The bike sharing craze that kicked off with China is now expanding outside Asia. Flooding the streets with bikes, the likes of Mobike and Ofo have been trying to reshape how people move across cities. Users can easily rent bikes through a mobile app and find the bikes to use in their neighbourhood. Now, in what is being seen as a significant milestone for the company, Mobike is set to launch in Manchester, UK.

Mobike has raised close to USD 325 million from investors including Foxconn, Sequoia Capital and Tencent. It plans to go live in Manchester, which will be its 100^th location, on June 29. Among international locations, Singapore was the first market for Mobike outside China.

While the concept of bike sharing won’t be new for the city, most of the existing setups follow a docking system in certain places. Mobike will kick off with 1000 bikes not limited to hubs. While the competition outside China is lower for Mobike, it is likely to not stay this way for long. Ofo, its competition from back home, is reportedly looking at a USD 500 million round to expand global footprint with plans for UK on the cards. In fact it is already running a pilot in Cambridge with 50 bikes. To avoid reaching a situation of haphazardly thrown bikes and flooded pavements like in China, the regulators are already keeping a watch with these companies racing in.

Source: TechInAsia

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The inevitable has happened. Everyone associated with driverless cars feared that the incident involving Tesla Model S will hurt sentiments around autonomous vehicles and put the regulating authorities on the defensive. As a result, Chinese officials have asked automobile manufacturers to stop testing driverless cars on Chinese highways until proper regulations are in place.

According to the head of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, She Weizhen, they have a preliminary draft of the regulations that will be implemented. However, a timeline of when the guidelines will be released and implemented hasn’t been shared.

Until a while back, China has been pushing for driverless cars urging automobile manufacturers to adopt new technologies and work towards bringing new innovations in mobility space. However, now they are trying to strike a balance between public safety and innovation in auto industry.

In China, Baidu has been actively involved with driverless cars and LeEco also recently showcased its Tesla rivalling product. With this new announcement, the developments in this space will slow down. The Tesla Model S incident is still being investigated thoroughly and its legal consequences could significantly impact how automakers all over the world go on about autonomous vehicles. They might face an increased political pressure with tough regulations putting the developments on a slower pace.

However we are optimistic as the reports suggest that as the draft of rules is ready, they will be finalised soon and the manufacturers will be able to resume testing once they are in place.

Source: engadget

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