Electric Bikes

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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:

Electric bike maker Cowboy is in an intellectual property dispute over the new AdaptivePower feature it released in March via a free software update. Seems the company was originally developing the tech to automatically overcome resistance like wind and hills through a partnership with eBikeLabs before terminating the contract sometime last year. Unsurprisingly, eBikeLabs feels cheated. Coincidence? Decide for yourself after reading TechCrunch’s excellent explainer.

The full-size S4 and smaller X4 (pictured) cost $2,498 / £2,198 / €2,198 and start shipping in August. They arrive after the company said they’d skip the 4-series of e-bikes because the 5-series was such a major advancement.

After reviewing both the S5 and S4, I can tell you that the cheaper and simpler SX4 models built for reliability are the ones most should buy.