Features
8 Jun 18

Uber JUMPs into Europe

After the troubles to get into the European market, Uber has found a new strategy: bike sharing. With the shared electric bikes of JUMP the company will continue where its ride hailing service has been stopped.

Uber Go Home

When Uber presented its bike sharing project in Berlin, protesting taxi drivers were telling Uber to go home, according to Reuters, showing a glimpse of the protests Uber experienced in many European cities. The launch in Germany is remarkable, since Germany is among the countries where the Uber ride hailing services are prohibited by court, as in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium.

The launch of a bike sharing initiative comes right on time, since Uber – as other ride hailers – lately faced accusations of adding to traffic congestion instead of relieving it. With its bike sharing initiative, Uber wants to play the green card. Moreover, Uber will spread its electric car service, Uber Green, to Berlin as well.

Not the only one

Uber might have experienced problems to get into the European ride hailing market, but the bike sharing market is already taken as well. Both cities and international companies offer bike sharing services, and cities already experience problems due to an overload of (dockless) shared bikes.

To offer its bike sharing services, Uber acquired the bike sharing start-up JUMP in April, after having entered in a partnership in January, which resulted in Uber Bike. Uber is not the only ride hailing company partnering up with a bike sharing company. The ride hailing companies Grab (Southeast Asia), and Didi (China) launched an own bike-sharing service, and invested in existing bike-sharing companies, Ofo and Obike.

Not the only transport mode

In the end, Uber wants to become a top urban mobility platform, said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber in TechCrunch; offering a first-to-last-mile solution for its urban costumers, of which bike sharing will only be one option.

Image: JUMP bikes

Authored by: Fien Van den steen