【This Ain't Cops XXX (2010)】

SHENZHEN,This Ain't Cops XXX (2010) China -- There’s a saying that everything in life comes full circle. In southern China, that is more apparent than ever as a new crop of start-ups battle to update what was once the icon of pre-economic reform China: the bicycle.

In the past year, Tencent-backed Mobike and Xiaomi-backed ofo have been locked in a battle for bicycle-sharing supremacy -- dumping tens of thousands of two-wheelers onto Chinese city streets.

Now, a third company, Bluegogo, has entered the fray.

Compared with the 600 or so other bike-sharing providers that the world has seen though, these Chinese startups are making them look downright primitive.

The typical drill: you find a designated station with the bikes, swipe a credit card, and ride. When finished, park the bike at the nearest station.

But Bluegogo, along with Mobike and ofo, are stationless. The bicycles are located at random spots throughout the city, but because they’re all connected via GPS, you can locate them via Bluegogo’s app.

Once you find one, simply scan the QR code to unlock, and off you go. When you’re done, just park the bike anywhere. Everything -- locating, unlocking, locking, paying -- is done through the app, which even tracks stats such as distance travelled and calories burned.

Here's the lock clicking open after the QR code is verified:

In the month or so since it started its bike service, the Beijing-headquartered Bluegogo has already placed 70,000 bikes on the streets in three cities: 35,000 in Shenzhen, 25,000 bikes in Guangzhou, and 10,000 in Chengdu. 

Bluegogo, being a latecomer to the bike-share game, needs to be aggressive.

Tony Li, the 28-year-old founder of Bluegogo, told Mashablethat the company produces a mindboggling 10,000 bicycles a day, through its own manufacturing plant and through partnerships with another eight factories.

That Bluegogo has such manufacturing prowess -- paid for by the 237 million RMB ($34 million) it raised in funding -- is one reason why Li believes it can make up lost ground on ofo and Mobike, which respectively have 70,000 and 40,000 bikes in China.

That doesn't mean the other two are resting on their laurels. Mobike, which will launch in Singapore next year, has said it will reach 100,000 bikes by the end of the year.

Smooth riding

I tried out all three bikes during my visit to Shenzhen, and I can confirm that Bluegogo’s bikes generally offered a better experience, though that may be due to the fact that the bikes are simply newer.

I felt Bluegogo’s bikes had more comfortable seats. The company’s vice president of operations manager, Hufei Yu, told me they designed the seat to feel like “a woman’s breast.”

Seems like an odd model for bike seats, but there’s no doubt Bluegogo's bikes are well-built. Just like Mobike's, they are supposedly maintenance-free for at least four years.

The PU polymer tires are airless so it can’t get punctured, its frame aluminum so it won’t rust, and it includes a solar panel to power the lock and lights.

Mobike requires an initial 299 RMB deposit ($44) and charges 1 RMB (15 cents) per half hour. Bluegogo only requires 100 RMB ($14) and 0.50 RMB (8 cents).

Ofo, while priced similarly to Bluegogo, has bikes I didn't like; you can't adjust the seat height, for example, and the locking mechanism requires users to manually input an app-generated code to unlock.

That's been subjected to vandalism, where people have scratched off the QR codes, rendering the bike unusable.

A buck a day may not sound like a lot of money, but multiply that by the hundreds of thousands of bikes that will be used every single day for what’s expected to be four years, and that number adds up to hundreds of millions.

Neither Li nor Yu would reveal the exact manufacture cost of each bike, only saying “it’s less than 2,000 RMB each”, but Yu did add that the bikes average a daily revenue of 8 RMB ($1) per bike.

“After the first three months, everything is profit," says Yu.

Ben Sin is a freelance technology writer based in Hong Kong.