When the shared bike is riding the wind and waves all the way to more cities, the government has come forward to park it. On Christmas Day, the Traffic Management Bureau of Chengdu Public Security Bureau formulated and issued the "Technical Guidelines for the location of non-motor vehicle Parking in Public Areas of Chengdu City Center", and bicycles have the "correct posture" of parking in Chengdu - put in a white frame and face the same direction.
Outside Shuangqiao Road Station on Metro Line 4, a new parking spot for non-motor vehicles has been painted.
A month ago, the Huayang Sub-district office in Tianfu New District, Chengdu, confiscated 204 shared bicycles for occupying urban roads to carry out business activities. Not only in Chengdu, but also in Shenzhen, Shanghai and other urban public managers are considering a series of regulatory measures to regulate and supervise the sudden influx of colorful bicycles.
As we all know, in 2016, which is known as the "capital winter", the sharing economy has been flourishing all the way and has become the absolute protagonist of the Internet venture capital circle. The story of capital bidding is far away from us, but the colorful bicycles on the streets are very close to us. Sharing bicycles as a non-creative concept, in the second half of the Internet with a strong momentum to complete multiple rounds of financing, do not want to attract the attention of the media is difficult, in fact, it has indeed become a number of media organizations talking about the sharing economy the most frequently cited example.
But it is clear that the battle for urban space set off by shared bikes has been poured cold water by regulatory policies everywhere. Just as the savage growth of Didi will inevitably usher in the "premature" introduction of regulations, the overlap of shared bicycle municipal public welfare will make its future development more complicated.
On the issue of the future of shared bicycles, different media organizations have different positions and attitudes.
Optimistic expectation
Tencent Research Institute listed "sharing economy" at the top of the list when summarizing the top 10 Internet keywords in 2016, and said that "2016 is the year of the rise of the sharing economy." After speaking in general about the emergence of shared bicycles, the article inserted the book "Sharing Economy: A New economic plan for supply-side reform" led by Mr. Ma Huateng in May this year, which believes that the sharing economy has a positive role in promoting hidden employment in society.
Why is the sharing economy still hot in 2017? The concept of life that rejects waste is the theoretical basis of sharing economy, and the mobile Internet provides technical support for sharing economy. Technology is advancing, and the sharing economy will not stop moving forward. With the strong wind of consumption surplus, people are surprised to find that the realization of hidden employment through the sharing economy platform has become a new social trend.
Wengengmiao, a self-media person from Baidu Hundred, took stock of the most admired sharing economy success cases in various fields in China, and the typical representative of the travel field is not shared bicycles. The article said that the on-demand Mobike "revives" urban public bicycles and "revives" the concept of the sharing economy. Although the fledgling Mobike is currently facing many problems, but "can still be optimistic", that in the healthy and environmentally friendly bike sharing field, Mobike is likely to become the next Uber or Didi.
China's Internet innovators organization "Geek Park" listed "shared bicycles" as one of the top 10 trends in the science and technology Internet circle in 2016, saying that the emergence of Mobike and ofo broke the cooling state of the capital circle, and more and more players competed to enter the game, lighting the enthusiasm of capital.
While marveling at "the bicycle that once dominated Chinese people's travel habits has returned to people's lives in such a form", Geek Park can also observe the latest drama in the field of shared bicycles: In the second half of 2016, more and more bicycle brands joined the fray, For example, Yong 'an (one of the largest public bicycle operators in China) launched a dockless shared bicycle Yong 'an line, Beast cycling launched a small blue car Bluegogo, Xiaoming bicycle backed by Kailush, Youbai bicycle backed by Yongjiu bicycle, and 700bike, an Internet bicycle brand cooperating with ofo.
After sharing bicycles presents a "pot of porridge" and there are already well-funded players in the market, what is the possibility of breakthrough for the companies and investors that follow up? Geek Park quoted Wang Tianfan, vice president of investment in Bettasman China, as saying: "Either there are electric vehicles, or cost advantages, or second - and third-tier city coverage, or strategic resources, or different technical solutions." In short, the streets were full of colors."
Look down on
The "public enemy of science and technology" from the Internet and technology circles questioned the business logic of shared bicycles. In its article published on the 23rd, "Within the business logic, do shared bicycles really have poetry and distance?" Three subheadings directly indicate the author's attitude: "Capital boom can't hide profitability woes," "Fake business model due to lack of subsequent markets," and "Acquisitions may also be a dead end."
First of all, the high cost and the single profit imbalance caused the profit dilemma of shared bicycles; Secondly, the market, derivative products and services that bicycles can promote are very limited; Finally, based on the need for cooperation and the possibility of acquisition of online car platforms and O2O platforms are not very good at present, shared bicycles can not find a successor in the short term, can only be used as a supplement to the government's public bicycles. In addition, at present, there is no public bicycle project in the world to achieve its own profit industry state, the prospect of shared bicycles is not optimistic.
Chop Chai network 24 published from the media people's article "Why not optimistic about the" Internet + bicycle rental "also expressed the same view. The author of the article believes that "Internet + bicycle rental" solves the travel needs of consumers in the last kilometer, but it will be better for the government to do it, private enterprises simply rely on capital to promote or there are many difficult points: the last kilometer demand pain point is not suitable for all cities; Good business model, but weak earnings; It is suitable for the government to do public welfare, but it is difficult to develop commercial intervention; Urban order is more important than scale.
Full of contradictions
In addition to the expectations and doubts about shared bicycles, many media's attitude on this issue appears to be contradictory.
TechNews Science and Technology News sorted out the financing situation in the field of shared bicycles in 2016, saying that in the context of the sharing economy, green travel is encouraged, and the traditional urban bicycle rental system needs to embrace the Internet, shared bicycles have obviously made a great difference in the field of urban travel. But it also left three sequelae to be solved: bicycle overcapacity, platform profitability difficulties, and the ethical dilemma faced.
In the top ten industry hot events in 2016, shared bicycles and the previous Didi Uber capital war were listed, and the former's large-scale financing in the second half of the year turned the last kilometer of the travel market into the hottest fire in the capital winter. But in fact, on the one hand, bike-sharing platforms cover the market with external investment, but on the other hand, there are many problems such as management defects, ethical dilemmas and unclear profit models. Burning money to expand is the road ahead of Didi Uber, and the plot is likely to be a merger in the end. Whether this shared economy myth stacked by capital will succeed remains to be seen.
36 Krypton selected shared bicycles as the "story of the year", and in the article "Shared bicycles, the behind the scenes war of true and false Tuyere", it sorted out the capital carnival behind the bicycle war in 2016 and where it will go in the future.
"The battle seems to be taking place on every street corner, but we think the real battle is actually taking place in the capital bets of Tencent, Didi and other major institutions such as Sequoia and DST, and in the calculation of real financial models."
In order to solve the rigid travel demand of the last kilometer of urban residents, the shared bicycle market represented by Mobike and OFO began to become hot, the orange-yellow war, the north-south confrontation drama made the entire capital circle hot blood, this year two companies respectively won four rounds of huge financing. The influx of capital has led to the competitive logic of sharing bicycles to become: by burning money quickly to expand, with a large enough scale and density to form barriers. Mobike and OFO took the lead in seizing first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, while later small players were subdivided from other second - and third-tier cities.