14 ms·

VanMoof acquired by e-mobility company Lavoie

99 points by geephroh 3y ago

ushakov 3y ago
What was left there to be acquired?
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  So many people locked out of their bikes to which you can now sell a subscription.
  - turboturbo 3y ago
    This is incorrect. No-one was locked out of their bike.
  - doctorpangloss 3y ago
    Exactly zero people are locked out of their bikes. That profoundly low information take is like a canary.
    - drfritznunkie 3y ago
      Certainly there are people locked out of their bikes, but perhaps not for the reason you're thinking about. Just recently, I bought a NIB VanMoof on CL. The owner had never put together and it sat in his basement for 2 years. So the batteries in it are dead (the controller battery was a spicy pillow, but the motor battery may still be okay), so I figured at the price it was offered at, it worth it just for the parts in the worst case. I knew about the BikeyApp, and getting the encryption keys downloaded before I went to go buy the bike, but unfortunately, before I could stop the PO, he deletes the bike from his VanMoof account because I now own the bike, and he wanted to release it so that I could register it to myself. So I own it now, right? Wrong... Even though I now "own" the bike, I cannot register it because I don't have the original manual for it (the PO lost it), which has a special QR code printed on it to register the bike. The PO, who has a receipt for the bike, cannot get VanMoof to transfer the ownership to me, so the bike is parts (which is a risk I was willing to take). I'm going to strip the craptacular electronics from it and just make it a regular 4spd pedal bike. The funny thing is I was able to get the controller powered up and guess what? The bike was defective from the factory... the controller throws charging over-temp errors regardless of it being hooked up to anything, even dummy loads. This apparently is not an uncommon experience with these bikes from the forum posts I've read about them. Also, as an aside, f* having to carry a phone to use a bike. This thing might look cool but it's a garbage fire of bad decisions fueled with VC money.
      - madeofpalk 3y ago
        You don’t need to carry a phone to use a vanmoof. You can unlock and change speed settings directly with the bike without a phone.
- Someone 3y ago
  Customers from a demographic that’s willing to pay a premium for looks. Income from future repairs to bicycles already sold. Reading https://www.vanmoof.com/en-NL/terms-and-conditions#t&c-section-2 https://www.vanmoof.com/en-NL/terms-and-conditions#t&c-secti...: payments from customers who leased a bicycle.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Brand, inventory, names and addresses of all of the previous buyers, servers for the lock/unlock facility and possibly more than that.
  - fgblanch 3y ago
    And leases, something very people know is that Van Moof has a great corporate leasing program. All big tech offer eBike commuting options paying Van Moof Leases. I think it is genius, the bikes are expensive to buy, but $100 a month lease including maintenance is very popular among Big tech (especially if your company pays for it). https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44002367584-vanmoof-for-business https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44...
    - jacquesm 3y ago
      How many of these do they have in the field? They could very well be losing substantial money on that. Leases only work if the quality of what you lease is high enough that you won't be bleeding to death on the availability guarantee. Financial lease insulates the lease provider from that but if it is operational lease then whoever inherits the leases might be in for a very hard time.
      - fgblanch 3y ago
        100% Agree and unfortunately I don't have numbers. However, anecdotally I work for a big tech and I have one of the leases, and it is a very popular option across my colleagues. I'd probably never buy one, but with the lease I'm very happy customer. Also they gave the option to upgrade to newer models for $10 more dollars a month after a year which I think it helps them to fix operational issues. There is also in-campus maintenance which is very convenient. I think that if they operate/scale the lease business properly it could make a very good business in its own.
        jacquesm 3y ago
        There are multiple of these lease suppliers and then there is Van Moof themselves, I take it your deal is with Van Moof directly. That should - assuming the new owners have actually bought the lease contracts as well - give you a priority position for spare parts. Here is the FAQ of another such provider (there is also Athlon, possibly others): https://www.leasefiets.nl/qavanmoof/ https://www.leasefiets.nl/qavanmoof/
afavour 3y ago
Glad that existing customers will be able to maintain their bikes more easily. But I also look forward to (hope for?) an era where e-bikes are a lot more like regular bikes: totally generic, interchangeable parts that don’t require any single manufacturer.
- notJim 3y ago
  Isn't that era already basically here, except for VanMoof which was the exception?
  - hutzlibu 3y ago
    Nope. Unless you mean only the core bicycle parts. Everything electronic is highly incompatible and unstandardized. Some things fit and some standards are emerging, but for others you struggle to find the right parts, or parts at all.
    - serf 3y ago
      a lot of it was standardized until individual companies decided to try to divvy up a market and segment it. so many electric vehicles are running their own version of the Benjamin Vedder VESC as the primary motor controller. They change a minor feature, stop providing source, and then pretend that it's their own design. But, even so, it's all still pretty inter-changable. Nearly all BLDCs are controlled similarly. Nearly all PEVs are running hall encoders, and if they're not it's trivial to switch between hall/sin-cos/foc/whatever with nearly any modern controller, just as nearly any controller can be programmed for just about any kind of voltage source, be it lead-acid/lipo/liion/lifepo4/whatever. Things seem a lot more friendly for tinkerers now than ever in the whole PEV sphere. Improvements can always be hoped for, but same as with every industry : you should probably expect to exchange interoperability and freedom for closely-knit support and homogeneity.
  - doctorpangloss 3y ago
    I own VanMoofs, and I live near a brand store. I also own a car, and I used to own a Stromer, which doesn't have brand stores. I can't believe anyone desires the experience of the auto mechanic, for anything. Like I know that's something that exists obviously and is something people do, like people go to normal bike shops. But it doesn't make sense. If people want to buy crappy bikes they can. There's an ecosystem for that. VanMoof's problems are complicated, there are a lot of super low information comments on HN right now. I'm not interested in people's anecdotes, and I'm not sharing any either. All I'm saying is that in my experience, with every product I've owned, the VanMoof approach has been better for me, as a consumer, and that I only hope that they figure out pricing to make it sustainable in the future.
pyrophane 3y ago
I wonder if companies like VanMoof just had a very small window there where they were compelling. I think when the VanMoof came out it was sleek and easy to use in a field of much more clunky eBikes. Now, if you want something that looks good on the road and is easy to operate, you have a lot of options, including ones from familiar bike manufacturers. Suddenly VanMoof no longer had such a differentiating factor compared to everyone else.
- brnt 3y ago
  VanMoof seemed to be a riff on Juicero: expensive custom parts specifically designed to keep you a lifelong overpaying customer.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    The overpaying started right on day #1.
  - vanderZwan 3y ago
    That one video of an engineer taking a Juicero apart and just being stunned from start to finish that it's built from the most expensive, high-quality parts imaginable, making it possibly the most over-engineered piece of junk ever, is probably one of the most entertaining YT videos I've ever seen.
    - yurishimo 3y ago
      I assume you mean this one from AvE? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ
      - vanderZwan 3y ago
        Yes, thank you for looking it up! Just skimming through it makes me giggle again. The engineers must have had so much fun. And given that their client was selling fruit juice with always online DRM, they probably did the world a service by ensuring said company failed faster by causing a net loss with each unit sold
conqrr 3y ago
Any ebike company that's using parts that my local bike shop can't work on is not getting my money. Also any local bike shop that insists they need to charge more for an ebike is not getting my business either. Ebikes are bikes with battery + motor mostly and not a new invention.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That's the right attitude. It also keeps your local bike mechanic in business, which is a good thing because you really need those in a community that uses bikes. If all the sales and parts flow through centralized companies then those bike mechanics will disappear and then you're done when you need your bike fixed in a hurry because you depend on it. Van Moof always struck me as targeting the 'hip' crowd without taking into account the whole eco system that a bike manufacturer operates in. Change too many things at once and the end results are predictable.
- hannasanarion 3y ago
  Charging more for an ebike, like, in general, or when working on ebike-specific features? Because they aren't just bikes with a battery and motor, ebikes typically have hydraulic brakes that require special equipment to service, more complex drive trains with internal hub gears, heightened strength requirements for chains and sprockets, etc.
  - switchbak 3y ago
    Come now. Any decent bike shop can service mountain bikes, and they have most of the things you describe (and more). Also, stronger chains / chainrings aren't any harder to work on. About the hardest thing is needing a strong enough bike stand to handle the additional weight. If they need to service the complex drivetrain components - sure, otherwise it's effectively the same as many existing bikes they deal with every day.
    - makeitdouble 3y ago
      Anecdotally, some shops won't deal with mountain bikes in the first place, and the shop that do usually have more qualified staff and set higher base prices, regardless of what you bring them. I'm with you that they should keep charging the same higher prices for ebikes, just saying the price differenciation is already there.
jacquesm 3y ago
Reddit thread about the same: https://www.reddit.com/r/vanmoofbicycle/comments/166as7v/mclaren_appliedx27s_lavoie_buys_bankrupt_dutch/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vanmoofbicycle/comments/166as7v/mcl...
wg0 3y ago
Keeping an eye on second hand market, I noticed that many were desperate to dump their VanMoofs in past few months. Some going as low as 1000 bucks but apparently, were finding hard to find someone fool enough to buy a bike who's parts are not available off the market otherwise in case something goes wrong down the road which means, you're purchase is total junk.
- VPenkov 3y ago
  I was thinking the same but also I suppose it's also easier for people to sell stolen bikes so I'd be cautious.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  A 1000 bucks isn't cheap for a bike with custom parts that has no support and is known to have issues. But you can't fault them for trying to offload the bikes and I guess plenty of people believe that the value of a thing is relative to what they themselves paid for the thing.
izacus 3y ago
What was so special about these bikes in comparison to one of the hundreds of other models on the market that are useable without apps?
- poniko 3y ago
  Design and marketing hype.. another company that was over founded and didn't have to make though choices and buy pre-made and well tested components. Ended up killed by the break downs and service cost of their own hardware. Would not have happened if they just went with bosch.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  The anti-theft service, mostly. When someone steals a regular bike, even if you have an airtag, tile or whatever pointing out where the bike is, it's a nightmare to get police to cooperate to get your bike back. In Germany, even out of the few thefts that do get reported (as most people don't even bother), just 10% get resolved. In contrast, VanMoof bikes come with a service of "bike hunters" that do this for a living and have better records about bike ownerships and so have established relations with law enforcements. Bike thieves quickly learned that stealing VanMoof bikes will only lead the cops to their stash. [1] https://www.oeffentlichen-dienst.de/wirtschafts-news/46-news/570-fahrraddiebstahl.html https://www.oeffentlichen-dienst.de/wirtschafts-news/46-news...
  - williamdclt 3y ago
    FWIW, in London I've been surprised that police (or maybe just the specific officer in charge of the case) was really keen to retrieve my stolen cheap ebike in which I hid an airtag. Still took several weeks to get it done, but I got my bike back. When I put the airtag in, I was pretty certain I'd lose a bike _and_ an airtag: got proven wrong!
- furyg3 3y ago
  They were trendy looking and expensive. That was the main selling point, at least in Amsterdam where the vast majority of people who owned them had zero need for an electric bicycle.
PatronBernard 3y ago
I will never, ever, buy a bicycle that will stop working if the manufacturer goes under.
- jdjdjdjdjduuuu 3y ago
  Just buy a kit to convert a conventional bicycle? Electric bicycles are pretty simple

99 points by geephroh 3y ago

ushakov 3y ago

What was left there to be acquired?

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
So many people locked out of their bikes to which you can now sell a subscription.
- turboturbo 3y ago
  This is incorrect. No-one was locked out of their bike.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  Exactly zero people are locked out of their bikes. That profoundly low information take is like a canary.
  - drfritznunkie 3y ago
    Certainly there are people locked out of their bikes, but perhaps not for the reason you're thinking about. Just recently, I bought a NIB VanMoof on CL. The owner had never put together and it sat in his basement for 2 years. So the batteries in it are dead (the controller battery was a spicy pillow, but the motor battery may still be okay), so I figured at the price it was offered at, it worth it just for the parts in the worst case. I knew about the BikeyApp, and getting the encryption keys downloaded before I went to go buy the bike, but unfortunately, before I could stop the PO, he deletes the bike from his VanMoof account because I now own the bike, and he wanted to release it so that I could register it to myself. So I own it now, right? Wrong... Even though I now "own" the bike, I cannot register it because I don't have the original manual for it (the PO lost it), which has a special QR code printed on it to register the bike. The PO, who has a receipt for the bike, cannot get VanMoof to transfer the ownership to me, so the bike is parts (which is a risk I was willing to take). I'm going to strip the craptacular electronics from it and just make it a regular 4spd pedal bike. The funny thing is I was able to get the controller powered up and guess what? The bike was defective from the factory... the controller throws charging over-temp errors regardless of it being hooked up to anything, even dummy loads. This apparently is not an uncommon experience with these bikes from the forum posts I've read about them. Also, as an aside, f* having to carry a phone to use a bike. This thing might look cool but it's a garbage fire of bad decisions fueled with VC money.
    - madeofpalk 3y ago
      You don’t need to carry a phone to use a vanmoof. You can unlock and change speed settings directly with the bike without a phone.
Someone 3y ago
Customers from a demographic that’s willing to pay a premium for looks. Income from future repairs to bicycles already sold. Reading https://www.vanmoof.com/en-NL/terms-and-conditions#t&c-section-2 https://www.vanmoof.com/en-NL/terms-and-conditions#t&c-secti...: payments from customers who leased a bicycle.
jacquesm 3y ago
Brand, inventory, names and addresses of all of the previous buyers, servers for the lock/unlock facility and possibly more than that.
- fgblanch 3y ago
  And leases, something very people know is that Van Moof has a great corporate leasing program. All big tech offer eBike commuting options paying Van Moof Leases. I think it is genius, the bikes are expensive to buy, but $100 a month lease including maintenance is very popular among Big tech (especially if your company pays for it). https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44002367584-vanmoof-for-business https://support.vanmoof.com/en/support/solutions/articles/44...
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    How many of these do they have in the field? They could very well be losing substantial money on that. Leases only work if the quality of what you lease is high enough that you won't be bleeding to death on the availability guarantee. Financial lease insulates the lease provider from that but if it is operational lease then whoever inherits the leases might be in for a very hard time.
    - fgblanch 3y ago
      100% Agree and unfortunately I don't have numbers. However, anecdotally I work for a big tech and I have one of the leases, and it is a very popular option across my colleagues. I'd probably never buy one, but with the lease I'm very happy customer. Also they gave the option to upgrade to newer models for $10 more dollars a month after a year which I think it helps them to fix operational issues. There is also in-campus maintenance which is very convenient. I think that if they operate/scale the lease business properly it could make a very good business in its own.
      - jacquesm 3y ago
        There are multiple of these lease suppliers and then there is Van Moof themselves, I take it your deal is with Van Moof directly. That should - assuming the new owners have actually bought the lease contracts as well - give you a priority position for spare parts. Here is the FAQ of another such provider (there is also Athlon, possibly others): https://www.leasefiets.nl/qavanmoof/ https://www.leasefiets.nl/qavanmoof/

afavour 3y ago

Glad that existing customers will be able to maintain their bikes more easily. But I also look forward to (hope for?) an era where e-bikes are a lot more like regular bikes: totally generic, interchangeable parts that don’t require any single manufacturer.

notJim 3y ago
Isn't that era already basically here, except for VanMoof which was the exception?
- hutzlibu 3y ago
  Nope. Unless you mean only the core bicycle parts. Everything electronic is highly incompatible and unstandardized. Some things fit and some standards are emerging, but for others you struggle to find the right parts, or parts at all.
  - serf 3y ago
    a lot of it was standardized until individual companies decided to try to divvy up a market and segment it. so many electric vehicles are running their own version of the Benjamin Vedder VESC as the primary motor controller. They change a minor feature, stop providing source, and then pretend that it's their own design. But, even so, it's all still pretty inter-changable. Nearly all BLDCs are controlled similarly. Nearly all PEVs are running hall encoders, and if they're not it's trivial to switch between hall/sin-cos/foc/whatever with nearly any modern controller, just as nearly any controller can be programmed for just about any kind of voltage source, be it lead-acid/lipo/liion/lifepo4/whatever. Things seem a lot more friendly for tinkerers now than ever in the whole PEV sphere. Improvements can always be hoped for, but same as with every industry : you should probably expect to exchange interoperability and freedom for closely-knit support and homogeneity.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  I own VanMoofs, and I live near a brand store. I also own a car, and I used to own a Stromer, which doesn't have brand stores. I can't believe anyone desires the experience of the auto mechanic, for anything. Like I know that's something that exists obviously and is something people do, like people go to normal bike shops. But it doesn't make sense. If people want to buy crappy bikes they can. There's an ecosystem for that. VanMoof's problems are complicated, there are a lot of super low information comments on HN right now. I'm not interested in people's anecdotes, and I'm not sharing any either. All I'm saying is that in my experience, with every product I've owned, the VanMoof approach has been better for me, as a consumer, and that I only hope that they figure out pricing to make it sustainable in the future.

pyrophane 3y ago

I wonder if companies like VanMoof just had a very small window there where they were compelling. I think when the VanMoof came out it was sleek and easy to use in a field of much more clunky eBikes. Now, if you want something that looks good on the road and is easy to operate, you have a lot of options, including ones from familiar bike manufacturers. Suddenly VanMoof no longer had such a differentiating factor compared to everyone else.

brnt 3y ago
VanMoof seemed to be a riff on Juicero: expensive custom parts specifically designed to keep you a lifelong overpaying customer.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  The overpaying started right on day #1.
- vanderZwan 3y ago
  That one video of an engineer taking a Juicero apart and just being stunned from start to finish that it's built from the most expensive, high-quality parts imaginable, making it possibly the most over-engineered piece of junk ever, is probably one of the most entertaining YT videos I've ever seen.
  - yurishimo 3y ago
    I assume you mean this one from AvE? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ
    - vanderZwan 3y ago
      Yes, thank you for looking it up! Just skimming through it makes me giggle again. The engineers must have had so much fun. And given that their client was selling fruit juice with always online DRM, they probably did the world a service by ensuring said company failed faster by causing a net loss with each unit sold

conqrr 3y ago

Any ebike company that's using parts that my local bike shop can't work on is not getting my money. Also any local bike shop that insists they need to charge more for an ebike is not getting my business either. Ebikes are bikes with battery + motor mostly and not a new invention.

jacquesm 3y ago
That's the right attitude. It also keeps your local bike mechanic in business, which is a good thing because you really need those in a community that uses bikes. If all the sales and parts flow through centralized companies then those bike mechanics will disappear and then you're done when you need your bike fixed in a hurry because you depend on it. Van Moof always struck me as targeting the 'hip' crowd without taking into account the whole eco system that a bike manufacturer operates in. Change too many things at once and the end results are predictable.
hannasanarion 3y ago
Charging more for an ebike, like, in general, or when working on ebike-specific features? Because they aren't just bikes with a battery and motor, ebikes typically have hydraulic brakes that require special equipment to service, more complex drive trains with internal hub gears, heightened strength requirements for chains and sprockets, etc.
- switchbak 3y ago
  Come now. Any decent bike shop can service mountain bikes, and they have most of the things you describe (and more). Also, stronger chains / chainrings aren't any harder to work on. About the hardest thing is needing a strong enough bike stand to handle the additional weight. If they need to service the complex drivetrain components - sure, otherwise it's effectively the same as many existing bikes they deal with every day.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    Anecdotally, some shops won't deal with mountain bikes in the first place, and the shop that do usually have more qualified staff and set higher base prices, regardless of what you bring them. I'm with you that they should keep charging the same higher prices for ebikes, just saying the price differenciation is already there.

jacquesm 3y ago

Reddit thread about the same: https://www.reddit.com/r/vanmoofbicycle/comments/166as7v/mclaren_appliedx27s_lavoie_buys_bankrupt_dutch/ https://www.reddit.com/r/vanmoofbicycle/comments/166as7v/mcl...

wg0 3y ago

Keeping an eye on second hand market, I noticed that many were desperate to dump their VanMoofs in past few months. Some going as low as 1000 bucks but apparently, were finding hard to find someone fool enough to buy a bike who's parts are not available off the market otherwise in case something goes wrong down the road which means, you're purchase is total junk.

VPenkov 3y ago
I was thinking the same but also I suppose it's also easier for people to sell stolen bikes so I'd be cautious.
jacquesm 3y ago
A 1000 bucks isn't cheap for a bike with custom parts that has no support and is known to have issues. But you can't fault them for trying to offload the bikes and I guess plenty of people believe that the value of a thing is relative to what they themselves paid for the thing.

izacus 3y ago

What was so special about these bikes in comparison to one of the hundreds of other models on the market that are useable without apps?

poniko 3y ago
Design and marketing hype.. another company that was over founded and didn't have to make though choices and buy pre-made and well tested components. Ended up killed by the break downs and service cost of their own hardware. Would not have happened if they just went with bosch.
mschuster91 3y ago
The anti-theft service, mostly. When someone steals a regular bike, even if you have an airtag, tile or whatever pointing out where the bike is, it's a nightmare to get police to cooperate to get your bike back. In Germany, even out of the few thefts that do get reported (as most people don't even bother), just 10% get resolved. In contrast, VanMoof bikes come with a service of "bike hunters" that do this for a living and have better records about bike ownerships and so have established relations with law enforcements. Bike thieves quickly learned that stealing VanMoof bikes will only lead the cops to their stash. [1] https://www.oeffentlichen-dienst.de/wirtschafts-news/46-news/570-fahrraddiebstahl.html https://www.oeffentlichen-dienst.de/wirtschafts-news/46-news...
- williamdclt 3y ago
  FWIW, in London I've been surprised that police (or maybe just the specific officer in charge of the case) was really keen to retrieve my stolen cheap ebike in which I hid an airtag. Still took several weeks to get it done, but I got my bike back. When I put the airtag in, I was pretty certain I'd lose a bike _and_ an airtag: got proven wrong!
furyg3 3y ago
They were trendy looking and expensive. That was the main selling point, at least in Amsterdam where the vast majority of people who owned them had zero need for an electric bicycle.

PatronBernard 3y ago

I will never, ever, buy a bicycle that will stop working if the manufacturer goes under.

jdjdjdjdjduuuu 3y ago
Just buy a kit to convert a conventional bicycle? Electric bicycles are pretty simple