The problem of frames breaking on the City of Stockholm's electric rental bikes has increased recently. The weekend before the rental was stopped, the frame of four of the electric bikes broke and one person had to be taken to hospital when his rental bike broke down.
"In hindsight, maybe you should have paused earlier," says Henric Hedenqvist, service manager at City Bike Sweden.
The 5,000 rental bikes were removed from the streets and are still controlled by the rental company, which found safety flaws on several of the bikes. According to City Bike Sweden, there are 74,000 users of the City of Stockholm's rental bikes and they hope to be able to open up the rental as soon as possible.
"But we must have safe bikes before we can start up again," says Henric Hedenqvist.
Costs 400,000 per day
The rental stop risks becoming an expensive story for City Bike Sweden, which owns and manages the bicycle rental. The penalty for the city is between SEK 450,000 and 500,000 per day, according to the company.
Now they are waiting for a message from the Italian company Vaimoo, which supplied the bikes, about how they intend to solve the safety problem.
SVT Stockholm is seeking Vaimoo for a comment.
Javascript is disabled
Javascript must be turned on to play video
Learn more about browser support
The rental bikes have suffered both legal and technical setbacks since the decision to introduce them. In the clip, you get the story in a minute. Photo: SVT