oBike (ceased operation)

nearly 1000 NT deposit seems pretty steep. i don’t think i’ve clocked up that much through all the times i’ve rode youbike.

any positives OBike has is negated by having no maintenance plan. each bike is a piece of trash waiting to happen. not that you need to use much forethought to see how things will go, just look at whats happened in other countrys.

I finally figured out how OBike locates the bikes :grinning:
No GPS on the bike, just a solar cell and an electronic lock. They use the last user’s mobile phone OBike app, get the GPS data from the phone and send them to the server, done.

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Has anybody successfully obtained their deposit back?

I think @Brianjones is the only one here who has attempted to get it back. No word from him yet.

Seem there is a GPS device within the bikes after all, though I too had my suspicion it was only using phone-connected GPS.

You can try, rent a bike, unlock it-lock it and then put it somewhere else. If it pops-up on the map in right location it has a tracker.

That may only suggest it does not have an active Internet connection.

I got it back last month. It took a few weeks to get the refund.

So whats going on with oBikes? I see them in random places parked, but I only see people riding uBikes around my house. Can I just steal one and put it in my house and take it out to bike?

Now that you mention it, for Obike you could probably drag one home, mess around with the lock, and disengage electronics, and ride it around and nobody would know the difference. But if you ever park it, somebody might ride off on it.

Same with Ubike, but you need somebody else’s ID card to unlock it.

If someone rides it away. I would just get another one? Seems like no shortage of ones I can just take.

Try it first, the bikes are not worth stealing them.

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This is a big problem in China. Or people putting their own locks on bikes. Hope Taiwanese civil society is a strong enough that you wont have these type of occurrences.

I china people just steal each other’s bikes all the time. You can’t buy nice bikes there because it will get stolen 100%. I was told to rough up my bike to make it look less new in Beijing and it still got stolen in my first week lol. After that I just rented it from a bike shop.

I don’t think we’d have this issue here (in Taipei). The locals still see that the oBike are crap quality compared to the Youbike.

A few months ago when it was first launched, I saw lots of usage. Probably from those curious about the program and the bikes. Now, not so many.

I would be curious to see if oBike released info on ridership in the past few months.

Man, you really hate OBike :slight_smile:

I like them, I ride them the ten minutes to the gym. More convenient than YouBike and costs like 2ntd each time. They seem to be in rotation though, think still fairly popular.

I don’t see Taiwanese putting locks on them or taking in their apartments like the selfish peeps in China

I was hiking and passed through a small village /section in a semi-wooded area that was about 45 minutes to an hour walk from a train station and somebody living there had an obike parked outside his house. Not many people there, so I assume it was taken for personal use.

They are all over the place, in scooter and car parking spaces, on sidewalks, blocking sidewalks, in landscaping, even lying on the ground in random places and on private property. They are a nuisance. I’ve seen many in disrepair, rusting out, falling apart and even missing seats. The system is a joke and not well thought out. Sooner or later cities will get sick of them and ban them. Ubike is better in terms of upkeep and respecting property and public spaces.