中国共享单车“橙黄大战”将在伦敦上演

China’s top bike-sharing companies are taking their rivalry to London after local supplier Ofo revealed plans to roll out a smart bike service this week in the UK to compete with rival Mobike.

中国顶级共享单车公司正将“战火”引向伦敦，ofo透露计划本周在伦敦推出智能单车服务，与摩拜单车(Mobike)竞争。

Ofo will launch its yellow bikes in the east London borough of Hackney on Thursday, only months after its orange-rimmed rival Mobike launched in west London.

9月7日，ofo将在伦敦东部的哈克尼区(Hackney)推出它的小黄车，数月前，橙色车轮的摩拜单车在伦敦西部亮相。

Ofo and Mobike have been going head-to-head in China’s major cities, where their rapid expansion has led to pavement clutter and junkyards of disused bicycles — as well as recent government curbs on the companies.

ofo和摩拜一直在中国各大城市激烈竞争，它们的迅速扩张导致这些城市的人行道杂乱无章，废弃的自行车堆积如山——导致政府最近出台了对共享单车企业的限制。

In London, the two companies will compete with an existing cycle scheme sponsored by Santander in which bikes must be docked at stations — unlike the Chinese smart bikes, which can be left anywhere and are unlocked via a smartphone app.

在伦敦，这两家公司将与一个由桑坦德银行(Santander)赞助的现有的共享自行车方案竞争，该方案规定必须将自行车停放在停车站——中资的智能单车则不同，它们可以停在任何地方，并通过一款智能手机app解锁。

“The Santander bikes . . . have not expanded as far as we would have liked. We are therefore really excited about Ofo’s potential to make cycling available to all,” said Hackney councillor Feryal Demirci.

“桑坦德自行车……还没有像我们所期望的那样普及。因此我们对ofo让所有人都能骑上自行车的潜力倍感兴奋，”哈克尼地方议会议员菲瑞亚•狄梅西(Feryal Demirci)说。

Analysts say the international expansion of Ofo and Mobike is in part a reflection of excess capacity, as new curbs have limited the number of bikes the companies can place in Chinese cities.

分析师们称，ofo和摩拜向海外扩张在一定程度上是运能过剩的反映，因为新出台的一些规定对这些企业可在中国城市投放共享单车的数量做出了限制。

“The over-deployment of shared bikes has disturbed public order and affected traffic safety,” said the local government of Wuhan, a city in central China, after it became the seventh city to issue curbs on shared bikes on Monday.

“共享单车无序投放，扰乱了城市公共秩序，影响了交通安全，”武汉市政府称，武汉是中国中部的一座城市，9月4日武汉成为中国第七个对共享单车出台限制规定的城市。

By the end of July, 70 bike-sharing companies had put a total of 16m new bikes in China, according to the Ministry of Transport. Most of those groups had sprung up only in the past year as China’s bike-sharing boom took off.

据中国交通部(Ministry of Transport)称，截至今年7月，70家共享单车公司已在中国投放了共计1600万辆新自行车。这些企业中的大多数都是随着中国共享单车的繁荣在过去一年出现的。

“China’s market for bike sharing is saturated,” said Zhang Yi, chief executive of iMedia, a Guangzhou-based internet consulting company.

“中国的共享单车市场已经饱和，”广州互联网咨询公司艾媒咨询(iiMedia)首席执行官张毅说。

“The ban is forcing companies like Ofo and Mobike to go to foreign densely populated cities,” he added.

“禁令正迫使像ofo和摩拜这样的公司去海外人口密集的城市发展，”他补充道。

Seven major cities, including Shanghai and Guangzhou, have told bike-sharing companies to stop placing more bikes on their streets, meaning that a often used tactic of overwhelming others in volume has needed to stop.

包括上海和广州在内的七个主要城市，已经告知各共享单车公司停止在其街道投放更多自行车，这意味着各家企业需要停止使用以往那种“铺量式”竞争策略。

“Globally speaking, the bike-sharing industry is still in its early stage, so entering the global market is a must for the two companies,” said Xue Yu, an analyst at IDC. “It is also possible that the two will speed up its international expansion in a bid to soak up their excess capacity.”

“从全球范围来看，共享单车产业仍处于早期发展阶段，因此进入全球市场是两家公司的必然选择。”IDC的分析师薛宇表示。“这两家公司也可能会加速海外拓展，争取消化掉过剩的运能。”

Ofo has so far entered eight countries outside China — Singapore, the UK, the US, Khazakstan, Malaysia, Thailand, Austria and Japan. The company — named because “ofo” looks like a cyclist from the side — says it aims to deploy 20m bikes in 20 countries worldwide by the end of the year.

ofo迄今已进入海外8个国家——新加坡、英国、美国、哈萨克斯坦、马来西亚、泰国、奥地利以及日本。这家公司——以此命名是因为“ofo”就像一个从侧面看的骑自行车的人——称其目标是在今年底之前在全球20个国家投放2000万辆共享单车。