this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Also, how do they go bankrupt during bike hype times like these, lmao
A little tutorial for you:
It helps if the people in charge are artists whom just want to create something unique, without too much thought on all the intricacies of running a company in real life.
Also exclusively using custom-made parts instead of using off-the-shelf parts that have proven themselves time and again, is a great way to not be able to leverage the costs and reliability benefits of mass production.
So now that you've ended up with the situation of high operating costs, you also end up with a lot of issues due to your fancy custom designed components breaking down within warranty. And it gets even better: because regular bikeshops cannot handle warranty cases, as they do not have the necessary training or components, you need a large number of in-house mechanics that only cost you money instead of helping you earn it!
They wanted to be like Apple and have a closed, proprietary system, but seemed to forget that when you do that, you’ve also got to charge Apple prices to cover all those kind of costs.
Only they did charge Apple prices. Their latest model cost about €3500, which (for Dutch standards at least) is insane for an electric city bike.
It’s insane for a shitty vanmoof. My Batavus e-bike was around that price but it’s a much nicer bike than any vanmoof.
Bad planning.
Their core market was always the Netherlands. That market is absolutely saturated with bikes. There are more bikes than people in NL. It's not like the US where it's a relatively novel fenomenom with lots of growth opportunities for new markets.