Angel Points for low battery e-bike to charging dock
On the Citibike Reddit there are some threads about this, I posted one long response with some ideas about what that could look like, which I reproduce here:
Once there are a few more charging stations, there is a motivation to do this – I'd been thinking about it already before seeing these posts. But once almost all of the stations have charging docks, there would be less motivation. There doesn't seem to be much interest at CitiBike to add Angel features or more sophisticated points computations – due to the fundamental benefit of simplicity, the cost of hiring more software engineers to implement and support features, but in this case also the chance that if charging docks are widely deployed there might be no more need for this feature.
In any possible implementation of such a feature, it would be essential to keep the additional rules for points as simple as possible, and avoid creating unfavorable or confusing interactions with the existing points system or confusion on the part of the Bike Angels.
For it to make sense for CitiBike to add Angel points for moving "low charge" e-bikes (whose remaining range is below some threshold, maybe 2 or 3 miles?) from a non-charging station to a charging dock, they would need to have confidence that those bikes would stay in the charging dock until they were (mostly? fully?) charged. I don't know whether those stays are or would be enforced, and if so, for how long, but regardless, it‘s inversely correlated with a need for more bikes in the station. To avoid that conflict of interests CItiBike could add points for dropping off "low charge" e-bikes only at neutral charging stations. Those stations could be indicated with a yellow lightning bolt badge where the usual +/- points badge would be if they were not neutral. As CitiBike gains experience with this system, they could tweak the Angel points algorithm to favor a neutral status for charging stations in situations where they might otherwise be +/- 1 point.
Showing the location of "low charge" e-bikes to Bike Angels is tricky, but critical, since Angels are lazy hard workers unlikely to search stations on the off chance of finding a "low charge" e-bike. Ideally there would be both an indication of stations with "low charge" e-bikes in the app and an indication for "low charge" e-bikes on their docks. Currently, red and yellow LEDs indicate bikes that require recharging and are not available for pick-up; extending this to "low charge" e-bikes would be somewhat helpful, but it would be better to have a distinctive indication, perhaps a flashing yellow LED only? This would probably require updates to the dock software or firmware (and maybe the Cosmo e-bikes as well), but if A/B stations can display red to prevent dock blocking, they might be able to identify "low charge" e-bikes in some way. Doing so would also be helpful for non-Angel members looking for e-bikes with enough range for a longer ride.
The station icons in the app are already cluttered, with e-bike and classic bike counters as well as Angel points. While the number of "low charge" e-bikes is definitely of interest, those numbers are likely to be small in most cases, maybe one to three and rarely more than that, unlike bikes unavailable due to very low charge. This would need to be displayed at pick-up stations (which already have a number for Angel points), as well as neutral stations, but probably not at drop-off stations, where it would be counterproductive. A badge with one, two, or three "low bat" symbols for a non-charging station with one, two, or 3+ "low charge" e-bikes would not take up too much space and would not be confused with the other counters or Angel point indications. If it is easier to use Unicode symbols, trigrams might work: ☱ ☳ ☷. Given that this data can change with every dock or undock, rather than just once every 15 minutes, it should be displayed together with the e-bike and classic bike counters, and suppressed from the display when e-bike and classic bike counters are merged into one.
It may be that the information about the number of "low charge" e-bikes at a station is not available, or impractical to update together with other availability data. If it isn't possible to display this, it might still make sense to offer Bike Angel points for moving "low charge" e-bikes from a non-charging station to a charging dock, but probably only if there is an indication for "low charge" e-bikes on their docks.
Rather than waiving e-bike fees, it would make more sense for CitiBike to offer optional pedal assist mode for "low charge" e-bikes. It may be impractical to restrict that to Bike Angel members, but there's value in offering it to all users. This feature would not be available at a station with charging docks, only at off-grid non-charging stations. The purpose would be to extend the "charge lifetime" of e-bikes and to make moving "low-charge" e-bikes more appealing to Bike Angels, since they could do so for free. It may not be worth implementing if there are no points for moving "low-charge" e-bikes from non-charging stations to charging docks, and even if there are points, implementing this would be an optional add-on.
Well, that's a lot of ideas, it's not a simple application and I wouldn't expect to see anything like it this year or probably even next year, but perhaps someone working at CitiBike might find it useful or an inspiration for other ideas.
