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Uber is getting into the dockless bicycle-sharing business with an acquisition reportedly worth $100-200 million:
Uber has acquired bike-sharing startup JUMP for an undisclosed amount of money. This comes shortly after TechCrunch reported that JUMP was in talks with Uber as well as with investors regarding a potential fundraising round involving Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz. At the time, JUMP was contemplating a sale that exceeded $100 million. We're now hearing that the final price was closer to $200 million, according to one source close to the situation.
JUMP's decision to sell to Uber came down to the ability to realize the bike-share company's vision at a large scale, and quickly, JUMP CEO Ryan Rzepecki told TechCrunch over the phone. He also said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's leadership impacted his decision.
[...] JUMP is best known for operating dockless, pedal-assist bikes. JUMP's bikes can be legally locked to bike parking racks or the "furniture zone" of sidewalks, which is where you see things like light poles, benches and utility poles. The bikes also come with integrated locks to secure the bikes.
Also at VentureBeat, Recode, and The Mercury News.
Related: New Electric Bikes, Scooters, and Dockless Bicycles Hitting U.S. Streets
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 14 2018, @12:53PM
> Able to tell self-driving uber cars to stop before turning rider into pancake?
Sure, for the Uber-owned bikes only. As evil as they are, even they should realize the irony (and bad press) of running over their own stuff. It will be closed software, say no more.
After reading about the recent Tempe death, I'm not going to be riding a bicycle anywhere that Uber is testing their self-driving cars. On a private forum I saw an analysis of the video resolution of the camera on that Uber test car--if you saw the in-car video you may have noticed that the person and bicycle "popped into view" at the last moment. This is pure lack of video resolution, the wheels and tubes of the bike were not even one pixel across until the car was very close (person only slightly better). By comparison, normal human vision (if the check driver had been looking) would have seen the ped pushing a bike across the street several hundred feet in advance.