Every district centre in Ulaanbaatar is now within a ten-minute walk of a station — and the first thirty minutes stay free.
When we put the first twelve powerbank stations into cafés on Peace Avenue two years ago, the question we kept hearing was simple: what happens when I walk out with one and my evening goes somewhere else? The answer only becomes useful at scale. This week Tino Charge passed 400 stations, which means the network is now dense enough that returning a battery is never a detour.
Sixty-two venues came online this summer alone — shopping centres, university buildings, hospital waiting areas and the arrivals hall at Chinggis Khaan International. Nine districts now have at least one station per square kilometre in their centre, and the median walk to a station from anywhere inside the Fourth Ring Road is under nine minutes.
Density is only half of it. The second-generation dock reports its own inventory every thirty seconds, so the map in the app shows how many batteries are actually free rather than how many slots exist. Stations that run dry are re-stocked on a route generated each morning from the previous day's demand instead of a fixed weekly schedule.
A rental network stops being a novelty at the point where you never plan around it. Four hundred stations is roughly that point for this city.
We also stopped charging for the walk. Rentals under thirty minutes — about a fifth of all rentals — are free, which turns the station into something you use for a single phone call rather than a decision you weigh up.
Tino Charge sits inside the same app as the other twenty-eight mini-apps, so nothing here needs a separate account, a separate card or a separate download.
Powerbanks, rides, groceries and bills — one download, one account.