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Dublin Tech Start-Up Moby to Compete with Bleeperbike in E-Bike Sharing

Dublin tech start-up Moby, known for its Jyroball hoverboard and YX One eboard, will now enter the electronic bike-sharing market after obtaining a licence from the Dublin City Council. Rather than being tied to traditional stations, e-bikes can be picked up and dropped off at any of the designated locations within a larger area. Similar to ride services like Uber and Lyft, users simply use an app to first locate than book a bike, and pricing is often contingent on the amount of time spent biking. This scheme has revolutionary implications for urban public transport.

However, Moby is not the first company to bring e-bikes to Dublin. In May 2018, the Dublin City Council granted licences to Urbo and Bleeperbike to operate e-bike sharing services, Killian Woods of Fora reported. Woods went on to state that 200 bikes were planned to be released at the start, the goal being to reach 1,500 bikes on Dublin’s streets. Jonathan Keene, also of Fora, followed up on the story last August when BleeperBike had reached 500 bikes and was continuing plans for expansion in other Dublin jurisdictions. Urbo, however, did not realise its ambitions. The company never deployed any bikes, and the City Council re-advertised its license in May 2019 when it failed to meet its October 2018 deadline, Keene reported.

It seems as though Moby will be taking its place. Keene followed this story with his most recent piece highlighting the vision of Moby Founder Thomas O’Connell. O’Connell sat down for an interview with Fora and revealed that the company planned to release just 20 bikes in August before the first full wave of 250 bikes in September. When elaborating on the relevance of bike-sharing to the city, he told Fora “‘I think there’s a need for the bikes to go out and go longer distances and that’s where we see an opportunity in Dublin.’” These e-bikes will share the streets with the Council’s own fixed bike station scheme Dublinbikes.

For more information, please visit the following: https://fora.ie/moby-stationless-bike-sharing-4668518-Jun2019/; https://fora.ie/share-bikes-dublin-urbo-bleeperbike-4043922-May2018/; https://fora.ie/bleeperbike-richard-barrett-4180033-Aug2018; https://fora.ie/urbo-dublin-bike-licence-4553857-Mar2019/

 

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