Upway is a Gennevilliers, France-based startup ebike reseller with a super interesting sales model. It takes overstock new ebikes from manufacturers, last year’s or floor models from bike stores, and even buy ebikes online (maybe yours!) to refurbish and sell at a 20-60% discount with a one-year warranty. It recently opened a US location in Brooklyn to add to its Paris and Berlin warehouse locations and invited us by for a visit…
About a year ago, Upway landed a $25 million Series A funding round led by Exor Seeds and Sequoia Capital. Some of that money went into starting its Brooklyn location and opening the US market.
Upway currently operates out of warehouses outside of Paris and Berlin and, besides Germany and France, also serves Belgium and the Netherlands. The team took the learnings from the European distribution points and built a terrifically organized warehouse in a nondescript wholesaler area of Brooklyn. I’m told it is scouting for a second US location along the West Coast outside of LA.
From the time the bikes roll in via delivery trucks/vans, they get tagged and bagged with the full background of the bike as well as accessories/chargers. Each bike, no matter if it is new or used, goes through a 20-step inspection and repair process to bring it up to “bike shop”-level tuning.
Once inspected and certified, they quickly get photographed in an impressive 360-degree automated camera room for posting on the internet.
Bikes that arrive in the morning are often for sale and sometimes sold later that same day. Here’s a small sampling of Upway’s current inventory (it only does e-bikes, no acoustic).
Almost all of the ebikes here are top-shelf “bike store” level ebikes, including Riese and Mueller, Specialized, Cannondale, etc.
Interestingly, because of New York’s new laws about e-bike batteries, Upway will only be able to sell bikes that are UL-listed or have UL-listed batteries.
Upway also buys high-quality ebikes off of Facebook Marketplace and other online sales platforms if it thinks it can make a margin on fixing and reselling. Cargo bikes and mountain bikes are particularly in high demand in the US right now.
Interestingly, while in the warehouse, I saw my friend’s Sondors Mad Mod arrive and go through the intake procedure. Unbeknownst to me, he was looking for something lighter and ran through the easy three-step trade-in process the previous week. Hours later, it was on the site, ready for sale.
Once purchased, Upway boxes and sends out bikes fully assembled and calibrated like a bike shop would and puts a new one-year warranty on the bike. The only thing the customer has to do is tighten the handlebars and put on the pedals. This means Upway’s boxes are a little bigger, and of course, they will be labeled “HDTVs,” a trick Van Moof invented so that the handlers are a little gentler on the boxes.
Boxes arrive in 2-5 days via FedEx or XPO, depending on geography, and can be expected to arrive in 2-5 business days from purchase, again depending on the distance from Brooklyn.
Even if you aren’t buying an Upway bike, the bike finder app allows you to figure out which bike brands meet your specific wants, and I’ve recommended the finder to people who ask me what kind of e-bike they should get.
Consumers get high-quality bikes in new or almost new condition with a one-year warranty. Bike manufacturers and shops have an easy way to offload bikes that they didn’t sell. And there’s a thriving marketplace for used e-bikes. Big wins all around.
You can probably think about Upway as an Outlet Mall or TJ Maxx/Marshalls/Ross of e-bikes.
However, the devil is in the details. A bike shipped to and from Brooklyn is going to cost a lot less than one shipped to Seattle, for instance. So Upway’s simple pricing is going to be a loss leader in some cases. Cargo bikes are even more expensive to ship, and the bucket/child carriers are required to be put on pallets. These logistics prices all eat heavily into margins.
I had a Trek event after my visit to Upway, and the company said it was working on its own version of this second-hand marketplace. If other retailers get into the game, Upway will be at a significant disadvantage. In fact, some already have. That Sondors Mad Mod I mentioned before is $2199 shipped, but Sondors itself has Open Box pricing starting at $1799.
Still, though, I think Upway is onto something here if my usage of its website is any indication. What do you think? Is this a great way to save a lot of money on a certified bike with a one-year warranty?
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On today’s fleet-focused episode of Quick Charge, we talk about a hot topic in today’s trucking industry called, “the messy middle,” explore some of the ways legacy truck brands are working to reduce fuel consumption and increase freight efficiency. PLUS: we’ve got ReVolt Motors’ CEO and founder Gus Gardner on-hand to tell us why he thinks his solution is better.
You know, for some people.
We’ve also got a look at the Kenworth Supertruck 2 concept truck, revisit the Revoy hybrid tandem trailer, and even plug a great article by CCJ’s Jeff Seger, who is asking some great questions over there. All this and more – enjoy!
New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.
Got news? Let us know! Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.
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Thanks to Trump’s repeated executive order attacks on US clean energy policy, nearly $8 billion in investments and 16 new large-scale factories and other projects were cancelled, closed, or downsized in Q1 2025.
The $7.9 billion in investments withdrawn since January are more than three times the total investments cancelled over the previous 30 months, according to nonpartisan policy group E2’s latest Clean Economy Works monthly update.
However, companies continue to invest in the US renewable sector. Businesses in March announced 10 projects worth more than $1.6 billion for new solar, EV, and grid and transmission equipment factories across six states. That includes Tesla’s plan to invest $200 million in a battery factory near Houston that’s expected to create at least 1,500 new jobs. Combined, the projects are expected to create at least 5,000 new permanent jobs if completed.
Michael Timberlake of E2 said, “Clean energy companies still want to invest in America, but uncertainty over Trump administration policies and the future of critical clean energy tax credits are taking a clear toll. If this self-inflicted and unnecessary market uncertainty continues, we’ll almost certainly see more projects paused, more construction halted, and more job opportunities disappear.”
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March’s 10 new projects bring the overall number of major clean energy projects tracked by E2 to 390 across 42 states and Puerto Rico. Companies have said they plan to invest more than $133 billion in these projects and hire 122,000 permanent workers.
Since Congress passed federal clean energy tax credits in August 2022, 34 clean energy projects have been cancelled, downsized, or shut down altogether, wiping out more than 15,000 jobs and scrapping $10 billion in planned investment, according to E2 and Atlas Public Policy.
However, in just the first three months of 2025, after Trump started rolling back clean energy policies, 13 projects were scrapped or scaled back, totaling more than $5 billion. That includes Bosch pulling the plug on its $200 million hydrogen fuel cell plant in South Carolina and Freyr Battery canceling its $2.5 billion battery factory in Georgia.
Republican-led districts have reaped the biggest rewards from Biden’s clean energy tax credits, but they’re also taking the biggest hits under Trump. So far, more than $6 billion in projects and over 10,000 jobs have been wiped out in GOP districts alone.
And the stakes are high. Through March, Republican districts have claimed 62% of all clean energy project announcements, 71% of the jobs, and a staggering 83% of the total investment.
A full map and list of announcements can be seen on E2’s website here. E2 says it will incorporate cancellation data in the coming weeks.
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Tesla has reportedly delayed the launch of its new “affordable EV,” which is believed to be a stripped-down Model Y, in the United States.
Last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a pivotal decision that altered the automaker’s direction for the next few years.
The CEO canceled Tesla’s plan to build a cheaper new “$25,000 vehicle” on its next-generation “unboxed” vehicle platform to focus solely on the Robotaxi, utilizing the latest technology, and instead, Tesla plans to build more affordable EVs, though more expensive than previously announced, on its existing Model Y platform.
Musk has believed that Tesla is on the verge of solving self-driving technology for the last few years, and because of that, he believes that a $25,000 EV wouldn’t make sense, as self-driving ride-hailing fleets would take over the lower end of the car market.
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However, he has been consistently wrong about Tesla solving self-driving, which he first said would happen in 2019.
In the meantime, Tesla’s sales have been decreasing and the automaker had to throttle down production at all its manufacturing facilities.
That’s why, instead of building new, more affordable EVs on new production lines, Musk decided to greenlight new vehicles built on the same production lines as Model 3 and Model Y – increasing the utilization rate of its existing manufacturing lines.
Those vehicles have been described as “stripped-down Model Ys” with fewer features and cheaper materials, which Tesla said would launch in “the first half of 2025.”
Reuters is now reporting that Tesla is seeing a delay of “at least months” in launching the first new “lower-cost Model Y” in the US:
Tesla has promised affordable vehicles beginning in the first half of the year, offering a potential boost to flagging sales. Global production of the lower-cost Model Y, internally codenamed E41, is expected to begin in the United States, the sources said, but it would be at least months later than Tesla’s public plan, they added, offering a range of revised targets from the third quarter to early next year.
Along with the delay, the report also claims that Tesla aims to produce 250,000 units of the new model in the US by 2026. This would match Tesla’s currently reduced production capacity at Gigafactory Texas and Fremont factory.
The report follows other recent reports coming from China that also claimed Tesla’s new “affordable EVs” are “stripped-down Model Ys.”
The Chinese report references the new version of the Model 3 that Tesla launched in Mexico last year. It’s a regular Model 3, but Tesla removed some features, like the second-row screen, ambient lighting strip, and it uses fabric interior material rather than Tesla’s usual vegan leather.
The new Reuters report also said that Tesla planned to follow the stripped-down Model Y with a similar Model 3.
In China, the new vehicle was expected to come in the second half of 2025, and Tesla was waiting to see the impact of the updated Model Y, which launched earlier this year.
Electrek’s Take
These reports lend weight to what we have been saying for a year now: Tesla’s “more affordable EVs” will essentially be stripped-down versions of the Model Y and Model 3.
While they will enable Tesla to utilize its currently underutilized factories more efficiently, they will also cannibalize its existing Model 3 and Y lineup and significantly reduce its already dwindling gross margins.
I think Musk will sell the move as being good in the long term because it will allow Tesla to deploy more vehicles, which will later generate more revenue through the purchase of the “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) package.
However, that has been his argument for years, and it has yet to pan out as FSD still requires driver supervision and likely will for years to come, resulting in an extremely low take-rate for the $8,000 package.
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