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.
“Until a few decades ago, component compatibility was a hallmark of bicycle manufacturing. My bicycles are a perfect example of this. Most components – such as wheels, gear set, and brakes – are interchangeable between the different frames, even though every vehicle is from another brand and year of construction.
[…]
Unfortunately, compatibility is hardly a feature of bicycle manufacturing anymore. Manufacturers have introduced an increasing number of proprietary parts and keep changing standards, resulting in compatibility issues even for older bicycles of the same brand. For example, if the shifter of a modern bike breaks after some years of use, a replacement part will probably no longer be available. You need to order a new set from a new generation, which will be incompatible with your front and rear derailleur – which you also need to replace. For road bikes, the change from cassette bodies with ten sprockets (around 2010) to cassette bodies with eleven, twelve, and most recently thirteen sprockets have made many wheelsets obsolete, and the same goes for the rest of the drivetrain including shifters and chains.
Disc brakes, which are now on almost every new bicycle, all have different axle designs, meaning that every vehicle now requires proprietary spare parts. Disc brakes also required new shifters, forks, framesets, cables, and wheels, making such bicycles incompatible with earlier designs.”
Oh this is such a thing. The lack of compatibility also makes things less customizable. I used to always add a horizontal brake lever for reaching when I lift up from the drops (which I do when in traffic), but now that every shifter is different and every shifter is integrated into the brake levers it's not really an option.
Somewhat unrelated I also kind of hate how popular aluminum has become (or at least was when I last bought a road bike). Since all the mass produced frames are aluminum, the only options for a steel frame were more exotic models and thus expensive. In retrospect I wish I had just bought a steel hybrid frame and built a bike myself, but I was rather busy at the time, and it probably still would have been more expensive since so many of the parts are non-interchangeable.
I ride a Niner RLT Steel (bought as a frame) for that exact reason.
It was a tossup between that or a Lynsey, and I snagged a close out color of the Niner for 1/3 of the quoted price of the Lynsky at the time, and that included a carbon fork.
I’m actually overhauling it now with an entire group set after riding the last one since 2016.
Interesting fact that relates: the first couple years of the RLT Steel shipped with a fork that is 15x100 thru axle; nowadays the gravel/cyclocross market has settled on 12x100.
So I ended up getting a set of New Old Stock (NOS) 29” wheels from that same era that are 15x100/12x142 and 22.5mm wide. Perfect for my bike, but vanishingly hard to find now as a set due to the oddball matchup.
I was going to say I paid around half of what they list for, but it looks like they are closing out last years color right now. Inflation adjusted I paid about what they are asking today ($1,300).
Pretty pricey, but I also got a bike fit and some other stuff and wanted a frame to just be done with it and ride. It’s served me well, and has many years of life left!
Random side note: I just realized this is the second time in two days I’ve responded to you (other was regarding a 7 seat vehicle). HN can be quite a small place!
If you buy wheels with DT Swiss or Hope wheels you can usually swap the end caps to fit different standards.
I am using almost exclusively DT Swiss 350 hubs and some of my wheels have been in use with quick axle, 15x100 and 12x100 frames. I even converted some 12x142 wheels to 12x148 (boost) mountain bike standard with the Boostinator kit from Wolftooth components.
Fork has been hammered to hell and back over the last 7 years, though no major crashes. Not an issue so far, nor are there any reported issues (Niner RDO carbon fork) with anyone else using it.
There's a few reasons some people prefer steel. 1) You can weld it pretty easily, if your frame cracks. I guess this is nice if you're bikepacking through Nepal or something, but I don't really see the practicality for normal people. 2) It's cheap (well, not any more). 3) It's more flexible than aluminum, so some people prefer the way it rides.
These days, I'd say #3 is the only really valid reason for most people. Steel bikes are generally heavier than aluminum however, but it is possible to get them close if you use a high-grade cromoly steel, but then that removes most of the cost advantage.
I've had two frames fail with fatigue cracks at ~ 10k miles or less. One steel (at the chainstay bridge weld) and one aluminum (at the seat tube/bottom bracket weld).
Not only can you weld steel, it also is more forgiving in the failure mode. Steel bends and the damage to the frame is better visible (and could be corrected, if you prefer so) while aluminum frames can develop hidden defects and catastrophically fail.
Contrary to iron, silver or gold, aluminium has to be chemically extracted. The mineral you extract aluminium from is bauxite. This chemical process was mastered so recently that the Washington Monument is tipped with it just to show off. Even then the tip is so small that you can barely see it with your own eyes, but you can see it in Spiderman :)
I'm not sure on all the particulars, but metals are not the same: some require more energy to work with or to refine than others.
Steel (IIRC) needs a lot more energy to melt than aluminum, however I think aluminum requires more energy to extract from ore. Also, IIRC, aluminum needs more energy to weld just because it conducts electricity so much better, even though it has a lower melting point.
An interesting feature of steel frames is demonstrated by Surly frames: their rear end spacing is currently 145mm, which is neither 142 nor 148 (the standards). What they say is that because it is steel, you can bend it a couple of millimeters without any negative side-effects, the frame will tolerate it and will not break. So your frame can accommodate both sizes.
From university I learned that aluminium and steel both have around the same weight to strength ratio. The fact they use aluminum for airplanes is that steel will become too thin and is therefor not stiff enough.
I think for bikes the opposite matters, with aluminium at required strength you will get a very stiff frame.
Reduced compatibility is an issue but some of these are not, depending on the manufacturer.
SRAM 12s cassettes are incompatible with the 11s freehub but Shimano 12s is still compatible. You will need new shifters, so you’d just buy the whole upgrade together.
Rim to disc is obviously incompatible but Shimano’s levers, rotors and callipers have all been forwards compatible so far on road bikes.
Even upgrading your cassette to an incompatible standard is usually just a case of buying a new freehub body for your rear wheel (Shimano -> SRAM XDR). Ideal? No. Affordable? Yes.
The biggest complaints usually come from bottom brackets and even here, changing is usually possible and affordable. Looking at Shimano, I’ve just upgraded my 2016 road bike from an older generation 105 crankset to a newer 4-arm crankset and didn’t need to change the bottom bracket.
Things like forks, seatposts, handlebars can be an issue because they’re becoming more proprietary on higher end bikes. I’m not convinced this is an issue that affects your average commuter, however. I just bought a bike where this isn’t an issue, for example.
A family member who is an 'above average' commuter has rebuilt bikes more than once until the frames wear out. He does commutes from Haarlem to Amsterdam every day and that really adds up in kilometers. It's never been a problem to get parts. Also: there is always the local equivalent of ebay if you want to keep bikes running, plenty of new old stock and parts with very little wear on them for sale. For a while I had a pretty rare team bike, a Guerciotti and even for that bike of which I'm pretty sure no more than a handful were ever made parts were readily available. Bikes are - fortunately - a commodity.
What van Moof tried to do is the playbook of every crappy startup: to graft on future revenue onto an initial sale. Every trick they could employ to bind the customer to them they pulled and that's exactly what did them in. The bike industry from a bike manufacturers point of view looks completely different than from a bike parts manufacturers point of view. The amount of knowledge required to build a bike is a small fraction of the amount of knowledge required to build all the parts. So most manufacturers will select parts to achieve a certain price point and quality level, add their own frames (or even outsource the building of the frames) and slap their label on it. And even then they sometimes get it horribly wrong, for instance the 'Stella' brand (a mailorder brand in NL) seems to be incapable of designing a decent bike in spite of using quality parts. Bad chainlines, cracked frames, weird rake angles, I don't think there is a beginners mistake they haven't made yet.
Van Moof could have been just as successful as Brompton, who make a relatively niche bike that is expensive but has an excellent reputation. Instead they wanted to be Apple, but without the incremental progress that got Apple to where they are today. It's an example of premature scaling: some strategies only make sense if you have achieved a certain scale. You can't leapfrog that process by deploying those strategies early, it will just bite you.
Yes. The other day I saw a modern looking bike with a chris king headset and I smiled. I wonder if there is an opportunity for a rogue group of manufacturers to essentially open source road bike designs and more or less freeze certain standards in the design (e.g. use threaded bottom brackets which are dramatically easier to maintain and give up little in _meaningful_ performance for most riders). Of course this would imply selling fewer bicycles to each individual consumer (though there would always be a need for replacement parts) so I'm sure the bike industry would hate such an idea.
Chris King headsets are still a thing. The headset madness of the 2000's has mostly settled down, and 3rd party headsets are a pretty trivial and standards compliant upgrade. We're even mostly settled into a standard bearing size (!).
Bottom brackets are an example where we're coming back to sanity. The pressfit junk they pushed on us was for ease of manufacturing and low cost. Consumers realized they were worse, and they started to avoid those. The manufacturers have caught on and started putting threaded BBs back in, as they ought to.
We've mostly got a set of semi-reasonable standards. In the MTB world at least, 148 rear hub width is almost ubiquitous, and 15mm front axles with boost spacing are effectively it outside of downhill applications. 6 bolt rotors of various sizes are essentially standard.
The majority of the pain is where the big manufacturers (SRAM and Shimano) are battling it out: hub and chain/shifting standards. That is admittedly painful right now, but you can chalk most that up to corporate greed.
All in all, I don't get the concern here. With a little bit of consideration of compatibility in a couple areas you can mix and match brands pretty easily on most of the bike.
>The pressfit junk they pushed on us was for ease of manufacturing and low cost. Consumers realized they were worse, and they started to avoid those.
From what I've seen said by bike experts on YouTube, pressfit is actually superior, because it saves weight, and is (maybe) still used on top-end racing bikes for this reason. The problem with pressfit is that it requires very precise manufacturing, and apparently most mfgrs just can't make a proper round hole in carbon fiber. Threaded BBs are more practical because they allow for sloppier manufacturing tolerances.
Of course, threaded is better for end users who want to do their own repairs, since it doesn't require special press tools like pressfit does.
I don't believe that it's easier to make a threaded hole than a smooth hole. I suspect the issue is that if you're making a threaded hole you simply can't pretend it's good enough so you're forced do it properly in some sense.
You can't make a threaded hole in carbon fiber at all; it's impossible. This isn't the issue.
The issue (according to the YouTube experts) is that for mass-market bikes, the manufacturers have somewhat poor quality control and manufacturing tolerances (as far as drilling holes apparently). For a press-fit BB (bottom bracket), you need an extremely round hole, accurately sized for the BB to press into (hence the name).
For a threaded BB, this isn't an issue, because those aren't pressed in. Those have an aluminum threaded part that's bonded into the hole; the hole doesn't have to be super accurate, just good enough for the aluminum part to fit into properly and get glued in. The aluminum part has the threads and perfectly fits the BB, and since it's machined out of aluminum at some other factory, doesn't have the problems with tolerances that the CF parts have apparently.
I had the dreaded creak. Installed a Wheels Mfg threaded insert BB thing - problem solved on that old bike. Never had much of an issue with the threaded ones otherwise over almost 30 years of riding.
There's lots of other ways to address PF issues, I think it's just that consumers know about the issues and prefer to avoid them if possible.
Bikes have been 'open sourced' since the early 1900's. It is only now with the advent of e-bikes and ridiculously overpriced racing bikes that the 'closed source' model has entered the equation. Bikes as a service is a thing now. You don't even own your bike anymore...
I bought a -cheap- beater for a family member a few weeks ago for the grand sum of $80. It is an excellent bike by a prime brand manufacturer, it needed a little bit of work (roller brake service, one new spoke, some grease and a new rear light) and it's as good as new. I fully expect it to outlive me, and probably everybody else in this house if it is taken care of as well. I regularly see bikes from the 60's around here that are still in very good shape.
The bike industry lives by: theft, bike accidents, kids growing up (kids are really rough on bikes) and cracks in frames. Everything else is fixable if the bike is of a reputable brand.
Crap bikes not so much those have the weirdest parts.
Rivendell, Velo Orange, Rene Hearse and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone else in that group more or less do this.
I'm nowhere near an expert but I think most small (or steel) bike brands never moved off english threaded bottom brackets so I think that's mostly a major manufacturer issue. The brakes are frame dependent but calpier and cantilever arms are fairly simple/available or flatmount if discs (ignoring that Shimano just kind of decided they didn't like post mount). Finally, if you're comfortable with (ratcheted) friction shifting then most drivetrain compatibility issues are covered.
The components themselves tend to be pricier since they're targeting a niche market but there are people serving it.
I just purchased a kit to convert the 10/11 speed SRAM brifters to 12 speed from Ratio in the UK [0], and there is a set of instructions in the community for turning the front shifter into a dropper lever.
I love how much people hack this stuff to overcome corporate shenanigans!
I love Rene Herse stuff (tires mostly), but ... they're niche of niche.
(Seriously, the complete bikes they sold are literally more expensive than any car I've ever bought. Not that I wouldn't like one, they're even roughly the style of bike I like, but I wouldn't use one enough to justify it. Their parts though, they're heirloom quality solid performance.)
There's a ton of custom and semi custom manufacturers out there of parts and frames, some of which are even affordable. A quick perusal of the Radavist will give pointers galore. Some of them even do production runs to make frame prices under 2k.
Personally, I like the look of the Crust Lightning bolt, but it's seriously pricey to import to the EU, so maybe something more like the Brother Mr. Wooden is next in line for me.
To be clear, I was intending my post to be exclusively about components. I was assuming people would get their preferred niche frames to put them on.
If I'm going to pick a fancy niche frame I don't want to afford I'd opt for a Jones LWB space frame. I'm actually a recumbent rider so the more likely expensive cycling purchase would be a velomobile.
On the lower end you still get square taper bottom bracket, threaded 7 speed cassettes, etc.
Also for the most parts, availability of replacement stuff is still high for years because the big transmission manufacturer know they get as much money selling replacement parts than new bikes and groupsets. They have no incentive to abandon old parts/standards completely.
Bike design is full of cascading effects: Now we can make wheels out of carbon fiber. But they delaminate on big descents, because the brake track gets too hot. And this is worse on clincher rims which are displacing tubulars on high end bikes. So now road bikes need disc brakes. But the cheap mechanical disc brakes are worse than rim brakes on alloy rims. The effects of these changes are different at different price points. The game is to sell "sporty" bikes to a mass market of riders who want a racy feel but who seldom if ever race. Every year both technologies and prices change and product formulation is driven by these changes.
I wonder if there is space for a pure IP company which simply created bike specs that manufacturers can create bikes compatible with, and then advertise themselves as “BikeDesignA” compatible.
With three major manufacturers that would never play with such a new entrant I think that ship has sailed. That's why you typically see major brand bikes that are entirely built up using Shimano, SRAM or Campagnolo parts. Note that Shimano (80% of the market or so, 10K+employees) is 100 years old and that Campagnolo (90 or so, sub 1K employees) is a high end niche player. SRAM is with 35 years of history and 3K+ employees the 'new kid on the block'.
So while I'm sympathetic to your idea in principle I think that in practice it would be really hard to get Shimano to play along with this, they have historically been real jerks about IP and have themselves been the subject of lawsuits involving unfair competition. I still use their products because I think they are value-for-money the best on the market but their corporate tactics suck.
Hm, maybe I'm misremembering this but I thought SRAM was an American company that acquired Sachs at some point. And yes, Sachs has enormous history but they did not as far as I know morph into SRAM, they basically ran until the end of the line and sold to the highest bidder. I remember their 'Sachs Ultra WC', the Rolls Royce of mopeds from the 80's. Very nice stuff.
The main reason to buy a ~$500 bike vs. a $100-$200 Huffy at Walmart is that you can't get parts for the Huffy, so you'll be buying a new one every 12 months.
A secondary reason is that they don't seem to make Huffy's for people over ~ 5' 10".
(The $500 bike will probably handle better too, but not 5x better, and I'd recommend getting something more expensive if you can afford it.)
Anyway, my point is that if the eBike people prevent you from repairing or customizing your bike by using non-interchangeable parts, then they're asking to be disrupted by low-end landfill bikes.
Nah, 5 years sounds about right to me for a cheap Dutch Omafiets.
I use my bike almost daily in all weather conditions, and it is only stored indoors at home. Chains and brake pads are wear items and are not too difficult to replace - just like tires.
I believe my previous one lasted me about eight years, and I only replaced it because the gears wore out and it wasn't viable to replace those. My best estimate is that it lasted 15.000-25.000 km, which isn't too shabby for a €200 bike.
I believe i wore out about 5-6 chains before I wore out the gears. To be fair, I rarely oiled my chains, and gear wear was probably minimized by it being only a single-gear.
> The main reason to buy a ~$500 bike vs. a $100-$200 Huffy at Walmart is that you can't get parts for the Huffy,
My (cheap department store) bicycle had a sudden critical failure that caused my front wheel to lock, throwing me over the handlebars. That's the main reason I'll never buy one of those again.
Of course, that was in the early 90s, and I'm open to the possibility that cheap bikes have improved since then, but it was an abrupt lesson about getting what you pay for...
I assume the cheapest bike you can get at the bike store is going to have awful failure modes too, with the main difference being that you can repair it with better parts after such things happen.
I might be overly pessimistic about the $500 bikes though; I’ve never owned one in that price range.
You can buy a basic Specialized with all standard parts for $500 (ish) on sale without an issue; I just did for my child’s first MTB. Nothing oddball on it, and it was available from XS to XL.
Everything in it is solid quality; Shimano hubs, aluminum hoops, micro shift drivetrain, threaded BB, decent headset and fork.
> with the main difference being that you can repair it with better parts after such things happen.
Unfortunately not. I thought the same but they usually come with very old parts where the manufacturer only makes that grade. Stuff like a 7s cassette: to get any better you need to drop £300-1200 and install an entirely new groupset, for example. Even upgrading your wheels starts from £300.
It’s only around the £1000-1500 point where you start getting into the realm of upgradable complements that are worth doing.
I rode a Felt Brougham daily for years, a steel frame single speed bike that just didn’t have any fancy parts. Do the normal maintenance you would do on any bike and it was solid. If you require anything like rack, fender, or water bottle mounts, then not the bike for you, but solid for commuting in the city.
I've yet to see that happening other than with Van Moof, but there is a fair chance that someone will again try to pull an 'Apple'. Bike savvy consumers have fallen for this once so there is a chance that some will fall for it again, especially in places where Van Moof wasn't popular but here people have - at least in my circles - quite soured on the concept so let's hope that sticks and they don't sell another bike. (Too bad for Lavoie).
> The main reason to buy a ~$500 bike vs. a $100-$200 Huffy at Walmart is that you can't get parts for the Huffy, so you'll be buying a new one every 12 months
Cheap ebikes are already that - you can normally swap motors, batteries and motor controllers between brands.
Batteries are all 48v lithium, with protection circuits built in. Motors are all 3 phase brushless. Controllers just take DC input, and output to a 3 phase motor.
Most take pwm input for torque or a magnetic pedal sensor.
The resulting bike feels 'cheap' due to all the parts not working well together (for example, they always jerk a bit when pulling away because the motor has no position sensor)
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.
I wonder if your opinion would be any different if you lived further away from a brand store, maybe because you moved, or because the store moved/closed.
+1 tight vertical integration leads to better products, better defaults, and better user experience in the (vast) majority of cases across most product domains.
It’s sad to see them fail, hopefully someone else will be able to pull it off. I guess my $20 deposit for their faster e-bike is unlikely to ever come to anything. Maybe I should just get a used stromer.
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.
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.
Sadly, though, I don't think off-the shelf e-bikes will likely ever head that way unless there's a sea-change in consumer behaviour.
Even regular old human-only powered bikes have been getting increasingly proprietary, at least at the middle to high-end of the market. It's not dissimilar to the increase in tech for cars, making it more challenging for DIYers to get their elbows dirty without involving some business related to the manufacturer.
DIY e-bikes are pretty easy; although they often require a bit of assembly. The assembly is not particularly hard, certainly no harder than building a simple gaming PC.
DIY ebike kits usually operate with standard, off-the-shelf bikes and bike parts. Even more poignantly, the kits are typically best on used bikes that followed common standards for a long time. The bike industry has worked hard to make us think hub-drive motors are the lesser option. They have some serious advantages for most commuting and general cycling (MTB'ing is a place where mid-drive motors excel), including more available power, lower drivetrain wear and the ability to use regenerative braking.
I built an e-bike recently around a late 90s MTB. The only complicated bit was figuring out the cable routing and hiding some of the bird's nest of wires well (some 3D printing took care of that).
In our conspicuously consumerist milieu, where form is often valued over function, bikes like the VanMoof offer a (deceptive) look of simplicity and elegance.
To my mind, that's a perspective we have to shift. Things should be easy to reason about, easy to fix, easy to customize—it's really the right-to-own (right to repair?) by another name.
But the electric components are not standardized. You can buy e-systems from Bosch, Yamaha, Shimano, Fazua, Mahle, Stromer, Bafang et cetera and they all have different dimensions, different mounting holes, different communication protocols and different chargers.
If you need a replacement part as a consumer, you have no choice but to buy the same part, which is usually quite costly because of lack of competition.
The tech is still rapidly evolving though—I'm not sure it's realistic to expect standardisation here for a while.
Manufacturers are experimenting with form factors, perf-to-weight ratios, noise levels, weatherproofing, connectivity features, anti-theft mechanisms, ABS, etc.
Battery connectivity and charging is where I'd personally like to see more standardisation—even if there are obvious form factor challenges. Standardisation here could drive costs down, which would benefit the entire market.
Maybe the EU should start leaning in this area.
Not sure why you think you're entitled to standardised parts across various manufacturers? When has that ever been the case for driveline components in vehicles more complicated than a standard pushbike?
Not my experience here - I bought a Giant eBike which has a Yamaha powertrain... which is neither fish nor fowl. Battery is Giant, motor is Yamaha, but it uses a different comms protocol between motor and battery than the later Giant-only ones, so it's actually Yamaha... and notorious for comms failures. Battery says it's OK, and motor says it's OK, but there's a comms issue between them, so no power. I'll need to spend time sitting on a 1-wire serial comms link to have any idea what's wrong (rumour is that the transistor that powers this in the motor is a common failure point).
Some of these batteries can't be re-celled as if they've had a failure, the BMS deliberately goes into a 'permanently dead' mode, so it can't be recovered even if the dead cells are replaced.
It's criminal what's happening in the proprietary eBike space.
There are (at least) two forces pulling in different directions: I can envision common form factors for mid motors and even motor/gearbox combos. That's most of the parts compatibility struggle. OTOH e-bikes can have a very wide range of designs and still be practical for all purposes. You don't have to optimize for weight. Your cargo ebike can be your commuting bike.
Also, there are niggles like belt drive requiring a different frame. You have to be able to put the belt through a gap in the... do we still call it a "chainstay?"
I've been shopping for a used bike. Life was so much simpler when I had no idea that Shimano and Campagnolo drietrain components were so incompatible and that incompatibility flows through to the way the rear wheel is built.
> VanMoof will abandon its in-house retail store model, instead using third-party retailers to sell and service bikes, opening up new markets around the world for potential buyers.
No, customers will have a harder time maintaining their bikes. They will visit bike shops that will quote X and then charge 1.5 * X, and you're going to be waiting in a line with 10 people who ride their bikes once a month.
The era you're describing is possible today if you build your own e-bike.
You can pick up a kit from ebikeling which includes standard throttles, hub motors (or mid-drive if you're into that), pedal assist sensors and displays.
You can buy one of thousands of batteries with XT60 connectors or solder one to any battery you'd like.
Depending on where you live this may not be a legal option. It shouldn't be like that but there are plenty of places where e-bicycles need to go through a certification track that costs a large multiple of a single e-bike. This to ensure that you match the maximum assist and top speed factors and that the bike is safe from an electrical point of view (which is an important enough factor).
Probably because I live in a detached home, but I kind of don't care if somebody else's bike catches on fire, but I strongly care if they are going to be going to be going over 50kph on a MUP. Even so, I think certification is a poor way of addressing the issue, since people modify the firmware of mass-manufactured ebikes all the time.
> since people modify the firmware of mass-manufactured ebikes all the time
They certainly try. Some bikes are better protected than others and part of the certification process is to verify it isn't trivial to hack the bikes. And if this is found to be the case after the fact certification can be withdrawn, retroactively so manufacturers have a lot riding on getting this right.
Note that in plenty of places nobody cares, but in some countries authorities are strict (and getting ever stricter).
It's a problem and a grey area. I've yet to have problems with my homebrew stuff but I've already had some conversations with LE that stopped me (fortunately not while exceeding the limit) because my bike looks more than a little weird.
And no, it's not just the components. The reason for that is that the bike motor, controller and rear wheel + sensor all have to be 'just so' for the speed limiter to work properly. There are some defeat tricks, usually stuff that fools the sensor by doing a neat little bit of Bresenham on the input signal but the smarter bike motors realize this is happening and will happily brick themselves. The latest generation Bosch is afaik not yet hacked and this is not for lack of people trying.
All the power to anyone that wants to do that! My biking needs are extremely utilitarian: I have a cargo e-bike I take my kids to and from school in. I don’t trust myself with (or, rather, I know I don’t have the time to be expert at) e-bike motor installation/repair/etc and in my experience very few bike shops will want to do something like that for you given the higher risks involved. Given I’m taking my kids on the thing every day I don’t feel like taking risks either.
You are asking for collaboration from multiple companies with different motivations. I guess you might not be aware of the rim+tubeless tires kerfuffle. If the industry manage to do it, I could be on board with the e-bikes in general, but i'm not holding my breadth at all.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even Chinese BSOs at hypermarkets these days often come with hydraulic disc brakes. That is no longer an MTB-only component that shops will refuse to service. Any bike shop in most developed countries will be able to maintain them. Hell, there are already regions where few bikes still have rim brakes.
"Chinese BSOs" was an interestingly ungoogleable term for me :)
Got to learn about helicopter crashes in passing (for those in the same boat, it should mean "Bike Similar Object")
Unsurprisingly it seems the markets are heavily split by region/country. I assume your comment is about the US market, and I'm kinda glad cheapish bikes are getting the spotlight and more love overall, as it's a neat gateway into biking.
In regions where biking has been a commodity for much longer (like Vietnam/Japan/Korea etc. in the SEA area), if the whole drive train is not electrified the front hub will be used for powered lighting and they won't bother with a disk brake. Which makes sense as they're not expecting people to go anything fast, efficiency is already down with the dynamo hub, and those will easily weight 20+ kh anyway, and they wont to get the price down wherever they can. Same way forks are super cheap, brakes themselves are lower grade (rear brake will often be a ribbon brake) etc.
On the other hand those country also have a huge chunk of electrified bicycles that will have complex drivetrain, high quality parts and of course disk brakes and they'll be services by bigger shops and certified people, and not your random small one-man shop at the corner of the residential street.
Apart from an oil refilling kit, hydraulic brakes don't need specialist equipment.
Most ebikes still use standard derailleurs (usually a 1x drivetrain).
For internally geared hubs, Nexus or Alfine IGH are the most common, and apart from getting the cable tension right, don't need any specialist equipment (though the Alfine 11 speed hub is apparently somewhat tricky because it has to be packed with grease).
Most IGH still use chains, belts are less common. Newer chains are rated for ebike use but that generally just means they're more robust.
Belt drives do need to be tensioned properly but again, this doesn't requires specialist tools nor does it require a huge amount of specialist knowledge for a bike mechanic that is (there's literally an app for that).
Enviolo, Roloff and other gearbox style systems are specialist equipment and not what you would normally expect a regular bike shop to do intricate servicing on.
Also, internally geared hubs have been around for almost a century and both IGH and belt drives are used on regular bikes. You would expect bike mechanics to be able to deal with them easily.
So by and large, they really are bikes with motors. Yes, there are some things that are more complex but the majority of things are basically the same
> Belt drives do need to be tensioned properly but again, this doesn't requires specialist tools
My LBS, which is familiar with Gates belt drives, uses for tensioning a rather old-looking metal contraption provided by Gates. Definitely a specialist tool. The phone app for tensioning a belt from the frequency of the twang it makes, is only for end-consumers. Shops are supposed to use the dedicated tool.
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.
You mean, a mountain bike only with an electric motor? Because that's what you just described, minus a battery and motor. Hydraulic brakes have been on bikes for years, there's no more "specialist equipment" required than saying that a third-hand tool for caliper brakes is "specialist equipment". IOW, hydraulic brakes are bicycle brakes in a lot of cases these days. Internal gears? I'm approaching retirement, and multi-speed, planetary gear hubs are what I rode when I was a kid; nothing special there. As for the chains and sprockets, well, your local bunch of amateur racers will put out more wattage than the measly 250W + rider output that an electric will put out, and they use the same chains and sprockets that you do. (I'm not counting electric motorcycles with a "bike" label that put out 1000W.)
So, yes, they are "just bikes" with an electric motor. The exception might arguably be the mid-frame motor ones that require the frame to be designed with the idea of mounting the motor, but even that's just an implementation detail: the rest of the bike is the same.
Regular bicycles also use hydraulic brakes and internal hub gears (and by the way, hub-geared drivetrains are less complex, just more expensive). All of the e-bike rated parts are coming from the same companies that sell normal bike parts. The difference is with companies like Van Moof and Rad Power Bikes, which use proprietary stuff to save money by dealing directly with Chinese factories to design them, rather than just ordering normal parts in bulk from brand-name providers.
Another issue comes with the actual battery and motor, because if you don't get a bike with a system from Bosch, Shimano, or Yamaha, chances are you're on your own for support. Bafang etc are much cheaper but the onus of support is on the vendor directly -- a bike shop can work with Bosch to find and fix problems, but for the Bafang gear they have to deal with whatever (possibly fly-by-night) vendor resold the gear, because Bafang won't help much.
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.
What are you talking about? eBikes and regular bikes are WAY different. They're way heavier because of battery + motor, so you need special stands and lifts, or it takes two people to manage it. All the electric components add way more complexity to maintaining the bike. It can take a 60 seconds to pull a wheel off a regular bike, but on an ebike that can to 10 minutes. The bike shops are spending more time on it.
Suits also aren't a new invention, but I wouldn't ask my bike mechanic for a bespoke suit. Most bike mechanics aren't used to working with electrical components. I wouldn't expect them to know about charging circuits, battery life, motor efficiency, etc...
The majority of ebikes that people bring to their local shops are unsafe, often not street legal contraptions from Amazon/WalMart that have no maintainable standardized parts and are a massive fire hazard.
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.
No, they could have succeeded if they didn't ship crappy quality. Vertical integration is doable if you deliver quality. If you don't then you will end up with more warranty work than you can handle because nobody else has access to your parts.
Yup I happily bought a Vanmoof S2 when it came out (2019) thinking it would be seamless and I could take it into the local Vanmoof shop whenever there were issues.
It turned out to be a lot less reliable than I had hoped, and there were issues with the hardware AND the software. Making it super frustrating that it was all integrated.
Software
- If the bike wasn't used for a few weeks it would turn itself back into "shipping mode" and I would need to reset the bike with a pin.
- Settings were forgotten almost every time the bike went to sleep, it would reset the sounds settings so turning it on or unlocking it would always play the cheesy sound effects no matter how many times I turned them off.
- For the first year or so the app would regularly log me out. And the design of the app at the time made it look like you were chatting with a bot so it would take longer to login than needed. Thankfully they redesigned it.
Hardware
- The integrated back wheel lock will now only unlock if I move the bike a few inches, any additional inches and the lock re-locks itself.
- The bike would randomly show an error code and drop power. Vanmoof replaced the battery and onboard computer but I have had it occasionally show error codes since and am nervous it'll turn into a brick at some point.
I now also own a regular cargo bike and the difference has been night and day. It doesn't look as cool, and requires more locks to keep it all secure. But it's dumb and just works, and I can do a lot of the service myself (excluding the electronics). Removing the back wheel on the Vanmoof is super challenging and makes me nervous about getting a flat.
I'd never want a bike that can lock itself remotely, my big fear would be the same as what you get when you have an irresponsible and inquisitive toddler at the back of the bike: "I wonder what would happen if I locked daddy's bike while we're cruising along?"
Only then without the toddler...
What in particular do you service on the electronics of your cargo bike?
Thankfully they had thought through the accidental locking, it needs to be stationary and in a certain position to lock. It's just getting it unlocked that is a little more of a hassle now :).
Sorry for the confusion I meant I can do all the service on the bike except the electronics. Things like brake pads and tires that wear down easily. On the Vanmoof it's a little more challenging to remove wheels for security - which I used to appreciate because I've had even little things like a mount for a light taken off my bike... but now I prefer it to be easier to service and just carry around more locks.
But that's all dependent on the implementation details: is the lock remotely activated or is it locally activated after local verification that those conditions are present. Because otherwise some joker could remote lock your bike, even when in motion. The outward appearance would be identical!
Thankfully you need to physically lock it with a button push on the back wheel. Unlocks can be done remotely with the app though (with a nearby bluetooth connection).
At the same time, all bikes break. They have to bear heavy vibrations and wear. You need a global logistic network of replacement parts, and a bike has many parts. Using common parts, or at least 50% common parts, would reduce design, production and logistics. On top of that, vanmoof also did repairs themselves.
That's all true. I think this is where my love for the local bike mechanic comes into play: each small town here has a couple of them, and the density is such that no company serving only a single brand could set up that kind of network. And it's also why I will never buy a bike online: these people are essential and to buy a bike with them ensures they stay in business. Every now and then when they are short on time and I have something I need fixed right away I'll be happy to do it myself assuming I have the tools. But for some bikes (for instance: a tandem that we have that has a lot of rare stuff on it) I'd rather have the bike shop work on it than that I'm going to end up risking wrecking something. Older bikes are easier in that sense, far less hard to source stuff.
I think Van Moof could have made it if they had been far more strict on QA and designing for reliability from day #1, bikes are as you correctly noted operating in a hostile environment and you need to design for that. Bike electronics are hard (super easy to mess that one up), batteries are hard, software is hard. If you then add a bunch of custom stuff you've set yourself up for failure. I did not do DD on any of the Van Moof rounds but when evaluating what bike to buy I looked at their bikes and decided that I did not like what I saw and went for a Riese & Mueller instead, which has served me extremely well (12000 km and counting, not a single failure in the field other than a broken spoke which was easily remedied, and likely the result of bumping the bike with another one in the garage here). Van Moof had their shot, they failed and I doubt the buyers are going to make this work without a total departure from both the business model and that bike design. They should make a deal with Bafang, Shimano or Bosch or some other experienced manufacturer to make their custom parts for them in return for some margin, the bikes are plenty expensive to leave enough room for that and they can pay for that from the reduced warranty reserve. As an added bonus they get certification thrown in as long as they don't change the wheel diameter. Then they can focus on the software (which had plenty of problems).
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I bought one - it’s an e-bike that doesn’t look like some big ugly transformer thing. I wouldn’t go so far to say it looks like a ‘regular’ bike, because the vanmoof now has a pretty recognizable design, but it’s close!
It had few features that made it more than just a regular bike with some motor attached.
Off the top of my head:
— automated gearbox (which was one of the most often breaking parts, but when it worked was magical)
— it had a "boost" button which gave you a little bit of extra power whenever needed (riding uphill, starting from red lights etc); my understanding is that those are now more common, but were pretty unique when S2/S3 generation was introduced
— no external batteries (a downside if you don't have a way to charge it, upside if you do because it just looks nicer)
— a lock integrated into a frame, that unlocked with your phone
— anti-theft features like the mentioned insurance thing, but also a built-in Find My network support for the newer models, and the bike itself has a "Lost Mode" which pings the nearby cell towers
— built-in display for showing you battery status, which gear you're on and your speed
I really like mine _when it's working_ (it had to spend few months in the shop waiting for parts), _because_ it's such a sleek and integrated product.
I probably wouldn't have bought another one even before the bankruptcy, because of the reliability issues; but when I bought mine (early 20201-ish?), nothing on the market at the time was even close to matching the complete package of VM.
Cowboy was the closest to it, but I really missed the multiple gears and the boost button when I test-rode one.
I was also very annoyed by them nickel-and-diming on things like kickstand on a 2k bike, but that's a different issue.
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.
They look space age and you can fulfill the Silicon Valley style craving to have rent seeking and anti repair business models invade every aspect of your life
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).
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.
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.
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):
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.
