Sign in / up

back to article Uber JUMPs, slurps San Francisco bike biz

Uber apparently isn't burning cash fast enough, so the ride-share company has bought dockless bike-share outfit JUMP Bikes, with CEO Ryan Rzepecki coming along for the ride. In February, everybody's favourite it's-not-a-taxi provider tied up with San Francisco's JUMP so users of its apps could rent battery-powered bikes …

COMMENTS

Post your comment
House rules Send corrections
Add to 'My topics' unstar *
  1. Warm Braw

    JUMP's bikes employ batteries

    The batteries clearly have a more favourable status than Uber's drivers, then...

    13 0 Reply
  2. Chris G

    Bicycle battery explodes

    An electric bike sharing company admitted one of it's batteries exploded under a riders derriere. They said ' we vet all of our bikes,this one that slipped past the system, we're sending it for recycling.'

    1 0 Reply
  3. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    As JUMP's bikes employ batteries, they'll be more expensive to acquire and operate than other bike share vehicles.

    CapEx will be higher, yes but OpEx will be about the same: insurance premiums, security mechanisms but particularly paying to move the bikes back from popular end points to popular starting points.

    0 0 Reply
    1. Buzzword
      Reply Icon

      Re: moving bikes to popular start points

      For regular bike hire schemes, popular start points are at the top of a hill and popular end points are at the bottom. Hence the need for an army of drivers to shuffle them around.

      Battery-powered bicycles can go uphill quite easily, thus neatly avoiding the problem in the first place.

      1 2 Reply
      1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: moving bikes to popular start points

        For regular bike hire schemes, popular start points are at the top of a hill and popular end points are at the bottom.

        What, always?

        0 0 Reply
        1. Buzzword
          Reply Icon

          Re: moving bikes to popular start points

          Always in San Francisco. It’s rather hilly.

          0 0 Reply
  4. The Nazz

    Business opportunity here for the brave.

    For a small fee from the owners, there's an opportunity here for the recovery of said bikes from the local sink estate, together with supermarket trolleys from a couple of the major brands.

    For the brave, foolish or (equally) well tooled up.

    2 1 Reply
  5. handleoclast

    A nice, cheap source of batteries

    3 0 Reply
  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Anything goes if its green

    My gran re-utilises the mesh net bag you get your oranges in as her hair net. Is that worthy of some investment?

    For a small fee she'll also recover others' nets.

    2 0 Reply
    1. Craig 2
      Reply Icon

      Re: Anything goes if its green

      "For a small fee she'll also recover others' nets."

      The net gains of a scheme like that could be huge....

      2 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Anything goes if its green

      Whats a hair net ? Is it used to catch falling hair ? If so, please could i have one.

      0 0 Reply
  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They can leave the bikes "anywhere"?

    Did I read that right? Should I presume that the user pays a premium for the privilege, or gets a discount for plugging it into a charging station?

    0 0 Reply

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

Forgotten password ?

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like