ANOTHER dockless bike company is set to launch in Oxford this weekend.

Pony Bikes will plant 100 distinctive green bikes around the city and will follow Chinese company Ofo, which unveiled its yellow ones last week.

The company has already signed up to Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council’s code of conduct for dockless bike companies, which was unveiled earlier this month.

It said it has developed a system which uses sophisticated routing algorithms which ‘means fewer bikes on the streets much more cycling’.

Pony Bikes’ Paul-Adrien Cormerais said: “We don’t believe in flooding the streets with cheap bikes, similar to what has happened in China.

“We believe in working hand-in-hand with local authorities and insist on introducing bikes gradually, over time, so the cities have time to digest the system little by little and our algorithm has time to learn.”

He added: “We needed more users to make a city the size of Oxford economically viable.

“An easy way out would have been to just throw more bikes at it, but we weren’t content with that, instead we solved the problem with innovation and research, using our routing algorithm to make each bike more revenue efficient.”

The company was founded in London and is now based in Oxford. Its bikes are designed and engineered for short distances and are are built in Portugal before being shipped to the UK.

Ofo dropped a batch of its distinctive bikes in Oxford outside the city’s railway station and the Saïd Business School last Monday.

Journeys will be free during Ofo’s six-week trial. At least four other companies have expressed interest about placing dockless bikes around the city.