It’s simple to identify VanMoof electrical bikes on Amsterdam’s streets. The riders are sometimes younger professionals who’re barely pedaling as they whiz previous fellow cyclists.
However these driving the modern bikes today aren’t sitting so comfortably.
VanMoof, the Dutch e-bike maker that gained a zealous following, tripled its gross sales within the pandemic and raised greater than $180 million in funding, declared chapter final month, leaving riders in limbo. That’s as a result of the eye-catching e-bikes, which begin round $2,000, are constructed from proprietary elements that solely the corporate makes, out there largely at company-run service facilities. And lots of the bikes’ capabilities are linked to VanMoof’s smartphone app.
“If I break it, or one thing else occurs, I don’t know the place to go,” stated Gideon Sutaman, 28, who lives in Amsterdam and has been driving his VanMoof e-bike since December.
Because the e-bike market boomed, the corporate offered about 200,000 bikes and opened shops throughout Europe, the USA and Japan. Within the e-bike world, VanMoof was usually likened to Apple or Tesla, given its elegant designs, heavy use of customized supplies and premium costs.
The speedy, technologically superior bikes shift gears robotically and embrace a lift button that gives an additional kick. An app can lock and unlock the bike, fine-tune its settings and monitor a machine’s location. (For an additional price, VanMoof employed “bike hunters” to recuperate stolen bicycles.)
These distinctive options are actually on the coronary heart of VanMoof house owners’ nervousness.
“Your bike will stay purposeful and rideable, as we intention to maintain our app and servers on-line and intention to safe the continued providers for the long run,” VanMoof stated in a press release. The directors managing the corporate’s chapter within the Netherlands “are at present establishing a gross sales course of for the property and actions of VanMoof,” the assertion stated.
When contacted, the directors declined to enter specifics, however confirmed that there have been firms all for shopping for VanMoof.
VanMoof, named as a Dutch spin on the phrase “transfer,” was based in 2009 by the brothers Ties and Taco Carlier, and didn’t begin off making battery-powered bikes. However in 2014, the founders got here up with a design that put the battery contained in the bike body, serving to shield it from rain and thieves, and giving VanMoof bikes their signature streamlined look. The model took off within the bike-friendly Netherlands, and phrase unfold to early adopters elsewhere.
Regardless of the excitement, VanMoof finally bumped into monetary issues, together with a manufacturing backlog that led to monthslong waits for gross sales and repairs.
“They tried to do an excessive amount of directly,” stated Horace Dediu, a co-founder of Micromobility Industries. “Total the business could be very wholesome,” he added.
International gross sales of VanMoof e-bikes have been halted, and at firm areas that stay open, like its store in Brooklyn, repairs may be carried out provided that the elements are in inventory.
In Amsterdam, the place all VanMoof areas are shut, most bike restore retailers can not, or is not going to, restore the model’s bikes. And that’s an issue, as a result of VanMoof bikes have developed a fame for breaking down.
VanMoof riders round Amsterdam stated they’d skilled issues with the bikes, at the same time as they praised the machines.
“When it’s working, there’s nothing higher,” stated Michiel Smit, 28. However, he added, the bike “breaks usually.”
VanMoof’s future is murky. At the least one bidder has come out publicly, the e-scooter rental agency Micromobility.com (unrelated to Micromobility Industries). Its nonbinding takeover bid was “positively acquired,” Micromobility stated on Monday. A value was not disclosed.
Salvatore Palella, Micromobility’s founder and chief government, stated that if the bid was profitable, he want to maintain the model in addition to a lot of VanMoof’s workers. “We’re fascinated by what we’re seeing and the way VanMoof created this superb model within the final 10 years,” Mr. Palella stated. He stated he would submit a binding supply by Friday.
One of many few locations in Amsterdam the place clients can nonetheless get their VanMoof bikes mounted is a slim alley within the middle of the town at WheelGood, a VanMoof-licensed bike store.
On some days, as many as 20 individuals cease by with damaged VanMoof e-bikes, stated Felipe Martinez, who works on the store. However they’ll do solely easy repairs that don’t contain VanMoof’s elements.
Others are in search of workarounds on-line. In Fb and Reddit teams, VanMoof house owners commiserate and ask for recommendation on repairs. Others are providing their bikes for discount costs on e-commerce websites.
Christa Brethouwer, a resident of Amsterdam, stated she had not skilled any issues together with her VanMoof, which she acquired three months in the past after an eight-month wait. She additionally bought the three-year theft safety package deal, now nugatory.
Different riders expressed concern about theft, partly due to the elevated demand for elements since VanMoof’s chapter.
“Right here within the metropolis, individuals hate you as a result of you have got a VanMoof,” stated Nadia Piet, an Amsterdam-based entrepreneur, who purchased her e-bike two years in the past. “Now individuals have a look at you with pity.”
Ms. Piet, 29, stated the “dreamy” bike changed the necessity for a automotive. Her associate, Steven Elbers, additionally owns a VanMoof. “I’m nonetheless an enormous fan,” Mr. Elbers, 40, stated. “I don’t perceive how this might’ve occurred.”
For others, the corporate’s collapse was not a shock.
“We noticed it coming for a very long time,” stated Joseph Web page, a mechanic at WheelGood who used to work as a “bike physician” for VanMoof. The e-bike maker’s advertising and marketing was spectacular, however “we knew it wasn’t nice from the beginning,” he added.
Maria van Aa, a motorbike maker in Amsterdam for 38 years, who typically does easy fixes to VanMoof bikes, known as it an “overpriced” product with too little consideration paid to the technical particulars.
She stated there was a way of schadenfreude amongst her clients and fellow bicycle makers. “It’s the speak of the city,” Ms. van Aa stated. But it surely’s not all dangerous, she stated, with VanMoof’s trendy design elevating the general public picture of bikes and bike makers.
“It’s a pleasant bike,” stated Emiliano Frigerio, a VanMoof-riding mechanic at WheelGood, “when it really works.”
