Smoove

Smoove

Industry	Urban transport
Founded	July 15, 2008 (2008-07-15)
Founder	Laurent Mercat
Headquarters	Montpellier, France
Key people	Laurent Mercat (CEO)
Products	Bicycle sharing systems
Website	www.smoove.fr

Smoove is a French company that designs, manufactures and markets^[1] 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^[2] by mayors and in the industry^[3] for its reliability,^[4] its moderate price^[5][6] and the fact that it is not linked to an advertising deal.^[7]

Fork lock

The Bike Stand

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.^[8] 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.

RFID/Keyboard electronic lock

Smoove bike

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^[9] is proposed, meant to reduce servicing and vandalism:

• self-winding lock cable, it winds itself in the frame;
• powerful and low energy LED lights, included in the frame;
• transmission gear by Cardan joint;
• secured punctureless tyres;
• rear hub gear and front hub dynamo;
• mud-guards, skirt-guard, front basket, with easily changeable promotional fabric;
• compatible with motorized bicycle.

Other products

Public foot-pumps, secured bike parks^[10] 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
• 
  A station in Vicenza, Italy
• 
  Bike in Action, Nicosia, Cyprus

Systems installed by Smoove

• Helsinki City Bikes (Helsinki)
• Mobi (Vancouver)
• Bike and Roll (Chicago)^[11]
• Annemasse
• Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok)^[12]
• Astana-Bike (Astana)^[13][14]
• Velobike (Moscow),^[15]
• Cycle Hire Slough (Slough),^[16]
• C.Vélo (Clermont-Ferrand),^[17]
• Optymo (Territoire de Belfort),^[18]
• Réflex (Chalon sur Saône),^[19]
• Vélopop' (Avignon),^[20]
• Libélo (Valence),
• Vélivert (Saint-Étienne),^[21]
• Vélomagg' (Montpellier),^[22]
• Vél'hop (Strasbourg),^[23]
• Bike in Action (Nicosia),^[24]
• Batumvélo (Batumi, Georgia),
• EasyBike (Corfu, Greece).

References

External links

• The official website with English content
• San Sénart has set up 80 individual park boxes at the railway station RER D of Lieusaint in December 2008.