Ohrn links to Portland Business Journal:
The Portland market is set to become a test bed for the latest program by Santa Monica, California-based peer-to-peer rental platform Spinlister.
The company is looking to reinvent the citywide bike share business model with a peer-to-peer program that includes a fleet of specialty VanMoof bicycles. Whereas individuals would own the bikes, rentals would be handled through the Spinlister mobile app.
It’s a distributed model instead of the traditional bike share models that feature hubs for the bikes.
The bikes include an onboard computer embedded in the frame that updates the bike’s location. The feature allows users to find bikes nearby and also, through its Bluetooth lock, offers a theft deterrent.
More here.
Bad link there. You just have to remove the “%20” at the end and it’ll work though.
Interesting business model. Very modern.
The bikes look nice too. VanMoof are a good brand. It appears that the chain case is one of those Chainglider types too.
I wonder how this operator can hope to achieve a critical mass of bikes available for sharing. Unless, that is, someone ponies up the capital to buy enough bikes. Uber and Lyft depend upon existing stocks of personal vehicles. Modo and Car2Go services do need to buy cars up front.