When Mobike’s founders launched their idea in 2015, their vision was to bring bikes back to Chinese cities as a means to solve some of urbanization’s most difficult challenges: traffic congestion, pollution, and accessibility. What evolved has become a globe-spanning business using its innovative technology to make cycling the most convenient and environmentally-friendly transport choice for urban residents around the world.

One of Mobike’s key early innovations was to design the world’s first truly “smart” shared bicycle platform. Every bike in its fleet integrates mobile Internet of Things technology that allows monitoring of the bikes health and activity in real time. Collectively, the company’s fleet of now over 8 million bikes in over 200 cities around the world generates around 30 terabytes of data on a daily basis- which the company’s “Magic Cube” AI platform translates into efficiency-boosting operations insights. This data can also paint an illuminating picture of how this resurgence in cycling is affecting urban residents’ behavior, the environment, and our conceptions about how cities operate, and how they ought to.

In this talk, Florian Bohnert, Head of Global Partnerships, and Luke Schoen, Global Communications Lead, will share the story of Mobike’s growth, from a 30-person team with an idea for a better way to get around in cities, to a global force making tangible changes to carbon footprints and behavior across cultures. They will also discuss recent joint research with Mobike’s NGO partners that has estimated some of the impacts that scaled use of Mobike and of bike sharing in general are already having on communities and the environment, and how the service’s big data insights can help urban planners to design more sustainable communities.