Wukong Bicycle

Wukong Bicycle
Former type	Private
Industry	Transportation
Founded	2016
Founder	Lei Houyi
Defunct	July 2017
Area served	Chongqing, China
Products	Bicycle rentals
Parent	Chongqing Zhanguo Technology

Last updated February 24, 2019

Wukong Bicycle (Chinese :悟空) was a bicycle-sharing company based in Chongqing, China. The company operated a fleet of 1,200 bicycles in Chongqing from January to July 2017, ceasing operations after 90 percent of their bicycles were reported missing.^[1]

Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases not mutually intelligible, language varieties, forming the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many minority ethnic groups in China. About 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language.

Chongqing, formerly romanized as Chungking, is a major city in southwest China. Administratively, it is one of China's four municipalities under the direct administration of central government, and the only such municipality in China located far away from the coast.

History

The company was founded by entrepreneur Lei Houyi in 2016, inspired by the success of other bicycle-sharing systems in Beijing and Shanghai.^[2] Houyi named the system "Wukong" after the monkey king Sun Wukong in the classic novel Journey to the West .^[3] The system debuted in January 2017, with 1,200 bicycles serving 16,000 users in Chongqing, charging 0.5 yuan per ride.^[4] It launched shortly after Ofo, a larger service based in Beijing, arrived in the city.^[5] The bicycles, manufactured in small factories locally, came without GPS equipment used by larger companies. The lack of GPS equipment led to the theft of 90 percent of Wukong's fleet; additionally, the hilly terrain in Chongqing dissuaded use of the bicycles.^[5]^[6] Future models were planned come with GPS trackers, along with a national rollout to ten cities by June 2017.^[4] On June 21, Wukong announced that it would cease operations within 30 days, retrieving its bicycles and refunding users.^[3] Observers called it the first bankruptcy in the Chinese bicycle-sharing industry, which was amid a massive boom.^[1]

Sun Wukong mythical character from Journey to the West

Sun Wukong, also known as the Monkey King, is a figure who features in a body of legends that can be traced back to the Song dynasty. He appears as a main character in the 16th century Chinese classical novel Journey to the West (西游记) and is found in many later stories and adaptations. In the novel, he is a monkey born from a stone who acquires supernatural powers through Taoist practices. After rebelling against heaven and being imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha, he later accompanies the monk Tang Sanzang on a journey to retrieve Buddhist sutras from "the West".

Journey to the West is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. In English-speaking countries, Monkey, Arthur Waley's popular abridged translation is well known.

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A bicycle-sharing system, public bicycle system, or bike-share scheme, is a service in which bicycles are made available for shared use to individuals on a short term basis for a price or free. Many bike share systems allow people to borrow a bike from a "dock" and return it at another dock belonging to the same system. Docks are special bike racks that lock the bike, and only release it by computer control. The user enters payment information, and the computer unlocks a bike. The user returns the bike by placing it in the dock, which locks it in place. Other systems are dockless. For many systems, smartphone mapping apps show nearby available bikes and open docks.

Serotta was an American bicycle builder located in Saratoga Springs, New York. Named after founder Ben Serotta, the company was founded in 1972.

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Citi Bike is a privately owned public bicycle sharing system serving the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn, as well as Jersey City, New Jersey. Named after lead sponsor Citigroup, it is operated by Motivate, with former Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Jay Walder as chief executive. The system's bikes and stations use BIXI-branded technology from PBSC Urban Solutions.

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Didi Chuxing Technology Co.,, formerly Didi Kuaidi, is a Chinese ride-sharing, artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous technology conglomerate. It is headquartered in Beijing. It provides services including taxi hailing, private car hailing, social ride-sharing, bike sharing and food delivery to users in China via a smartphone application.

Biketown, also known as Biketown PDX, is a bicycle-sharing system in Portland, Oregon, that began operation on July 19, 2016. The system is owned by Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT) and operated by Motivate, with Nike, Inc. as the title sponsor. At launch, the system had 100 stations and 1,000 bicycles serving the city's central and eastside neighborhoods, with hopes to expand outward.

Mobike, also known as Meituanbike, founded by Beijing Mobike Technology Co., Ltd., is a fully station-less bicycle-sharing system headquartered in Beijing, China. It is, by the number of bicycles, the world's largest shared bicycle operator, and in December 2016, made Shanghai the world's largest bike-share city.

ofo is a Beijing-based bicycle sharing company founded in 2014. The dockless system uses its smartphone app to unlock and locate nearby bicycles, charging an hourly rate for use.

LinkBike is a public bicycle sharing system serving the city of George Town in Penang, Malaysia. Launched in 2016, it is the first such system in Malaysia. Currently, there are 250 LinkBike bicycles and 25 stations throughout the city, including its UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as suburban places like Queensbay Mall.

Bluegogo was a bicycle-sharing system based in Tianjin, China, founded and owned by Tianjin Luding Technology Co., Ltd. It operated in six Chinese cities, and briefly operated in San Francisco, United States in 2017. The station-less bicycle-sharing system used a mobile app to unlock bicycles. The company went bankrupt in November 2017.

oBike is a Singapore registered stationless bicycle-sharing system started by businessmen Shi Yi and Edward Chen with operations in several countries. The bikes have a built-in Bluetooth lock and can therefore be left anywhere at the end of a journey, not just at a docking station. Users use a smartphone app to locate and hire bikes. It launched in Singapore in February 2017, and ceased operation on 25 June 2018 in Singapore. Subsequently, the parent company filed for insolvency in its home market. Before it withdrew from Singapore, it transferred the deposits owed to the Singapore users to its sister company in China. They are currently under investigation for fraud by the Singapore Police Force. The effect on operations outside of Singapore is unknown.

Neutron Holdings, Inc. doing business under the name Lime, formerly LimeBike, is a transportation-rental company based in the United States. It runs bicycle-, scooter-, and car-sharing systems in various cities around the world. The systems offer dockless vehicles which users find and unlock via a mobile app which knows the location of available units via GPS and radio. Lime's charges typically start at $1/1€ for a 30-minute ride on unpowered bicycles, while electric bicycles and scooters cost $1 to unlock and 15 cents per minute in the US.

Spin is a scooter-sharing company that is owned by the Ford Motor Company. It is based in San Francisco and was founded as a start-up in 2017, launching as a dock-less bicycle-sharing system controlled by a mobile app for reservations. Spin later moved into scooter-sharing.

Social Bicycles Inc., doing business as JUMP, is a dockless scooter and electric bicycle sharing system operating in the United States and Germany. The bikes cost US$2 for the first half-hour to rent, then US7¢ per minute. They can be located using the Jump or Uber apps. They are bright red and weigh 70 pounds (32 kg). Each Jump bike has a 250-watt electric motor which powers the front tire. Jump employees swap out the battery packs every three days. At the end of a ride, the bikes have to be locked to a sidewalk bicycle rack. A pilot program began in February 2018, allowing certain users of the Uber app in San Francisco to access Jump's fleet of electric bicycles.

References

1 2 "Chinese bike share firm goes bust after losing 90% of bikes". BBC News . June 21, 2017. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
↑ Lu, Yuan (September 21, 2017). "Bike-Share Boss Says Failure Just Bump on Road". Sixth Tone . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
1 2 "Wheels come off bike-sharing firm". China Daily . Xinhua News Agency. June 24, 2017. Retrieved October 28, 2017.
1 2 Ng, Yi Shu (June 22, 2017). "People nicked 90% of the bikes belonging to a bike-sharing firm, so it had to close down". Mashable . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
1 2 Jing, Meng (June 22, 2017). "Here's how Wukong became the first bike-sharer to close in China". South China Morning Post . Retrieved October 28, 2017.
↑ Yan, Alice (June 21, 2017). "Chinese bike-share firm closes after 90 per cent of cycles stolen". South China Morning Post. Retrieved October 28, 2017.

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[BBC-1] 1 2 "Chinese bike share firm goes bust after losing 90% of bikes". BBC News . June 21, 2017. Retrieved October 28, 2017.

[Sixth-2] Lu, Yuan (September 21, 2017). "Bike-Share Boss Says Failure Just Bump on Road". Sixth Tone . Retrieved October 28, 2017.

[Daily-3] 1 2 "Wheels come off bike-sharing firm". China Daily . Xinhua News Agency. June 24, 2017. Retrieved October 28, 2017.

[Mashable-4] 1 2 Ng, Yi Shu (June 22, 2017). "People nicked 90% of the bikes belonging to a bike-sharing firm, so it had to close down". Mashable . Retrieved October 28, 2017.

[SCMP-5] 1 2 Jing, Meng (June 22, 2017). "Here's how Wukong became the first bike-sharer to close in China". South China Morning Post . Retrieved October 28, 2017.

[6] Yan, Alice (June 21, 2017). "Chinese bike-share firm closes after 90 per cent of cycles stolen". South China Morning Post. Retrieved October 28, 2017.