A pattern you see with these bikes is that people mostly don't bother to mess with them after they learn about the counter measures. Basically, there are several levels of protection. 1) if it is locked, it will make some noise when people mess with it. 2) When they don't stop, it will make a lot of noise. And it escalates quickly to ear piercing levels. There is no way you can pick this up and just walk way with it unnoticed unless you can unlock the bike or dismantle it without setting off the alarm. A light touch will do that. 3) if by any chance you do succeed in stealing it while not drawing the attention of the entire neighborhood, it has a tracker. 4) if you manage to disable all of that, you basically have a product that is relatively hard to sell because world + dog knows they might have to hand it over in the likely case that they are caught by the bike hunters. Because so few thefts escalate to that, VanMoof can afford to spare no expenses on trying to track thieves down and keeping victims pacified with a replacement bike. It's a simple insurance that works and actually lowers their risk.

It's not impossible to steal one of course but it adds up to a lot of trouble and risk for not a lot of payoff. Most bike thieves would prioritize easier, less risky, and more valuable targets.

I use Swapfiets, which is a Dutch bike leasing startup. I just pay a monthly fee and don't worry about theft, repairs, etc. There are many thousands of them across Berlin; hundreds of thousands across many European cities. Nobody ever messes with these bikes. They are so recognizable that there's no point in stealing one. No bike hunters required for this. It has no tracker or alarm. I've had one for two years in Berlin and nobody ever messes with it. And it's a decent bike too. I park it wherever I want including some places where I would never park any bike I own like the train station, rough neighborhoods, etc. It's great. I can go anywhere I like in the city, leave the bike on the street for a few hours and it will still be there when I come back. I do this every day. They have electrical ones too. They are very popular with delivery services.