediately after coming in from the cold without letting the battery warm up, which is one reason why these fires occur most often in winter.

I’m very pro ebike, but can’t just act like they don’t have these issues…

> charging immediately after coming in from the cold

Why should this be any concern of the end user? The BMS is supposed to manage that condition.

This is not true. The article you linked only mentioned one particular instance that the battery fire was not the result of a e-bike battery. There have been fires due to bad e-bike batteries (see https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/11/21/ebikes-fires-lithium-ion-..., and https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/01/31/ebike-battery-fire-hazard...).

I'm a huge pedal assist e-bike fan and I use my e-bike all the time around NYC. Throttle based e-bikes used to be technically illegal in NYC until 2020 (pedal assist were not), which is what all the delivery workers still continue to use. (https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/ebikes.shtml). Do you have a citation that they continue to confiscate e-bikes?

You're not listening. NYFD calls ALL "mobility device" fires "ebike fires."

You can quote articles all you like - they're all based off NYFD's lies.

TIL "hateboners" is a word

I don’t fully understand these kind of businesses especially in the “tech” space. I wonder if they paid for this article but I honestly don’t see the growth in these companies. They can be great businesses but not ones that would be posting in TechCrunch.

Not all tech businesses have to be hyperscalers slave to investor profit seeking

Right but TechCrunch is fairly well known to be pay to publish and this felt like a puff piece for the company. Just surprising because I don’t think the economics would work out in a business like this. Like I already said, it’s a fine business but fairly local and not too much if any of a most.

I was reading it thinking "their PR firm is earning its fees."

I enjoyed the article anyway, but still.

(every time there's a freakout on rightard twitter about "you will eat the bugs" the article about insect protein that triggered it pretty much always includes a reference to a company that closed a funding round not long ago - I am honestly impressed that their respective PR companies managed to get basically the same story published so many times)

People don't typically read tech news to hear about slow growing bootstrapped lifestyle businesses.

To your credit, it wouldn't be the first time TC did a pay-for-play.

Also, TC has been beyond irrelevant for years.

Now, it's even worse. It's a negative-signal attached to all those desperate enough to use it.

That’s was probably the confusion I had. I figured every lengthy piece like this one was paid for but then I was thinking I don’t understand how this would benefit the company u less they are raising money and at that point I don’t see the economics playing out to take funding.

I would guess they're hoping that it'll get in front of some potential customers and augment their primarily word-of-mouth marketing strategy as a result.

I did appreciate that the "hired a car" story included a comment of "and this is worth doing because it gets us customers," the lack of pretense there was nice.

I got some "ad" vibes, but nothing specific comes to mind. Maybe more like "this is a fluff piece." Better worth the time to publish if someone is paying you.

It's absolutely a fluff piece. Think about it. The title brags about how awesome the business is for the riders. Did they speak to a single rider? Nope.

That's because every single rider would rather that instead of being given 25 cent foot warmers, a few-cents cup of coffee, a couple cents of electricity, and a place to piss: be paid a livable wage, be paid for their time (there are a number of circumstances where the app delivery companies will leave the delivery person with nothing, even though they did work), get paid time off, worker's comp if they're injured while working, protection from discrimination, wage law protections, and all the other myriad of things that these companies can't afford because their business model doesn't work if you pay people working for you a fair, livable wage.

It seems like every other SV company works this way. Amazon is of course the shining example, where they've outsourced almost all of their warehouse labor to third party companies, and those companies purposefully try to burn out / annoy the employees so they don't stick around long enough to claim the benefits Amazon brags about on their hiring pages. The drivers? Employed by "DSPs", most of which are very short-lived. Again, on purpose/by design. Can't get sued for workers comp if you're employing people through a third party company that (oops!) dissolved 6 months ago.

Google Books gave the Books employees very visibly different IDs and they were third-class citizens on campus, not even allowed to leave the area around the Books warehouse, if I remember right? Google won't even pay their shuttle drivers enough; there was an article a while back where the reporter interviewed a shuttle driver who was having to live in a camper van in the Google parking lot because she couldn't afford any housing anywhere near a reasonable drive from the Google office. I knew a massage therapist who worked at a Google office and she snorted when I asked her if she got all the fancy benefits management, engineering, and marketing get.

FFS the article brags about how "prudent" they are for their labor cost-cutting; overseas outsourcing a lot of their labor, for example. I bet damn near every non-management position is part-time so they get out of paying any benefits.

This stuff is being done to deflect criticism when labor rights activists go to city hall or Albany. Grubhub et al hire lobbyist who throws some cash at legislators to get meetings with them, strolls in, shows them a nice presentation with all these pictures of smiling riders, and the legislator thinks "gosh golly they're treating these people so nicely." Ditto for public committee hearings.

The delivery riders and drivers don't have the ability to trek up to Albany and even if they did, there's no way in hell a legislator would make time to meet them.

While I sympathize with your broader point about gig worker wages, I'm a little confused about joco's role in the situation. They're providing a service to the workers. They're not paying them -- the workers are paying joco. What do you suggest their role in the system should be?

Yeah it’s gig market BS 10 years after everyone has discovered the pitfalls. Probably the most interesting thing about this story is that there are two people named Jonathan Cohen that had a similar enough business idea to start together as founders. Neat

Sponsored content. Have come across my company doing the same. There are no to few rules about labeling as such.

I thought practically every article in TechCrunch was for pay in some form. That’s why I was wondering.

techcrunch is a good source because they exchange writing fluff pieces for access, if you read them with that in mind you can get good info

there are a few outlets like this, like theinformation

>> life cycle of the new Segway bikes is three to five years.

...then I guess it's promptly thrown off a bridge into the river. The idea that a bicycle lasts 3 years, even with hard, year-round riding, is from the disposable tech consumer mindset. A well maintained commuter bike - not an expensive one - lasts 10+ years. These aren't really bicycles, but computerized, electric mopeds.

I am not really convinced that 3-5 years is not a reasonable useful life. You are comparing one person owner bike to an electric bike ridden throughout the day but all sorts of people. Maybe it gets trashed and maybe it gets broken down and recycled parts where possible.

A well maintained commuter bike is ridden twice a day during those 10+ years.

I see a few comments hung up on the 10 years number. Bikes last decades.

Maybe the frame does, but aside from that I expect it to be a bike of Theseus after a decade.

And the original commenter is of course right about the "computerized, electric mopeds" part. That's what makes those bikes useful. The drive unit is likely the expensive part. It also means many parts get a lot more wear because the bikes accelerate faster (= much bigger forces involved) and drive faster on average (= heavier vibrations/bumps).

Combine this with accidents (from the bike falling over while stationary, to the rider wiping out, to car crashes) and the useful life of the vehicle is limited.

> Combine this with accidents (from the bike falling over while stationary, to the rider wiping out, to car crashes) and the useful life of the vehicle is limited.

This.

I don't see how a bike can be used daily, year-round, for ten years, without falling or being hit by a car driver.

And I would never ride again an alloy or carbon bike that has been involved in a crash with a car.

It largely depends on where you live.

It seems likely that the miles put on a "commuter bike" used for commuting twice a day for 10 years are within shouting distance of the miles put on a bike used for several hours of deliveries every day for 3 years.

The company is incentivized to get the most out of their investment. If the bikes can be maintained economically by staff mechanics, they will be — and these vehicles ought to be simple enough devices for mechanics to squeeze a long life out of them.

If there's a difference, it would be in the lack of an ownership mindset by the riders: they might abuse them akin to how drivers abuse rental cars.

It's about mileage, not age. A chain is good for maybe 2000 miles - a commuter might get a year or two out of it, but a courier or serious roadie could wear it out in a matter of weeks. The same basic equation applies to wheel rims, bearings, cassettes, chainrings and (in the case of e-bikes) batteries and motor-gearbox units. If you're changing those parts often enough, eventually something will strip or seize badly enough to write off the frame. Most casual cyclists will never experience it, but an aluminium frame will inevitably succumb to fatigue cracking around the bottom bracket after a few tens of thousands of miles, no matter how well it's cared for.

Three to five years is incredibly good for a bike that's potentially being ridden all day, every day under very harsh conditions.

> , but an aluminium frame will inevitably succumb to fatigue cracking around the bottom bracket after a few tens of thousands of miles, no matter how well it's cared for.

That is a urban myth.

I know several bikes with alu forks and bottom brackets who have been in use for more than 30 years and +50000 kms and they are all good. In fact the glue bond between the tubes is what fails and they have been reglued several times.

Stuff don't strip or seize if torqued correctly, the right kind of greases/compound are used and the bike is disassembled/reassembled once a year.

Having said that, I wouldn't expect a courrier to do it himself nor to have an LBS do this for him.

Glue?!

Yes the popular vitus and alan aluminium frames of the late 80's to mid 90's had aluminium tubes glued to aluminium lugs. Also many early carbon frames of that era from TVT, Alan, Vitus, Trek, Giant or Specialized) were built the same way with carbon tubes and aluminium lugs. In the early 2000's there were also some frames with an alu front triangle and a carbon rear triangle bonded together. Usually they were mid tier bikes below full carbon ones.

This is still a popular method for frames built with mixed materials.

Tubes in the rear triangle are more susceptible to breaking as they twist ever so slightly during use. Steel will gladly take up this sort of springy torsion, aluminium not so much.

I've seen it first-hand. The old lugged and bonded Trek frames are much more resistant to this than welded frames, because that construction method minimises the stress concentrations that initiate macro cracks. E-bikes are probably more vulnerable, partly because the structure is compromised to allow for battery installation and wiring, but mainly because there's a bunch of extra torque going through the chainstays.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/frame_fatigue_test.htm

An aluminium frame used in all weathers is vulnerable to galvanic corrosion. Aluminium is less noble than steel, so steel fasteners will rot out aluminium threads. In a perfect world this would be prevented by a suitable assembly grease, but a delivery bike being used through winter in London or New York is about as far from a perfect world as you could imagine. There's salt on the roads, the bike never gets a chance to fully dry out, so any amount of aluminium-to-steel contact is going to lead to very rapid corrosion.

> but an aluminium frame will inevitably succumb to fatigue cracking

I'm no expert, but couldn't you just weld it up then? That's a fairly simple operation that shouldn't take more than 5 minutes and cost maybe $30.

It's possible to weld an aluminum frame but you'll have to heat treat it, at which point it's no longer a simple and cheap operation.

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/To-the-Point-Heat-Treating-Alu...

> but a courier or serious roadie could wear it out in a matter of weeks

worked as a cycle courier for almost 3 years here, full-time (6 days a week) + a commute of 20 Km (back and forth) as my parents lived in the suburb, wasn't rare to work in the rain (113 days of sun in a year)... NO FUCKING WAY you can destroy a bicycle chain in a matter of weeks! unless you don't know how gears work, which i doubt couriers don't know (and most of them use single/fixed gears, which the chain is waaay sturdier than 8,9,10 speed ones)

still have my +20,000 Km without previous experience 'hand' centered/aligned aluminum entry category wheels on my 1996 road frame

I didn't know fixed speed bikes were popular among couriers. Do you know if this is regional? I've always thought fixed speed would be a nightmare in somewhere with any elevation gain like the hills of San Fransisco. Or, is fixed speed with electric assist the combination that makes this tolerable?

Brazil here... city had lots of hills tho i always said it was a 'mild hilly city', my cycles when i measured were around 700-2000 meters of altimeter, between 35-60 kilometers; sometimes we had bad days of few workers (motor and bicycle), so they had to send bicycles far away from the center (which was flat). i remember 3 or 4 people having fixed gears, some single (i had one for a short time, with a ratio of 1.6 or 1.8:1 i think) speed but the vast majority used gears

didn't read much on the internet but fixed gears is quite popular among couriers in flat cities (London, NY). maintenance is simple and cheap. salaries are quite low too :)

i never saw an electric fixed gear bicycle, nor much electric bicycles down here (i can remember only 1 guy with an electric bicycle back in 2017 and never saw him working much... maybe it was a occasional teen worker that was there to get some dime for parties (we had a bunch of them)). lately people here ride four-stroke engine adapted bicycles... it's quite rare to find a human-powered bicycle courier nowadays. basically Ycombinator liberated a grand for a super anti-competitive and non-ethical company (Rappi) and they destroyed the local courier scene here, later Uber also entered the scene. now you either work on a motorcycle (which also got effected) or you probably be working as most people back in my days; if you don't love cycling in 3 or 4 months MAX. you will give up from the job and you are doing strictly as an extra income or till you find something better (basically any legal job as far as i know)

People have ridden fixed in SF for decades. I have as well. You learn to prefer certain routes, and when the hill is steep, you just deal with the low cadence.

I can certainly wear out a bicycle chain in a matter of weeks.

If you use a fixed gear bike, your tolerances for chain wear are far looser and you can always adjust the spacing to compensate. But for anyone using a modern drivetrain, you will rapidly wear the chain to the point where it will damage the cassette fast enough for it to be economical to replace the chain in order to avoid replacing the expensive cassette (and having poor shifting/skipping cogs).

On an e-bike you can wear your chain even faster, especially if you stay on the small gear too much.

At the end of the day it's not really an issue though, a chain is 10-15$.

That said you're right about the frame lasting far beyond, a good aluminum frame could certainly last over 100'000km

Agreed except for the aluminum frame wears is out after 10 years, and fails spectacularly

While this kind of failure is certainly not unheard of, it's not exactly the norm for good quality frames in my experience; I've had quite a few old and well used but high quality frames.

One of my frames did start to crack, but it is now 35 years old - it's an Olmo record

Wrong you should change your chain every couple weeks if you ride eight hours a day otherwise you’re going to wear your cassette and then you are going to be skipping, and need to change the whole drive chain. Which is why fixed gear is popular among couriers the chain is thicker and the whole drive chain can wear together

chain rotation is nice, makes them even last longer..! you can also don't do it and fit a new chain when the 1° is over in an 'old' cassette and after some gentle rides it'll settle there and stop skipping (at least 2-3 times till the cassette comes to an end). you can even rotate the crank cog when you change your chain, so you have less tear as the crank arm tends to make pressure in only some parts of the cog (aka. concentric movements)... but i can't see a case where you destroy a chain in weeks, with our without rotation, doesn't matter if you are a 100 kilos or a 55. maybe without doing any cleaning and no oil, still i have my doubts as i rode for some months as a test, with my chain without oil just to check how much it would last! in my defense i cleaned it every other day or on a daily basis if there was rain (also i had mudguards)

If properly cared for, and under common urban all-weather cycling conditions, yeah your chain is going to last for more than a few weeks.

1500 miles is what I get on my 12sp MTB chains, which get exposed to more severe service than urban bikes do.

I have taken a chain from new to letting the .5 gauge barely slip through on the chain checker in about a week though. It required riding through all manner of mud and crap for about 18 hours a day during an ultradistance race.

The issue is that you can't repair these bikes because they all have proprietary parts that only licensed mechanics are allowed to touch. And the ebike companies are dropping like flies at the moment.

Rented equipment is treated like trash by an unfortunate number of renters. This is true even for things like apartments and homes. For short term rentals of cheaper goods like bikes and scooters it is far, far worse.

Once you factor in that the bikes are fully utilized, rather than ridden a few times a week, and 3-5 years actually sounds pretty good.

Stepping back a bit, having these on the road rather than cars or petrol scooters must be a big win even if they don't last as long as we'd like

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