Ofo has thousands of bicycles to donate after major U.S. downsizing

The bright yellow Ofo bicycles came into our country fast and furious last August, but after barely a year in the United States, the app-enabled bike share company announced it was downsizing its presence in more than 30 U.S. cities down to a handful.

But its 40,000 bicycles won’t go to waste. Already about 3,000 of its traditional pedal bikes will be donated to organizations in 10 different cities, and more cities will donate bicycles in the coming weeks.

“We want to make sure the bikes stay in the community and go to people who can use them,” Ofo spokesperson Tom Sarris said. “They’re not going to the scrap pile.”

The company said just a few weeks ago that the U.S. was the bike-share company’s fastest growing market and third largest in the world. It aimed to be in 100 cities by the end of this year.

It seems likely that Ofo’s fairly new e-bikes will get redistributed to cities that are maintaining an Ofo presence, even with a diluted or minimal operations team.

As to why Ofo suddenly downsized after just announcing its big goals of riding into more and more markets, it’s unclear. But what worked so well in China didn’t cross over as successfully as the company had hoped. Maybe it had to do with complaints of bike litter with the stationless bikes, or the sudden inundation of bicycles in new cities.

Unlike Lime with its new Uber backing and partnership and Bird with its strong VC backing, Ofo was still very much a China-based company with backers like Alibaba and other Chinese VCs. In the fight to capture more “last-mile” commuters, Ofo was supposed to introduce an e-scooter in the U.S. this summer. 

But with Ofo slamming hard on the brakes, we shouldn’t expect that anytime soon.