7 ms·

Dutch e-bike maker VanMoof goes bankrupt, leaving riders stranded

70 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

cianmm 3y ago
Fairly old news at this stage, but worth pointing out for existing VanMoof owners that this doesn't brick your bike. Your bike can still be unlocked via the app, and via the PIN set when setting up the bike. Cowboy (VanMoof competitor) have built an app[1] to let you save the encryption key used to unlock the bike, if you're worried about the VanMoof app going down. The real pain here is all of the annoying brittle and priority parts in the bike. The next time your eshifter dies, that's it. [1] http://bikey-app.cowboy.com http://bikey-app.cowboy.com
- csydas 3y ago
  https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/2044000001513-about-vanmoof-s-current-situation https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/20... https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44001778328-how-can-i-unlock-my-vanmoof-s2-or-x2-bike- https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44... I think it's worth adding to this the official statement from Vanmoof, as overall I think it does have most of the information that owners would like. Kind of a shame that the so many Dutch people are getting screwed here, but the repair shop owners/workers from the article describe a very locked-down bike seemingly designed to be a lock-in device, not a useful bike.† I've been in Rotterdam for a good amount of time (and Amsterdam naturally) and even knowing that everyone in these cities bikes doesn't prepare you for how much the Dutch have integrated biking into their cities. It's very impressive and enviable, and plenty of options for persons who do need other transport options. From my perspective, trying to do vendor lock-in on a bicycle is a bad idea; transport needs to be treated like a utility, and purposefully making a device that requires a company to exist to give you permission/parts to use this utility while there are dozens if not hundreds of non-locked-down options just seems like an awful business idea, especially when the model has been "open" for almost 200 years and bicycle engineering is already extremely efficient and user friendly without the vendor lock-in. Whether it's locked in by code or by non-open hardware, trying to capture what is basically a utility (transportation) is a dumb. † I understand that many users liked the bike design, but in my opinion, if repair shops are having to crack open the bike frame or can't use normal bike parts to fix it, it's a bad bike.
  - hnbad 3y ago
    Yes, it's absolutely a case of vendor lock-in. While the bankruptcy won't brick your bike, any vendor-specific part (and that seems to be most of the bike) breaking will leave you with a broken bike and no way to fix it. I'm pretty sure the business plan here was to generate "recurring revenue" by "vertical integration" in the "long tail" or some collection of buzzwords like that but it boils down to making customers depend on you after the sale and forcing them to come back to you for anything they need. This reminds me of how software is becoming increasingly subscription based and triple-A games have moved to "live services" and "season passes" as a business model. I guess at least Van Moof actually sold you the bike and didn't make you rent it.
    - generic92034 3y ago
      > I guess at least Van Moof actually sold you the bike and didn't make you rent it. The potential loss for the customers would have been much lower if they had rented the bikes for, say, one month at a time. They might lose some days of paid usage in the worst case (as it now seems to be, they would not have lost anything in that one-month-rent case). But then they could switch to any competitor. I guess sometimes renting is not tightening the vendor lock-in, compared to buying.
- furyg3 3y ago
  > Your bike can still be unlocked via the app, and via the PIN set when setting up the bike. ** For now. Also Cowboy's app does not (cannot?) support all models.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  One of the official bike repair partners figured out a way to fix most things without official parts. He seems to be popular: https://www.deondernemer.nl/innovatie/technologie/vanmoof-ebike-fietsen-repareren-de-broers-fietsreparateurs-amersfoort~4822697 https://www.deondernemer.nl/innovatie/technologie/vanmoof-eb... So seems like most Van Moof's can be repaired in the end.
  - cianmm 3y ago
    As far as I know based on interactions in the owners form on Facebook (although I don't speak Dutch) he can't repair e-shifters, which are the most commonly broken proprietary part on the bikes.
- tpmx 3y ago
  https://www.vanmoof.com/blog/en/ride-the-future-e-shifter https://www.vanmoof.com/blog/en/ride-the-future-e-shifter That thing seems a bit delicate/fragile for a bike.
  - tim333 3y ago
    Yeah doesn't look solid in this tear down https://youtu.be/bm3JqpoqUY8?t=136 https://youtu.be/bm3JqpoqUY8?t=136
tomalaci 3y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36769998#36770325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36769998#36770325 This company had an interesting concept to fight bycicle thievery with "hunters" who steal it back [1]. [1] https://www.vanmoof.com/en-SE/peace-of-mind https://www.vanmoof.com/en-SE/peace-of-mind
- no_time 3y ago
  If you are curious about how this works in practice, check out this series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz7AHnQUIUEkXynllHhjiCtA7skzWSn2A https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz7AHnQUIUEkXynllHhjiCtA7... Someone made full english subs for it.
JR1427 3y ago
I feel for VanMoof owners. Another one for https://twitter.com/internetofshit https://twitter.com/internetofshit
- tetris11 3y ago
  https://nitter.net/internetofshit https://nitter.net/internetofshit
nicbou 3y ago
A bicycle is one of the most elegant tools out there. You get an insane amount of value for your money, and anyone can learn to fix them at home with very few tools. They are incredible machines. VanMoof took everything that is right with bicycles - standardisation, resilience, ease of repair - and deliberately ruined it. I'm happy to see that business model fail.
- asddubs 3y ago
  it is undeniably pretty slick to just have everything inside the frame of the bike. But as with phones, to some extent elegance is at odds with repairability. I'd rather have something that lasts a long time.
  - Gravityloss 3y ago
    The frame tubes do have open ends. Especially on Van Moof bikes [1]. So I assume the components slide through the ends. Gear components from the bottom. Electronics from the front and back. So I don't see fundamental physical issues? Maybe this style will be more standardized by some companies at some point. 1: https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-05/c54c62b0-9455-11ea-bcbd-e23993955748 https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-05/c54c62b...
    - asddubs 3y ago
      Even so, I assume it's using specialty parts to meet size constraints, making them harder to replace.
    - rcostin2k2 3y ago
      The top tube seems to have a small removable part, few inches behind the head. Else, there is not much to access the inside because of the seat post and head ... The tension forces favor the model because at that point there is only compression, so the tube closes itself.
      - Gravityloss 3y ago
renewiltord 3y ago
Okay, well that's annoying. That's going to kill the sharing feature, I assume. My buddy has one and I ride it most and it's really kind of nice in SF.
- lelaurent 3y ago
  Can’t you just use a numeric combination lock?
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    The locking feature built-in locks it at the hub. I feel good that I've made some thief's day worse.
Gravityloss 3y ago
Well written article and a good cautionary tale.
Sirupsen 3y ago
While I never owned a VanMoof, I read they painted pictures of flat screen TVs on the shipping boxes after months of issues with bikes being damaged by the time they got to customers. Clever!
Deukhoofd 3y ago
Note that the bankruptcy was already a month ago. They're currently looking for a purchaser to make a restart. Last I heard, McLarens electric scooter brand Lavoie was in talks for an acquisition.
SilverBirch 3y ago
Pretty wild how badly this business was run. If you walk around Amsterdam there are VanMoofs everywhere and they aren't cheap! I was expecting this to be a Peloton style story where they grew too rapidly and then suddenly a crunch just killed them, but it's wild to hear that instead they've just... run the business incredibly badly to the point where they can somehow make a loss on selling $4000 bikes.
- oblio 3y ago
  $4000 bikes with cheap, no name parts, at that.
- wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
  When they were selling them between 3400 - 4000 it was going reasonable well for them & support, as well as customers being happy with them. However they were selling them at 2000 in the end, they tried to also scale up production to support this. They seem to have failed at that stage in both quality and cutting costs.
  - zihotki 3y ago
    Not only that, the quality of parts was also subpar. Considering several years of warranty, that costed them too much. Almost all my friends owning it had to visit the repair shop due to major failures.
runeks 3y ago
I found some details about their financials: > They show VanMoof had three major creditors. Lenders led by American venture capitalist TriplePoint lent VanMoof 77.9 million euros. The bike company owed 50.6 million euros to suppliers and other business partners. And it also had 15.3 million euros in tax debts, including 12.1 million euros owed to the Dutch Tax Authority. https://nltimes.nl/2023/08/23/vanmoof-debts-144-million-euros-went-bust https://nltimes.nl/2023/08/23/vanmoof-debts-144-million-euro...
moffkalast 3y ago
Looks like VanMoof went... VanPoof. I'll show myself out.
glimshe 3y ago
My kid uses an old school, human powered kick scooter to go to school. I offered an electric one but he was concerned with charging and reliability! That's some great engineering insight right there, I was so proud!
Fradow 3y ago
I despise the anti-social alarm of those bikes. At my work, someone has put one on the bike rack, which is a type where you suspend bikes by one wheel. If you so much as brush that bike, or even shake the bike rack a bit, it will scream loudly and startle you. Do it again and it's an ear-piercing alarm you have to contend with while you store your bike. And it's really hard to do considering how packed the rack is, and how normal it is to move other bikes a bit to store yours. Other than that, I don't have a strong opinion on those: they seem like overpriced bikes that are expensive to repair, and other commenters seem to agree on that.
marssaxman 3y ago
I watched someone riding a Van Moof bike get hit by a delivery truck this morning. He was fine, but the bike's front wheel and fork need to be replaced. Shame to think the bike is probably a loss, now that the manufacturer has shuttered.
theklr 3y ago
With this news, does anyone know if there’s any of these new cycle tech startups that are working together to make some kind of FOSS tech to mitigate having vaporware if the company goes bell up? Glad Cowboy stepped in, but this feels like one of a couple.

70 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

Fairly old news at this stage, but worth pointing out for existing VanMoof owners that this doesn't brick your bike. Your bike can still be unlocked via the app, and via the PIN set when setting up the bike. Cowboy (VanMoof competitor) have built an app[1] to let you save the encryption key used to unlock the bike, if you're worried about the VanMoof app going down. The real pain here is all of the annoying brittle and priority parts in the bike. The next time your eshifter dies, that's it. [1] http://bikey-app.cowboy.com http://bikey-app.cowboy.com

csydas 3y ago
https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/2044000001513-about-vanmoof-s-current-situation https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/20... https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44001778328-how-can-i-unlock-my-vanmoof-s2-or-x2-bike- https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44... I think it's worth adding to this the official statement from Vanmoof, as overall I think it does have most of the information that owners would like. Kind of a shame that the so many Dutch people are getting screwed here, but the repair shop owners/workers from the article describe a very locked-down bike seemingly designed to be a lock-in device, not a useful bike.† I've been in Rotterdam for a good amount of time (and Amsterdam naturally) and even knowing that everyone in these cities bikes doesn't prepare you for how much the Dutch have integrated biking into their cities. It's very impressive and enviable, and plenty of options for persons who do need other transport options. From my perspective, trying to do vendor lock-in on a bicycle is a bad idea; transport needs to be treated like a utility, and purposefully making a device that requires a company to exist to give you permission/parts to use this utility while there are dozens if not hundreds of non-locked-down options just seems like an awful business idea, especially when the model has been "open" for almost 200 years and bicycle engineering is already extremely efficient and user friendly without the vendor lock-in. Whether it's locked in by code or by non-open hardware, trying to capture what is basically a utility (transportation) is a dumb. † I understand that many users liked the bike design, but in my opinion, if repair shops are having to crack open the bike frame or can't use normal bike parts to fix it, it's a bad bike.
- hnbad 3y ago
  Yes, it's absolutely a case of vendor lock-in. While the bankruptcy won't brick your bike, any vendor-specific part (and that seems to be most of the bike) breaking will leave you with a broken bike and no way to fix it. I'm pretty sure the business plan here was to generate "recurring revenue" by "vertical integration" in the "long tail" or some collection of buzzwords like that but it boils down to making customers depend on you after the sale and forcing them to come back to you for anything they need. This reminds me of how software is becoming increasingly subscription based and triple-A games have moved to "live services" and "season passes" as a business model. I guess at least Van Moof actually sold you the bike and didn't make you rent it.
  - generic92034 3y ago
    > I guess at least Van Moof actually sold you the bike and didn't make you rent it. The potential loss for the customers would have been much lower if they had rented the bikes for, say, one month at a time. They might lose some days of paid usage in the worst case (as it now seems to be, they would not have lost anything in that one-month-rent case). But then they could switch to any competitor. I guess sometimes renting is not tightening the vendor lock-in, compared to buying.
furyg3 3y ago
> Your bike can still be unlocked via the app, and via the PIN set when setting up the bike. ** For now. Also Cowboy's app does not (cannot?) support all models.
wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
One of the official bike repair partners figured out a way to fix most things without official parts. He seems to be popular: https://www.deondernemer.nl/innovatie/technologie/vanmoof-ebike-fietsen-repareren-de-broers-fietsreparateurs-amersfoort~4822697 https://www.deondernemer.nl/innovatie/technologie/vanmoof-eb... So seems like most Van Moof's can be repaired in the end.
- cianmm 3y ago
  As far as I know based on interactions in the owners form on Facebook (although I don't speak Dutch) he can't repair e-shifters, which are the most commonly broken proprietary part on the bikes.
tpmx 3y ago
https://www.vanmoof.com/blog/en/ride-the-future-e-shifter https://www.vanmoof.com/blog/en/ride-the-future-e-shifter That thing seems a bit delicate/fragile for a bike.
- tim333 3y ago
  Yeah doesn't look solid in this tear down https://youtu.be/bm3JqpoqUY8?t=136 https://youtu.be/bm3JqpoqUY8?t=136

tomalaci 3y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36769998#36770325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36769998#36770325 This company had an interesting concept to fight bycicle thievery with "hunters" who steal it back [1]. [1] https://www.vanmoof.com/en-SE/peace-of-mind https://www.vanmoof.com/en-SE/peace-of-mind

no_time 3y ago
If you are curious about how this works in practice, check out this series: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz7AHnQUIUEkXynllHhjiCtA7skzWSn2A https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz7AHnQUIUEkXynllHhjiCtA7... Someone made full english subs for it.

JR1427 3y ago

I feel for VanMoof owners. Another one for https://twitter.com/internetofshit https://twitter.com/internetofshit

tetris11 3y ago
https://nitter.net/internetofshit https://nitter.net/internetofshit

nicbou 3y ago

A bicycle is one of the most elegant tools out there. You get an insane amount of value for your money, and anyone can learn to fix them at home with very few tools. They are incredible machines. VanMoof took everything that is right with bicycles - standardisation, resilience, ease of repair - and deliberately ruined it. I'm happy to see that business model fail.

asddubs 3y ago
it is undeniably pretty slick to just have everything inside the frame of the bike. But as with phones, to some extent elegance is at odds with repairability. I'd rather have something that lasts a long time.
- Gravityloss 3y ago
  The frame tubes do have open ends. Especially on Van Moof bikes [1]. So I assume the components slide through the ends. Gear components from the bottom. Electronics from the front and back. So I don't see fundamental physical issues? Maybe this style will be more standardized by some companies at some point. 1: https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-05/c54c62b0-9455-11ea-bcbd-e23993955748 https://s.yimg.com/os/creatr-uploaded-images/2020-05/c54c62b...
  - asddubs 3y ago
    Even so, I assume it's using specialty parts to meet size constraints, making them harder to replace.
  - rcostin2k2 3y ago
    The top tube seems to have a small removable part, few inches behind the head. Else, there is not much to access the inside because of the seat post and head ... The tension forces favor the model because at that point there is only compression, so the tube closes itself.
    - Gravityloss 3y ago

renewiltord 3y ago

Okay, well that's annoying. That's going to kill the sharing feature, I assume. My buddy has one and I ride it most and it's really kind of nice in SF.

lelaurent 3y ago
Can’t you just use a numeric combination lock?
- renewiltord 3y ago
  The locking feature built-in locks it at the hub. I feel good that I've made some thief's day worse.

Gravityloss 3y ago

Well written article and a good cautionary tale.

Sirupsen 3y ago

While I never owned a VanMoof, I read they painted pictures of flat screen TVs on the shipping boxes after months of issues with bikes being damaged by the time they got to customers. Clever!

Deukhoofd 3y ago

Note that the bankruptcy was already a month ago. They're currently looking for a purchaser to make a restart. Last I heard, McLarens electric scooter brand Lavoie was in talks for an acquisition.

SilverBirch 3y ago

Pretty wild how badly this business was run. If you walk around Amsterdam there are VanMoofs everywhere and they aren't cheap! I was expecting this to be a Peloton style story where they grew too rapidly and then suddenly a crunch just killed them, but it's wild to hear that instead they've just... run the business incredibly badly to the point where they can somehow make a loss on selling $4000 bikes.

oblio 3y ago
$4000 bikes with cheap, no name parts, at that.
wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
When they were selling them between 3400 - 4000 it was going reasonable well for them & support, as well as customers being happy with them. However they were selling them at 2000 in the end, they tried to also scale up production to support this. They seem to have failed at that stage in both quality and cutting costs.
- zihotki 3y ago
  Not only that, the quality of parts was also subpar. Considering several years of warranty, that costed them too much. Almost all my friends owning it had to visit the repair shop due to major failures.

runeks 3y ago

I found some details about their financials: > They show VanMoof had three major creditors. Lenders led by American venture capitalist TriplePoint lent VanMoof 77.9 million euros. The bike company owed 50.6 million euros to suppliers and other business partners. And it also had 15.3 million euros in tax debts, including 12.1 million euros owed to the Dutch Tax Authority. https://nltimes.nl/2023/08/23/vanmoof-debts-144-million-euros-went-bust https://nltimes.nl/2023/08/23/vanmoof-debts-144-million-euro...

moffkalast 3y ago

Looks like VanMoof went... VanPoof. I'll show myself out.

glimshe 3y ago

My kid uses an old school, human powered kick scooter to go to school. I offered an electric one but he was concerned with charging and reliability! That's some great engineering insight right there, I was so proud!

Fradow 3y ago

I despise the anti-social alarm of those bikes. At my work, someone has put one on the bike rack, which is a type where you suspend bikes by one wheel. If you so much as brush that bike, or even shake the bike rack a bit, it will scream loudly and startle you. Do it again and it's an ear-piercing alarm you have to contend with while you store your bike. And it's really hard to do considering how packed the rack is, and how normal it is to move other bikes a bit to store yours. Other than that, I don't have a strong opinion on those: they seem like overpriced bikes that are expensive to repair, and other commenters seem to agree on that.

marssaxman 3y ago

I watched someone riding a Van Moof bike get hit by a delivery truck this morning. He was fine, but the bike's front wheel and fork need to be replaced. Shame to think the bike is probably a loss, now that the manufacturer has shuttered.

theklr 3y ago

With this news, does anyone know if there’s any of these new cycle tech startups that are working together to make some kind of FOSS tech to mitigate having vaporware if the company goes bell up? Glad Cowboy stepped in, but this feels like one of a couple.