Spin

Spin — the developer and the owner of network of "smart" bicycles and electroscooters based by graduates of Y Combinator, Lyft and Disqus. It is one of the first companies starting this model in the USA.

History

2018: Ford purchased Spin for $40 million

In November, 2018 Ford announced purchase of Spin company for $40 million. This transaction the American auto giant entered the market of electroscooters.

Spin will join division of Ford Smart Mobility as independent business with full save of management team. In Ford intend to expand actively geography of presence of service — it is about hundreds of the large and small cities and also university campuses.

Ford entered the market of electroscooters

Acquisition of Spin in Ford is called the next stage of program implementation of micromobility within which the carmaker is engaged in search of a problem of the so-called "last mile" — a distance which the person from the car or a stop of public transport to final destination should overcome.

Ford gives results of a research of Populus company which showed that 70% of Americans positively perceive electroscooters as a kind of city transport, and nearly a half of all trips to the USA does not exceed 5 km — distance which the electric scooter is quite capable to overcome.

Feature of Spin service is the lack of charging stations and the selected racks for the parking of electroscooters: users can begin and complete lease in any point within the selected zones. The cost of lease is $1 plus 15 cents in every minute of use. Each electroscooter is equipped with lobbies and back lighting instruments, a sound signal, the handle of an accelerator, sensitive to pressure, and brakes with ABS. Use of service is performed using mobile application of Spin.

As   the head of Ford X, division of Ford Motor which is engaged in new mobile solutions Sanni Madra connected with electroscooters business "reported the Financial Times newspaper develops everywhere just phenomenally" and "compliance of a product to the market becomes obvious". 

2017: Grishin Robotics invests in Spin

On May 26, 2017 Grishin Robotics announces investment into Spin company. The venture firm acted as the leading investor in $8 the M round, having closed the largest transaction in the history.

Among co-investors there is Grishin Robotics — Exponent (founded by graduates of Y Combinator), CRCM (one of the leading investors of an early stage focused on the companies of China and Silicon Valley), one of founders of Quora and one of the first investors of Dropbox. Spin is the fifth transaction of Grishin Robotics from the current fund of $100 in size of M.

The city systems of bicycles in lease work in all largest cities of the world (including Moscow), but all of them 'are tied' to stations. Users are forced to take away and return bicycles from the fixed points in the city; lack of flexibility — one of basic reasons why in most cases any of such systems did not become really popular. However within the last two-three years a number of the Chinese players (Ofo, Mobike) offered the alternative systems which at the expense of a combination of GPS and smartphones allowed to refuse use of stations and gave to users the chance to rent and leave bicycles everywhere — without demanding at the same time investments into deployment of city infrastructure that usually becomes at the expense of taxes.

The round of financing of A which is just closed by a startup will be spent for start in a number of the cities of the country and deployment of one of the largest networks of rent bicycles in the world. The company develops both bicycles, and the software exercising monitoring and control of all devices and users in a system. Each trip will cost $1, and for a bicycle unblocking will be to scan the QR code on it using the official application of Spin enough. In a system GPS, is going to equip with modems of cellular communication, solar batteries and airless buses all devices.