A new Danish startup is launching a Kickstarter project soon with the aim of providing a network of instantly-available bicycles in various cities around the world, It will allow people to rent out their spare bikes for cash.
AirDonkey is a platform to share your bike and earn money on it. Using the locks and platform developed by Donkey Republic, users can find and pay for the use of bikes on the Donkey Republic App. in order to share their bikes, AirDonkey hosts will order a Donkey kit, which contains the Donkey lock.
The Donkey kit will cost about €80 and will include a special rear-wheel lock which can be released via a mobile phone app, along with stickers marking the bike and a listing on the website.
The website will keep a track of available bikes’ locations via the lock, which can go 500 days between battery charges.
Co-founder Erdem Ovacik told The Guardian: “We’re a new bike-sharing service that’s going to disrupt urban transport. We want to also kind of have a political advocacy side of things: how can cities become more bike friendly? And this is where Copenhagen really is a benchmark.”
AirDonkey hopes to be an “Uber for bicycles”, he says: “You could see it as a Scandinavian reply to the American way of doing things with Uber. Of course, these are very ambitious words. But that’s the vision.”
