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Comment by paulhart | Hacker News Reader

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paulhart·

Pity about Van Moof though - and the owners if the cloud service disappears and they can’t ride their bikes any more.

https://electrek.co/2023/07/12/dutch-e-bike-company-vanmoof-...

[German]: https://zug.network/@moritzkraehe/110716829137328870

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This is not true, even if it’s repeated a zillion times everywhere. As long as you don’t change your phone, smart unlock works without internet connection. And there is already third party software (which needs to connect to the Vanmoof servers once to save the key though). But you can always unlock by entering your code using the button. The real problem is that these bikes break every 20 km and there will be no parts or service anymore.

"As long as you don’t change your phone" being a requirement for continuing to use the bike I paid for is ludicrous. That said I saw this in an article just yesterday, maybe it solves the problem created by techbros wanting to build smart 'everythings': https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bikey-app/id6451117309

Definitely a shame. After reading the article I thought the S3 looked neat and was disappointed to see it is no longer available. The new model is ugly and uninteresting.

I'm glad to know about this - it would never have occurred to me to ask about such an issue when shopping for an electric bike! One more dumb "smart" feature to avoid...

They're putting DRM in everything these days.

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