VanMoof, the e-bike darling, skids off track: sales paused, execs depart | Hacker News Reader

VanMoof, the e-bike darling, skids off track: sales paused, execs depart

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20 pointsthe_mitsuhiko15 comments

It feels like there's always one of these and the end result is always very predictable. Selling expensive bikes to people who aren't already using bikes just isn't a big enough market. Anything that's an actual ergonomic improvement gets picked up by the established manufacturers quickly anyway.

Bikes are extreme mature tech, with established players offering a broad configuration of tradeoffs between the major axes of optimization (reliability, performance, cost). E-bikes are newer and there's more room for exploration but it's still a very well-understood product.

Aside from that once you're above the lowest-cost options bikes are kind of their own distinct aesthetic tradition. Subjective of course but definitely real. There's room for a brompton's nerdy utilitarianism but from what I've seen these kinto tumbler ass bikes just have zero appeal to the kinds of people who are most likely to spend $1000+ on a bike.

I think your observations are very apt.

I bike for my primary transportation, and I have zero interest in e-bikes. The reason they aren't interesting to me is that a large part of the benefit I get from bicycling is the actual bicycling -- the physical effort and exercise.

E-bikes confuse me because I don't understand what the demographic for them is. I initially thought it was basically "electric scooters", but you can buy actual electric scooters. So then maybe it's "electric scooters at a lower cost"? But do e-bikes beat scooters in price?

I'm not bashing ebikes at all -- I just don't understand them.

Giving some examples:

- City commute - it's faster than bus and much easier than motorbike

- Grocery shopping.

- Good at climbing if ur city is not flat.

But isn't an electric scooter a better solution for those things?

Probably because of the lower price and u can still exercise with it? U can treat a ebike just like a scooter, but you can't do the reverse. A cargo focused ebike is also very cheap. The size of the ebike is usually much more compact

It’s not about skipping the exercise, but increasing range vs effort. It might cut your commute by 30%, allow you to live further away, or enable that scenic ride to the next town over, without requiring you to cultivate potato-shaped lower legs.

Scooters are heavier, more expensive, only work on battery power, and sometimes are not allowed in cycle lanes (IMO they never should be).

> sometimes are not allowed in cycle lanes (IMO they never should be).

This relates to my largest pet peeve about ebikes right now -- people using them on the bike paths. They're not allowed there, and for good reason, and their presence is causing accidents.

To be fair, it's not the ebikes as much as it's the people behaving badly. It's entirely possible to use an ebike on a bike path without being a hazard (don't use the power assist, warn people when you're passing others, and other basic bike path courtesies) -- but very few people do.

An e-cargo bike turned my wife into a daily bike commuter. It wasn’t just matching my bike’s child lugging capacity but also the ability to get to work faster every day, cancel out wind or a hot day, etc. You still get plenty of workout, just either shorter time or longer distance.

Based on people we know, this is pretty common. It’s become routine to see parents riding daily with 1-3 kids, people carrying tons of groceries, etc. I’m certain most of those would have been car trips 5 years ago.

But why is that a better solution than an electric scooter? I'd think the scooter would be preferable for that sort of use case.

You get far more exercise. If by “scooter” you mean something like a Vespa, it’s cheaper, doesn’t require a driver’s license, grants access to bike paths, and could have greater cargo capacity. If you mean a push/kick scooter, a bike is faster and has far more cargo capacity.

There isn’t a right choice for everyone but e-bikes hit a sweet spot for a lot of people in cities where you convert travel into exercise but can still carry all of the children and cargo you need. Where I live you tend to see heavy scooter use for younger people living in hip areas (short distances, not buying crates of groceries, etc.) but shifting towards bikes for older people who need to go further or carry more. It’s common to see a parent with 1-2 kids and full shopping bags, for example, because the kids are too young to carry groceries or go fast enough.

They're fun and make biking more accessible to people who wouldn't bike because they're out of shape, can't bike up steep hills, or don't want to show up at work covered in sweat. Try one sometime, a good ebike with a torque sensor just feels as if you suddenly have bionic legs.

I have tried them, and they're fine. I just don't understand them. If people don't want the exercise, then why isn't an electric scooter the preferable option for them?

I prefer an e-bike over an escooter because I have a lot of prior experience biking in traffic that it feels more natural to be biking. I also find I can't really take one hand off of the handle bars on my scooter (to signal for example) whereas I can easily do that on a bike. There's a whole laundry list of small things I like better about ebikes than escooters.

A common misconception is that e-bikes do not require any physical exertion to use.

In the EU it's generally only legal to use a pedelec, which offers assistance when pedalling, but does not have a throttle that allows you to move without pedalling.

The motor is limited to providing assistance when travelling up to 25KM/h (15.5MPH).

So an e-bike in most parts of the world makes pedalling easier, but still requires physical exertion.

I can assure you that going up a steep hill with an e-bike is still pretty tiring!

In my experience, the e-bike makes it feasible to travel further before getting tired.

I have 3 bicycles for different use cases:

- 1 VanMoof X3 for my daily commutes around the city (it really lowers the barriers and doesn't make me think about how far I might go that day - be it 60km on a regular office day). I also haul my kayak with it and overall see it as car replacement (6000km per year) - 1 Folding bike (non-electric) for mixed-modality journeys (when I hop on a train / coach to another city) or bikepacking (long stem allows putting a huge bag in the front) (~2000km per year) - 1 Babboe Big cargo bike (non-electric) for cargo trips / hauling stuff from A to B (usually <10km but I also use it for workout - this thing's heavy to get up the hill (took it to Germany after having lived 4 years in NL)) (~1000km per year)

I used to be the same: Pedelec / E-bike critical - but the numbers just speak for themselves: The average distance is higher, meaning it drastically lowers the comfortable distance for average people who would otherwise use a car (which is a far more complex and inefficient tool for a simple task). And those are the people we want to have cycling to justify good cycling infrastructure (not only the ambitious 5% weekend cyclists)

Sometimes I don't like the public relations and behaviour of VanMoof but I also don't like the fragmentation on the bicycle market which makes it intransparent for people to overlook and make a good purchase decision. Many people just want a pillar to hold on to (brand), security (VanMoof theft protection) etc. - unfortunately the pillar of VanMoof is crumbling atm which is a dark moment for the bicycle industry that imho. especially needs innovation-leading brands like VanMoof to build a strong lobby against big oil / car.

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