It aims to bring a network of instantly-available bicycles to cities around the world – if enough people want to rent out their spare bikes for cash.

When you’re launching a new business, having big aspirations is usually the done thing. For the distinctively-named AirDonkey the ambitions are bigger than most: to be something of a combination of Uber and Airbnb, but for bicycles.

If that wasn’t enough, the Copenhagen-based startup, which is soon to launch a Kickstarter appeal for about €100,000 of funds, hopes to be as much of what co-founder Erdem Ovacik calls “a movement” for more liveable, bike-filled cities as a commercial company.



The basic premise involves letting people with spare or little-used bikes rent them out by the day or week to those who need one, whether for tourism, commuting or anything else.



Purchasers of the AirDonkey “kit”, expected to cost about €80, will get 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, which keeps a track of available bikes’ locations via the lock, which can go 500 days between battery charges. Users find a nearby bike, pay for it and unlock the bike using the app.



The firm behind AirDonkey, Donkey Republic, say they have successfully tested the system around Copenhagen.

With a recommended daily rental of about €10 in places like London and Copenhagen (the company hopes to launch across several European nations, including the UK) bike owners could soon recoup their outlay, the company hopes. It is also encouraging bike shops to kit out a number of bikes as an extra revenue stream.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The AirDonkey bike kit. Photograph: AirDonkey

Ovacik notes that the planned system, if stocked with sufficient bikes in a given city, will have advantages over municipal city bike hire schemes like London’s once blue now red machines, not least the potential variety on offer, including bikes with child seats, childen’s bikes, even cargo bikes. Additionally, unlike many municipal schemes, it will not need public subsidy (something which has totalled about £10m a year for most of the London system’s existence).



“We’re a new bike-sharing service that’s going to disrupt urban transport,” Ovacik says. “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.”



Many UK cyclists, especially those in places like London, will have by now seen a potential drawback to the scheme here: it involves leaving a bike on the street locked either to itself, or to something else with the addition of a relatively flimsy optional looped cable. The company say they are working on a new version of the kit which would allow more secure locking to other objects.

The AirDonkey lock with optional “leash” for locking the bike to an object. Photograph: AirDonkey

Ovacik adds that the scheme is designed for everyday bikes, not expensive, swift machines, as reflected in the choice of animal for the company name.



“We wanted a nature-based name, to resonate with the simplicity,” he says. “Donkey came from this simplicity, and the idea of a reliable, affordable partner.”



Will it work? The team certainly has the expertise. Ovacik is a former McKinsey trainee consultant who has previously worked on two other start-ups. A key point will be getting to a viable number of bikes available, which is why the company is keen to get as many pre-orders ofAirDonkey kits as possible before the Kickstarter launch.



“We’re more interested in the crowd that the funding,” he says. “One of the perks will be that with a kit you buy a rental day, which also creates the demand side for the bikes.”



To an extent the company faces a contradictory set of challenges. In cycle-friendly nations like Denmark and the Netherlands, where leaving your bike locked to itself on the street is more normal, many commuters will have their own machines while tourists are often well catered for by traditional rental shops. In many places in the UK, meanwhile, a supply of people happy to leave their bike outside could be the difficulty.



But I hope AirDonkey does well. It’s a clever idea, executed with a lot of thought. And in 2008, who would have predicted that a US tech start-up would become the world’s most valuable hotelier? Or that a cab firm formed a year later without any vehicles would soon be worth about £30bn?



Anyway, given the UK seems incapable of increasing everyday cycling on our own, we could do worse than outsource the whole project to a group of Danes.

11.30am note

The all-knowing Carlton Reid, editor of the BikeBiz website, got in touch to point out that something similar(ish) already exists, a website called Splinster, which I’d never previously encountered. It’s different in that bikes are collected from and returned to their owners, without any sort of automation. Looking at the bikes on offer, they also tend to be as much enthusiast-type machines as basic utility bikes.

The company is now planning to sell its own so-called Smart Bike for people to own and rent out.

