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VanMoof is (nearly) back up and running.

The version 2.0 rollout of the company now owned by McLaren Applied, is well underway, having resumed production of spare parts and signed 50 repair and service locations across seven countries, with more cities on more continents including North America coming “later this year.”

The company also says it will “soon” make an announcement about the resumption of sales for its re-engineered e-bikes.


Tern’s new Orox is a cargo e-bike for adventurers.

I don’t know who these people are but I respect their get-out-of-Dodge attitude, loading up their lives on top of a Bosch Performance Line CX motor, massive 29 x 3-inch tires, and dual-800Wh batteries for 186 mile (300km) of escapism. Pricing starts at $6,499 / €6,799 / £5,900.


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More states are throwing up roadblocks to e-bike ownership.

New Jersey is set to pass a bill that requires electric bike and scooter owners to acquire a form of liability insurance that doesn’t really even exist. The industry-backed bill would create more obstacles to owning low-speed electric micromobility vehicles that have positively linked to less car usage and fewer carbon emissions. Which is to say this bill sucks and I hope it fails. (It probably won’t.)

Other states are also considering bills that would make it harder to own an e-bike. I guess its cheaper than building protected infrastructure to make things safer for everyone on the road.


Swedish electric motorbike company Cake files for bankruptcy.

The company, which makes extremely unique-looking utility-themed motorbikes and motorcycles, was forced to make the decision after a major investor bailed right before a funding round was set to close, according to Electrek. Certainly this will come as sad news to fans of Cake’s two-wheelers, which are geared toward off-roading and cargo-hauling.

Our own Thomas Ricker was taken with the Ösa’s multifaceted features, but found the price and digital display to be lacking.


Cake Osa
You can have your Cake, and ride it too — for now.
Image: Thomas Ricker / The Verge
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VanMoof starts delivering spare e-bike parts to new service centers.

The trailblazing Dutch e-bike brand that went vanpoof last year is slowly delivering upon promises made by new owner McLaren Applied. Parts are limited, and right now only eight service center partners have been named for all of the Netherlands and Germany, but it’s a start with more parts and countries to come.

More details in the FAQ and in this email sent to subscribers:  

Good news! This week we delivered the first spare parts to selected VanMoof partners in the Netherlands and Germany. For certain repairs, you can immediately book an appointment with a VanMoof partner near you. Please note that our partners have limited stock and capacity.

We’ll be rolling this out much further in the coming months - adding another 40 locations, delivering more components, and expanding to more countries before mid-February. 


Segway e-bikes are now a thing.

The self-balancing brand once hyped as “more important than the internet” has been so thoroughly milked of its value by Ninebot that it now covers giant batteries, lawn mowers, robots, 4x4s, and scooters that can’t balance themselves at all.

The new Segway Xafari and Segway Xyber electric bikes are pitched as off-roaders with GPS anti-theft, integrated alarms, automatic power adaptation, and integrated hub locks. On sale “late 2024” for a TBD price.


<em>Segway Xyber can hold two batteries for 1,440Wh of capacity and up to 95 miles of range.</em>

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Segway Xyber can hold two batteries for 1,440Wh of capacity and up to 95 miles of range.
Image: Segway Ninebot

The hubless electric motorcycle with sci-fi style and a great name

Verge Motorcycles’ 360-degree sensors could make the wild TS Ultra safer than anything else on two wheels.

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Putting ChatGPT in an e-bike is so dumb.

Urtopia, an Indiegogo darling that sells “the world’s smartest e-bikes” direct-to-consumers, spends as much time marketing its bikes as it does saddling them with superfluous tech. Now it’s pushing an Iron Man “Jarvis” feature ahead of CES complete with smart ring activation that’s so absurd I just had to share.


VanMoof 2.0: a new hope

The electric bike company’s new leadership outlines its post-bankruptcy plan to relaunch and expand into more areas of e-mobility.

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Bird’s goose is cooked.

The Miami-based electric scooter rental company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Southern Florida, despite its best efforts. Last year, Bird admitted that it had overstated its revenue for at least two years.

The company will continue to operate while it works through a restructuring agreement with its creditors, and notes that its European and Canadian business arms are unaffected by the bankruptcy.


How to build a bike lane in America

Advocates are working across the country to make their communities safer and more accessible for cyclists, but not every effort is successful.

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The Honda Motocompacto is a low-speed scooter disguised as a briefcase.

I got to try out Honda’s new folding scooter, the Motocompacto, and despite feeling incredibly self-conscious riding it, it was a goofy thrill ride. I’ll have more impressions to share later, but one thing I was left wondering was how absolutely scuffed this thing is going to get after a few days in the city.


Gogoro’s newest e-scooter is a “two-wheel SUV.”

Taiwan’s oft-imitated battery-swapping scooter company never quite took the world by storm but continues to impress with urban e-transport options like this new CrossOver. It’s a swankier take on the Cake Ösa I reviewed last year, with its high ground clearance and oodles of cargo lashing points that help make city escapes that much easier.


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New VanMoof owner could be announced soon.

Ever since declaring bankruptcy in the Netherlands, trustees have been trying to find a buyer to restart the e-bike industry darling that raised over €200 million in capital and ended up with total debts of €144 million on sales of over 200,000 electric bikes.

“We are now talking exclusively to one party,” says co-founder Taco Carlier in a leaked email sent to former staff, “We expect to announce a new owner and explain their plans for VanMoof within a few days.”


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VanMoof’s future is narrowing down.

micromobility.com (formerly Helbiz) won’t be acquiring the bankrupt Dutch e-bike company, after the trustees in charge of VanMoof’s future turned down the company’s bid, according to a tweet from CEO Salvatore Palella. (He also suggested VanMoof’s founders may be trying to purchase the company through a shell company.) And Taiwanese bike manufacturer Giant also said it wasn’t in the running.

The trustees say there will be more news later this week. Previously, they said they’d select a single company and hammer out the final terms before announcing anything.


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This is why we can’t have nice things.

In my e-bike conversion feature, I talked about why I don’t trust the battery that came with the motor I put on my cargo bike. The wording from the warning section on a battery very similar to mine really drives home why:

ONLY CHARGE THIS BATTERY IN A PLACE WHERE YOU WOULDN’T MIND STARTING A FIRE. NEVER LEAVE A CHARGING BATTERY HOME ALONE. Some people put their battery and charger in a BBQ grill with the lid on so that if anything bad happens it would be contained. There are also ammo-boxes and safe, metal boxes for charging battery packs

It’s not that it’s bad advice (well, apart from not mentioning the importance of proper battery venting) — but it definitely underscores why you should buy from a reliable source with proper certificaton.


I converted a cargo bike to an e-bike — here’s what I learned

The conversion is tedious but not difficult if you have the right tools. Just expect the unexpected.

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Reminder: e-bikes don’t kill cyclists, cars kill cyclists.

Micah Toll at Electrek, who knows more than anyone about e-bikes and the challenges US bicyclists face, had the same reaction I did to a pair of weekend NYT articles that mistakenly blame e-bikes for a rise in injuries and deaths among cyclists. Sure, some e-bikes go too fast, and young riders often lack experience with road rules, but make no mistake, the culprit is cars, and urban planners that design communities around them, not people.

Here, let Not Just Bikes explain: