Cyclehop, the US operator in charge of Orlando, Santa Monica, Vancouver… station-based programs chose to change its strategy by offering a dockless E-bike-sharing solution!

I was raising the issue of operation cost in different articles about Jump Bicycles or Zehus’ Bitride, and here is the big news with Cyclehop’s HOPR solution: they decided not to manage the battery charging, and to leave it to the user who will have to take care of his portable battery! This kind of solution for E-bike-sharing has already been sold for station-based system, with JCDecaux in Stockholm, SWE, or Cykleo in Laval, FRA.

The HOPR battery has a 10miles (16km) range, and powers the bike up to 15mph (25km/h). It can also be used as a power pack to charge any device through conventional plugs. The bike itself is build around a beam frame, and cheap components quite common in dockless bike-sharing: plastic spokes wheels (please tell me the real english technical word), air-free tires, single-speed, minimalistic fenders.

It will be interesting to check how customers adopt this solution. If you have the choice between HOPR and Lime-E in a city, the only way for Cyclehop to compensate lesser service will be to adapt its rental prices. Is it the good business model? We’ll see with the first programs later in 2018.