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I waited for this day for nearly two years, biding my time until I would finally get a chance to throw a leg over the SONDORS Metacycle electric motorcycle and ride off into the sunset with the twist of a wrist.

I never quite got that sunset, but an overcast LA morning was the next best thing I could wrangle up on short notice. The SONDORS team let me take out an early production Metacycle to get a sense of how the bike rides and whether or not it lives up to the long-building hype.

Where did the bike come from?

Just a quick refresher to set the stage: SONDORS is an electric bicycle company that unveiled a sexy-looking $5,000 electric motorcycle set to drastically expand the brand’s market reach. The bike claimed impressive specs including an 80 mph (130 km/h) top speed and an 80 mile (130 km) range to match.

The project ended up running a bit long in the production cycle, rolling out nearly a year after the earliest promised delivery date.

Over that time, the specs and appearance started to change too. The sexy silvery polished aluminum frame turned into a gray painted frame. The bike had less-than-elegant plastic bits added all over, including necessary DOT parts, like a rear fender to hold the license plate, larger (and more legal) lights and signals, etc. The SONDORS Metacycle somehow gained around 100 pounds (45 kg) from its target weight. The quick release battery turned into a slow-release battery that requires a tool. And the price walked up from $5,000 to $6,500.

So yeah, there were a lot of changes along the way: Some were for legal reasons. Some were for comfort reasons (like a plusher padded seat). And some were likely cost savings measures. I can’t imagine how many hours went into polishing that prototype’s shiny aluminum frame. It surely wasn’t cost-effective for mass production.

After all of that, the bikes finally started rolling out to early reservation holders, or at least those folks who were living in Southern California.

And that’s where I come in. I may not live in Southern California, but while passing through, I got to borrow one of these early bikes for the morning, and here I am to tell you about it.

Make sure you check out my video below if you want to see the bike in action.

Love the one you’re with

I’d have loved to ride the original SONDORS Metacycle from all those beautiful product shots we saw in early 2021. But that’s not the bike that is getting delivered these days. That bike now exists only in the thoughts and memories of those who drooled over it many months ago. So all I can do is tell you how the real-world SONDORS Metacycle looks, feels, and rides.

For anyone that laid down a cool five G’s last year and is getting a somewhat different bike than they expected, that’s definitely a bummer, and I feel your pain. But what I can tell you is that the bike you’re getting is still a fun ride. And it’s still an awesome little commuter bike.

With SONDORS’s background in electric bicycles, it’s no surprise that the company’s first electric motorcycle is a commuter-spec bike. It’s not overly powerful, and it’s not overly sporty. But that doesn’t mean it can’t offer a fun ride.

sondors metacycle review

The bike feels much lighter than its reportedly more than 300 pound (136 kg) curb weight. It spits right out in front of traffic when the light turns green, which is exactly what I want in a commuter bike.

I don’t need to beat a Ducati off the line. I just need to beat that distracted SUV driver texting her boyfriend while juggling a latte in the other hand.

With so much of the bike’s weight mounted down south with that low-slung battery and rear hub motor, the bike is quick to lean and quicker to stand back up, making for a nimble ride in traffic. And the SONDORS Metacycle is so easy to ride that it feels like a great starter bike. It’s basically a sexy scooter. Someone who has spent years on electric bicycles but has no motorcycle experience could hop on it and feel at home. In one ride, they’d probably be comfortable with it, though riding at highway speeds for someone only used to going 30 mph (48 km/h) on an electric bicycle can sometimes take a bit longer to get used to.

But for so many e-bike riders that have toyed with the idea of upgrading to an electric motorcycle, the Metacycle is probably one of the best candidates I’ve ridden in terms of easing that transition by blurring the line between e-bike, e-moped, and e-moto.

sondors metacycle review

The 14.5 kW peak rated motor puts out 20 horsepower, which is sufficient for this type of commuter riding but isn’t going to leave you slipping off that narrow seat. Speaking of which, I was expecting the seat to be an issue, but I found it to be surprisingly comfortable. I’m not a big guy myself, and I don’t have an American-sized rear end, so perhaps that’s part of it, but I felt like I could sit on that bike for hours without an issue. The hour or so I spent on it was perfectly comfortable.

The only uncomfortable part of the bike to me was how my ankles tended to rub on the wide battery case. By changing my stance a bit, I could mostly get away from it, but I think if the battery had stayed as slim as it looked in the original prototype photos, then that issue would have been avoided entirely.

Other than that though, the bike felt quite comfortable and confidence inspiring. In fact, the SONDORS Metacycle largely feels like a scaled up electric bicycle, which makes sense based on the company’s roots. You’re in a more upright riding position that gives you a better view of the road and the cars around you. It’s not a little City Slicker electric motorcycle, but it’s also not a big Energica either.

The bike even had some cool features that I’ve never seen anywhere else. That glove box with the wireless charger is a really cool feature that likely came out of SONDORS never having designed a motorcycle before and not being limited by what people think of as conventional motorcycle features. It’s easier to think outside of the box when you’ve never seen the box before.

I did notice that occasionally I’d hit a big bump and my phone would jump around a bit, stopping and then starting the wireless charging if it didn’t quite land back in the correct spot. But as long as I stayed away from major potholes, it wasn’t too much of an issue.

And speaking of those potholes, the bike’s suspension was also decent. It’s not super plush, and you do have a pile of unsprung weight in the rear wheel, but then again, this isn’t a performance bike. For cruising around town and hitting the freeway, the suspension was more than adequate.

sondors metacycle review

What are the disadvantages of the SONDORS Metacycle?

As much as I enjoyed the ride, there were several areas that seemed a bit limiting to me.

First was the range. With just a 4,000 Wh battery, you’re not going to be going too terribly far. They claim a maximum range of 80 miles (130 km), but that’s likely only possible at electric bicycle speeds.

Here’s a little tip for you and a quick way you can suss out whether or not e-bike or e-motorcycle ranges are BS. Use these two numbers: 25 Wh/mile and 50 Wh/mile. The former is the efficiency of an average e-bike on throttle only at around 20-25 mph. The latter is the same figure for a light electric motorcycle or seated electric scooter (think Vespa-style) at around 30 mph.

So if you’re sticking to absolute city speeds, you can take an e-scooter or light e-moto’s battery capacity in watt-hours and divide it by 50 Wh/mile. In this case, that’s 4,000 Wh divided by 50 Wh/mi, giving us 80 miles. Bam. There you go. So if you’re super gentle on the throttle and you don’t exceed 30 mph, you might be able to just eke out that 80 miles of range from the SONDORS Metacycle. But good luck staying at those speeds.

sondors metacycle review

During my riding, I had an extrapolated range of around 40-45 miles (64-72 km), though that was with plenty of highway riding and ample use of the sport mode button (more on that in a moment). As a commuter bike, that’s probably fine for most people.

If you need to take a highway and you have a commute of less than 20 miles (32 km), or double that if you can charge at work, then the bike can work for you. But the SONDORS Metacycle is not a long-range motorcycle by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh, and one more thing about the battery. The display uses one of those 10-segment battery bar icons instead of displaying a battery percentage. That may be fine for some people, but my engineering background makes me super uncomfortable with that fuzzy approximation. I’d rather see battery voltage if I could, but if not, then at least give me a battery percentage readout. I don’t need five significant figures, but I’d rather know I have 28% battery charge than just that it’s somewhere between 20-30%. Don’t do the analysis for me with battery bars; just tell me exactly what I have left!

Actually, one more thing about the battery. The fact that you can’t remove the battery using some type of quick release anymore, which was part of the original design, is also a bummer for those that wanted to carry it into their home or apartment for charging each night. That was a huge feature that somehow got left by the wayside. For those that planned to bring the battery inside an apartment to charge, going through a two-minute procedure that includes unbolting several bolts in an aluminum housing each day just isn’t realistic.

Now let’s talk about that top speed. Yes, the bike can hit 80 mph (130 km/h), at least assuming the speedometer is accurate. But it can’t sustain it.

I always assumed that 80 mph top speed from the marketing was going to be a constant top speed. But the SONDORS Metacycle actually tops out somewhere between 60-70 mph (96-112 km/h) during normal cruising. There’s a turbo button that engages Sport Mode for about a minute or so and lets you get up to 80 mph. That makes it good for passing or other maneuvers where you’d want all of your power and speed on tap. But once that minute is up, you’ve got to wait a bit before you can use the turbo button again. It’s like a power-up in a video game that has a recharge period.

If you never take roads that require going over 65 mph or so, then this won’t even be an issue to you. But if you were counting on that 80 mph top speed to always be there, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

Lastly, as much as I enjoyed the ride, it felt like there was just something missing. It’s hard to put my finger on it, but the bike didn’t seem to have the same passion that I feel on other electric motorcycles I ride. I know that’s an annoyingly vague sentence, but to be fair, it’s an annoyingly vague feeling. I don’t know quite how to describe what’s missing or why it feels that way. Maybe it’s the muted scooter-style performance. Maybe it’s the lack of a belt drive to give some type of sound feedback. Maybe it’s that its so easy to ride that you almost feel like you’re on an electric bicycle. I’m not quite sure. I’m not saying it’s not fun. It’s absolutely an enjoyable ride! But it just doesn’t have that passion to it that I feel on other bikes.

Part of that feeling may be that I went into this with the wrong frame of mind. I had been on a LiveWire One and an Energica Eva Ribelle in the few days before riding the Metacycle. Those two flagship electric motorcycles have several times the power of the Metacycle and are completely different beasts. When you hop on the Metacycle, you have to remember what it is and what it isn’t. It’s a fun and engaging ride, but you should expect performance more in line with a good, peppy scooter. It’s not a flagship electric motorcycle, and it was never meant to compete with those bikes.

Would I buy the SONDORS Metacycle?

Yes, definitely. Despite the list of disadvantages and even at its now higher $6,500 price, I still think the SONDORS Metacycle is worth it.

There are downsides, sure. Until they release some type of storage box for that center cavity, you can’t really carry anything on it that doesn’t fit in the TI-84 calculator-sized glove box. And even though they talked about releasing pillion pegs at some point, it doesn’t seem like a bike that is going to be comfortable for two riders. And of course, it’s not a long-range bike.

But even despite its shortcomings, it’s great at what it is designed to do. This is a commuter electric motorcycle, through and through, and it has to be judged through that lens. I’d rather ride the Metacycle any day of the week, experiencing the world around me, than be commuting in a car watching the world go by like a rerun on TV.

It feels so light and so easy to ride. I mean it when I say that it’s probably the best electric motorcycle out there right now for easing an e-bike rider looking to enter into the world of e-motorcycles. It’s a transition bike.

It’s got some stiff competition on the horizon though. Bikes like the Ryvid Anthem and the CSC RX1E are a few thousand bucks more expensive but offer their own compelling cases. And with the SONDORS current order books looking like it might take a year or more to fulfill outstanding reservations, those other bikes could be preparing to eat the Metacycle’s lunch sooner rather than later.

But assuming SONDORS can deliver, then I think the Metacycle is definitely going to have its place in the light electric motorcycle market.

sondors metacycle review

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

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Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more

Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.

The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.

As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.

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After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:

We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.

Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:

Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET:

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

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Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller

A new Tesla prototype was spotted again, reigniting speculation among Tesla shareholders, even though it’s likely just a Model Y, potentially a bit smaller, and the upcoming stripped-down, cheaper version.

Over the last few months, there have been several sightings of what appears to be a Model Y with camouflage around Tesla’s Fremont factory.

It sparked a lot of speculation about it being the new “affordable” compact Tesla vehicle.

There’s confusion in the Tesla community around Tesla’s upcoming “affordable” vehicles because CEO Elon Musk falsely denied a report last year about Tesla’s “$25,000” EV model being canceled.

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The facts are that Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla” in early 2024. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.

Instead, Musk noticed that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as the Company faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.

We previously reported that these electric vehicles will likely look very similar to Model 3 and Model Y.

In recent months, several other media reports reinforced this, and Tesla all but confirmed it during its latest earnings call, when it stated that it is “limited in how different vehicles can be when built on the same production lines.”

Now, the same Tesla prototype has been spotted over the last few days, and it sent the Tesla shareholders community into a frenzy of speculations:

Electrek’s Take

As we have repeatedly reported over the last year, the new “affordable” Tesla “models” coming are basically only stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.

They might end up being a little smaller by a few inches, and Tesla may use different model names, but they will be extremely similar.

If this is it, which is possible, you can see it looks almost exactly like a Model Y.

It’s hard to confirm if it’s indeed smaller because of the angle of the vehicle compared to the other Model Ys, but it’s not impossible that the wheelbase is a bit smaller – although it’s hard to confirm.

Either way, the most significant changes for these stripped-down, more affordable “models” are expected to be cheaper interior materials, like textile seats instead of vegan leather, no heated or ventilated seats standard, no rear screen, maybe even no double-panned acoustic glass and a lesser audio system.

As previously stated, the real goal of these new variants, or models, is to lower the average sale price in order to combat decreasing demand and maintain or increase the utilization rate of Tesla’s current production lines, which have been throttled down in the last few years to now about 60% utilization.

If this trend continues, Tesla would find itself in trouble and may even have to close its factories.

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Ethereum is powering Wall Street’s future. The crypto scene at Cannes shows how far it’s come

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Ethereum is powering Wall Street's future. The crypto scene at Cannes shows how far it's come

Ethereum succeeded beyond anyone's expectations, says network co-founder Vitalik Buterin at EthCC

CANNES — Wall Street’s new plumbing is being built on Ethereum and this week its architects took over the same French Riviera villas and red carpet venues that host the Cannes Film Festival in May.

The Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC, took over the beachside town that was swarming with crypto founders, developers, and some of the institutional giants now building atop the infrastructure.

The crypto elite climbed the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a cinematic landmark now repurposed as the stage for Ethereum’s flagship European event.

“The atmosphere this year was palpable in Cannes,” said Bettina Boon Falleur, the powerhouse behind EthCC for the past seven years. “The prestige of the location, combined with the quality of talks, has reinforced Ethereum’s stature and purpose in the wider ecosystem.”

Private parties sprawled across cliffside estates and exclusive resorts, but the conversations were less about price action and more about the blockchain’s evolving role as the back-end of global finance.

EthCC, now in its eighth year, has tracked Ethereum’s trajectory from scrappy experiment to institutional backbone.

“That impact was unmistakable this year,” Falleur said. “From Robinhood embracing decentralized finance infrastructure via Arbitrum to local governments like the City of Cannes exploring deeper integration with the crypto economy.”

Indeed, one of the boldest moves came this week from Robinhood, which became the first publicly traded U.S. company to launch tokenized stocks on-chain.

At a product showcase held inside a Belle Époque mansion overlooking the sea, Robinhood unveiled a sweeping new crypto strategy — including the ability for European users to trade tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs via Arbitrum, a Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.

The announcement helped push Robinhood stock past $100 for the first time, capping off a week of fresh all-time highs and a more than 30% rally since being snubbed by the S&P 500 during a recent rebalance.

Inside the Palais des Festivals, ETHCC draws founders, developers, and institutions into the same halls that host the world’s biggest film premieres — this time, for the future of finance.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Ether, the token native to the Ethereum blockchain, was up nearly 6% on the week and several public equities tied to the blockchain have rallied alongside it.

BitMine Immersion Technologies, a company that mines bitcoin, gained more than 1,200% since announcing it would make ether its primary treasury reserve asset. Bit Digital, which recently exited bitcoin mining to “become a pure play” ethereum staking and treasury company, gained more than 34% this week. And SharpLink Gaming, which added more than $20 million in ether to its balance sheet this week, jumped more than 28% on Thursday.

Ether ETF inflows are rising again too — a sign that institutional investors are warming back up.

Ether is still down more than 20% this year and lags far behind bitcoin in market cap and adoption. But funds tracking ETH have seen two straight months of mostly net inflows, according to CoinGlass data. Still, ether ETFs total just $11 billion — compared to $138 billion in bitcoin ETFs.

Institutions aren’t betting on Ethereum for hype — they’re betting on infrastructure.

Even as prices stall and the network faces headwinds from slower base layer revenues and faster rivals like Solana, the momentum is shifting toward utility.

“Ethereum is getting plugged into these core transactional systems,” Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY, told CNBC on the sidelines of EthCC. “Investors, savers, people moving money — they are going to start shifting from some of the older mechanisms of doing this into Ethereum ecosystems that can do these transactions faster, cheaper, but also very importantly, with significant new functionality attached to it.”

Crypto founders and developers climb the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a familiar backdrop for the Cannes Film Festival, now repurposed for Ethereum’s flagship European event.

MacKenzie Sigalos

Deutsche Bank recently announced it’s building a tokenization platform on zkSync — a faster, cheaper blockchain built on top of Ethereum — to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.

Coinbase and Kraken are also racing to own the crossover between traditional stocks and crypto.

Coinbase has filed with the SEC to offer trading in tokenized public equities, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.

Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.

BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL — launched on Ethereum last year — offers qualified investors on-chain access to yield with redemptions settled in USDC in real time.

Stablecoins, meanwhile, continue to serve as the backbone of Ethereum’s financial layer.

Circle’s USDC — the second-largest stablecoin — still settles around 65% of its volume on Ethereum’s rails. According to CoinGecko’s latest “State of Stablecoins” report, Ethereum accounts for nearly 50% of stablecoin market share.

“The builders and contributors at EthCC aren’t chasing the next bull run,” Falleur said, “they’re laying the groundwork to make Ethereum home for the next billion users.”

Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum is proving its staying power as a trusted network.

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, told CNBC in Cannes that there is an assumption that institutions only care about scale and speed — but in practice, it’s the opposite.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.

EthCC

“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.

Buterin added that firms often ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”

Tomasz Stańczak, the new co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, said institutions are choosing Ethereum for the same core reasons.

“Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades, with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance,” he said.

He added that when institutions send orders to the market, they want to be “absolutely sure that their order is treated fairly, that nobody has preference, that the transaction actually is executed at the time when it’s delivered.”

Those guarantees have become increasingly valuable as stablecoins and tokenized assets move into the mainstream.

The Senate’s recent passage of the GENIUS Act, along with Circle’s IPO, gave the industry a regulatory tailwind and helped reinforce Ethereum’s role as the infrastructure layer for tokenized finance.

Ethereum’s core values — neutrality, security, and censorship resistance — are emerging as competitive advantages.

The real test now is whether Ethereum can scale without losing its values.

“We don’t just want to succeed,” Buterin said from the mainstage of the Palais this week. “We want to be something that is worthy of succeeding.”

He said the hope is that future generations will look back and see a network that truly delivered openness, freedom, and permissionless access to the masses.

White-clad guests dance poolside at the rAAVE party in Cannes.

MacKenzie Sigalos

But the week didn’t end in the conference halls, it closed with tradition. On the balcony of Villa Montana, overlooking the Bay of Cannes, the rAAVE party lit up.

White-clad guests sipped cocktails as the DJ spun by the pool, haze curling from smoke machines.

This year, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and DeFi icon Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, stood atop the balcony overlooking the crowd and the light-dotted skyline of Cannes.

It was a fitting snapshot of the momentum behind Ethereum’s institutional rise and symbolic of Web3’s shift from niche experiment to financial mainstay.

WATCH: Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains ‘dual purpose’ behind trading platform’s new crypto offerings

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev explains 'dual purpose' behind trading platform's new crypto offerings

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