Smoove
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| Industry | Urban transport |
|---|---|
| Founded | July 15, 2008 |
| Founder | Laurent Mercat |
| Headquarters | Montpellier, France |
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Key people
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Laurent Mercat (CEO) |
| Products | Bicycle sharing systems |
| Website | www |
Smoove is a French company that designs, manufactures and markets products related to bike-sharing. The company produces lightweight bike stands that require virtually no civil engineering and no electricity. The lock is on the bicycle, situated in the fork. It secures the bike in the stations and outside the stations with an auto-winding cable.
The system won some recognition by mayors and in the industry for its reliability, its moderate price and the fact that it is not linked to an advertising deal.
The lock can be either mechanical or electronic. The mechanical lock is based on the distribution of an RFID-tagged key from a pillar box dispenser. The electronic lock relies on an RFID reader on the bicycle, together with a keyboard for casual users. A long term member will simply flash the member card on the bike to unlock it while the casual user will purchase a code, by internet, SMS, at a counter, or from a credit-card pillar dispenser. One idea is to share costs of payment methods and of street furniture with other existing systems such as car park ticket machines or public transport ticket systems, which can host the radio relay server.
The salient part of the bike is the Fork Lock which can be adapted to different types of bicycles, including motorized bicycle. A cheap, light and sturdy bicycle is proposed, meant to reduce servicing and vandalism:
Public foot-pumps, secured bike parks whether collective large shelters with access code or mono bike carousels. In a town equipped with the Smoove Box electronic key system, an RFID-radiotag bike-theft monitoring system can be provided for individuals, users can locate their bike whenever it is within 50m around a station or a mobile reader. A "Smoove Soft" web access software helps manage the whole system, from the user and administrative perspective.
Secured bicycle parking
Bicycles are redispatched by a fleet of electric vans
Vélopop' in Avignon
Bike in Action, Nicosia, Cyprus
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Wikipedia