Feb 5, 2015

Bike Sharing Anyone?

Here’s a press release I received from BlancFleet: Dear Editor,

We want to radically change how enthusiasts nationwide gain access to newer bikes in the market. Today, riders have two options, own a bike outright or rent one. Owning a bike offers freedoms renting cannot, but it also limits the number of bikes an enthusiast will enjoy on the road in his lifetime. Renting also has its problems, cash deposit requirements, mile limit requirements, insurance requirements, and in most cases, renters only have access to an older fleet of bikes.

We want to change this through sharing and crowdfunding. The latter allows bike enthusiasts to raise money for new bikes they want to experience on the road and then share them between the pool of buyers. We believe sharing + crowdfunding together is the future and Blancfleet is paving the road forward that will connect bike enthusiasts everywhere to make buying a new bike more cost effective and accessible to everyone. Blancfleet also wants to remove cash deposit requirements, mile limit and insurance requirements on each bike funded through our platform so buyers simply enjoy the fleet of bikes they helped fund.

We want to expand Blancfleet nationwide and in the future globally.

If you believe your readers would benefit from our bike sharing program, we invite you to write about us.

Best,
Charles Polanco
Founder and CEO of
Blancfleet

I can see this as the wave of the future for auto-piloted cars. I don’t quite get it for motorcycles.

3 comments:

Andy Mckenzie said...

"Blancfleet also wants to remove cash deposit requirements, mile limit and insurance requirements on each bike funded through our platform so buyers simply enjoy the fleet of bikes they helped fund."

So what they're saying is, "we want to buy up a lot of brand new bikes, and then let uninsured people who can't afford to rent a bike ride them as much as they want."

I don't think I'd want to be involved in that, and I CERTAINLY wouldn't want to ride one of those bikes without having my own mechanic check it out. I imagine they're planning to charge membership fees high enough to replace those bikes when uninsured riders flip them over a guard-rail somewhere, which probably means I couldn't afford to ride them anyway.

Paul Y said...

And the possibility of getting pulled over your first day on the bike - "We have a report of a bike matching this description and license number...".
Or being far from home when the engine packs it in because the last user liked to ride mile long wheelies and flogged it mercilessly.

T.W. Day said...

What a bunch of realistic buzz-killers. ;-) I'm not even sure this is a too-little-too-late idea. I was wrong about Amazon, though.