Chinese startup Mobike has announced in a blog that it lost over 200,000 dockless bikes in 2019 due to theft and vandalism.
In a blog post, Mobike said that it 205,600 of its dockless bikes were lost to theft and vandalism. In 2018, the company decided to suspend its bikesharing service in the city of Manchester due to these incidents.
Over the last few years, the use of shared dockless bikes hired via an app has become more commonplace in cities around the world. Companies such as Uber, Lime, and Ofo have started offering bikesharing services, as well as local city councils.
However, in China, thousands of share bikes have been discovered in scrap heaps, leading to people to question the demand for them in the country. The Beijing-based firm, which rebranded to Meituan Bike, expressed its gratitude to the 189,000-plus users who reported stolen and damaged bikes.
The bikes are targeted for relatively short trips across cities and locked in a public space once users are done using them. However, some users take them home or even discard them in rivers and canals.
Mobike uses a credit score system that gives rewards to good users and punishes those with bad behavior. It imposes penalties to those who break the rules and some even get banned from the service or reported to the police.
According to the company's blog, around 2,600 people have been arrested by Beijing police in relation to bike theft and vandalism. In Manchester, the police were called to over 400 incidents between July 2017 and August 2018, of which 124 were filed under criminal damage and arson offenses.
At the beginning of 2018, Mobike's Hong Kong rival Gobee pulled out of Europe entirely due to "mass destruction" of its bike fleet. Meanwhile, The Financial Times has reported that the company's main rival, Ofo, has been on the brink of bankruptcy for months.
