蘋果CEO蒂姆·庫克又在中國上頭條了。本周二，他造訪了中國的一家單車共享公司Ofo。在中國的單車共享市場上，有30家左右的新創企業正在為了市場份額和投資人的融資而激烈競爭。

庫克試騎了該公司標志性的小黃車，會見了包括CEO戴威之內的幾位創始人。他還在他的新浪微博官方頁面上發了一條慶祝微博：“感謝Ofo團隊盛情接待！感受到你們滿滿的正能量和使命感，讓通勤更環保、更高效、更有趣！”

Ofo本月早些時候剛剛獲得了4.5億美元的融資，邁過了所謂“獨角獸”也就是10億美元估值的門檻。但問題是，像Ofo及其競爭對手這樣的商業模式，在中國真的行得通嗎？

在曾經的“自行車大國”中國，由于新的地鐵線路不斷竣工，加之私家車的爆炸式增長，最近這十幾年，真正騎自行車出行的人早已變得越來越少。直到最近，中國的街道上才再次出現了不少騎行者的身影。與此同時，從事單車共享業務的創業公司也在中國各大城市涌現，漆成黃色、橙色、藍色等鮮亮顏色的共享單車已經成為街頭巷尾的一道風景，這些單車共享公司更是動輒拉到幾億美元的融資，其背后金主不乏紅杉資本和華平投資這樣的國際巨鱷。就在21日，中國最大的單車共享公司摩拜單車宣告正式打入了新加坡市場。

用戶們很喜歡單車共享服務。他們可以把單車放在任何地方，單車上的GPS加上手機定位功能，可以讓下一批用戶輕易地在手機APP上找到它們。

不過經濟學家們表示，單車共享的火爆現象之所以沒有流行到美國是有原因的，因為它對于單車公司來說幾乎不具有任何經濟上的效益。

中國的這30多家單車共享公司都夢想著成為下一個滴滴出行（滴滴也是Ofo的投資方之一）。為了打敗競爭對手和構建市場份額，他們的產品幾乎和白送差不多。問題是單車共享跟滴滴這樣的打車服務完全沒有可比性。作為一家單車共享公司，你的注冊用戶越多，你就需要購置越多的單車。而你購置了越多的單車，像車子被盜或是被丟在遠離市中心的地方這種問題就會顯得越發重要。

北京大學教授杰弗瑞·陶森曾為沙特的阿爾瓦利德王子工作過。他表示，很難相信這些單車共享公司竟然獲得了這么多的融資。他最近還對有關單車共享的問題進行了一番剖析。以下是他的部分觀點：

? 單車共享業務沒有網絡效應。它跟Facebook和Uber不一樣，沒法光靠用戶的涌入實現平臺的增長。他指出：共享單車的規模“無法顯著降低每個單位的成本結構。”換句話說，摩拜或者Ofo每額外增加1,000名用戶，他們就得相應采購更多的單車。規模經濟對單車共享業務是不起作用的。

? 單車共享服務的定價太低了，這些公司要么根本不盈利，要么利潤比紙還薄。以摩拜和Ofo這兩家最大的單車共享公司為例，租一輛單車每30分鐘的費用只有5毛到1塊錢人民幣。而單車本身的價值卻不可謂不貴。據稱去年摩拜單車每輛的成本大約是3000元人民幣，不過據說這個價格已經有所下降。假設每輛單車每天被人使用5到8次（這其實是不太可能的，因為很多車子最終都被停在遠離交通熱點的地方），那么收回成本至少需要一年的時間。Ofo的車子成本更低廉些，大約只有250元人民幣左右。即便這樣，它也需要好幾個月才能收回成本。另一方面，共享單車的成本也并非是一成不變的——它還要雇人把車子騎回到交通繁忙路段，找回丟失的車子，做好防盜工作，以及應對層出不窮的政府新規——因為北京以及其他不少城市都出現了將共享單車亂停亂放占用人行道的問題，讓各地官員深感頭痛。

? 競爭者的蜂擁涌入。共享單車是很難做到差異化的，市面上這些公司也無非就是圍繞單車的造型、舒適度和應用軟件做做文章。市場上的共享單車公司根本無法組織新進者的涌入，而且市面上差不多已經有了30家左右的共享單車公司了。

? 雖然中國這30家左右的單車共享公司肯定會死掉一批，但即便這樣，屆時也依然很難產生規模效應。這是由于單車共享本質上并不是資產的共享。人們并非像Airbnb的房東一樣是在出租自己的資產。這些單車的采購和養護都是由單車公司負責的。

今年早些時候，摩拜單車獲得了騰訊、富士康和淡馬錫等投資方的3億美元注資。而Ofo也從DST和滴滴出行等投資人處拉來了4.5億美元的融資。

目前，該領域的競爭已經變成了一家公司能拉來多少資本，用以攫取市場份額。

問題是，即便他們獲得了一些市場份額，也可能永遠拿不到真正的利潤。所以這些公司將來IPO時要小心了。（財富中文網）

作者：Scott Cendrowski

譯者：樸成奎

Apple CEO Tim Cook made news in Beijing Tuesday, when he paid a visit to the bike-sharing company Ofo, one of the 30 or so Chinese start-ups that are aggressively competing for bike-sharing market share and investor cash.

Cook took a ride on one of the firm's signature yellow bikes, met its founders, including CEO Dai Wei, and posted congratulations in an official Sina Weibo post: "Thanks for welcoming me today, Ofo team! Great energy behind your mission to make commuting greener, more efficient and fun!"

The question is whether Ofo—which raised $450 million earlier this month and reached "Unicorn" status with a valuation above $1 billion—and its competitors make any economic sense.

More than a decade after the numbers of bike riders began declining thanks to new subway lines and an explosion of private cars, China's streets are again awash in riders. Bike-sharing startups have flooded China’s major cities with hundreds of thousands of starkly-colored branded bikes—in yellow, orange, blue—after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital fundraising from notable investors including Sequoia Capital and Warburg Pincus . Just today Mobike, the biggest Chinese company according to rides, opened for business in Singapore.

Users love the services. They can leave bikes anywhere. GPS on the bike or smartphone locations allow the next users to find them on the app.

But economists say there’s a reason the phenomenon hasn't come to the U.S.: it doesn’t make any financial sense for the bike companies.

The 30 or so bike sharing companies in China today envision becoming the next Didi Chuxing (which is an Ofo investor). They practically give away their product for free to beat competition and build market share. The problem is, bike sharing isn’t anything like Uber ride-sharing. The more people who join your bike company, the more bikes you have to buy. The more bikes you buy, the more problems like theft and bikes abandoned far from city centers start to matter.

Jeffrey Towson is an investor who once worked for Prince Alwaleed and a professor at Beijing University. He can’t believe the amount of money the companies have received and recently dissected the problems. Just the biggest:

? There’s no network effect in bike sharing. This is not like Facebook (fb, -1.02%) or Uber, which improve as more of your friends or drivers join the platform. Scale “ doesn’t create a much lower cost structure per unit,” Towson points out. In other words, when Mobike or Ofo add another 1,000 customers, they need to buy more bikes. Economies of scale don't work in bike sharing.

? Prices are so low that the bike-sharing companies are either unprofitable, or carry razor-thin margins. Mobike and Ofo, the two largest companies, charge between 0.5 yuan to 1 yuan (7 cents to 14 cents) for 30 minutes. And those bikes can be expensive. Mobike's premium bikes reportedly cost 3,000 yuan ($435) to produce last year. It says the cost has since fallen. But if you assume each bike is used five to eight times a day, which is unlikely, as many end up far away from popular destinations, it takes more than a year to recoup costs. Ofo has said its simpler bikes are 250 yuan ($36). Even then it takes several months to recoup costs, which increasingly include paying employees to haul bikes back to busy intersections, find abandoned bikes, fight theft, and comply with new regulations sprouting up because officials in Beijing and other cities are annoyed at hordes of bikes blocking sidewalks.

? Competitors keep piling in. There’s almost no way for them to differentiate, except for tiny differences in bike style, comfort, and their app. There’s no way to keep competitors from piling in and there are already some 30 companies.

? Even when China’s 30 or so bike-sharing competitors are whittled down to a few, scale doesn’t pay off then either. That’s because, again, there’s no asset-sharing going on. People aren’t listing their bikes to be used like homes on Airbnb. The bikes are bought and kept up by the companies.

Earlier this year Mobike raised $300 million from Tencent (tcehy, -1.49%), Foxconn (fxcny, -0.42%), and Temasek. Ofo raised $450 million from DST and Didi Chuxing.

The business is being defined by how much capital competitors can raise to spend on gaining market share.

The problem is, once they capture some, real profits may never be part of it. Beware of a future initial public offering.