Exposed: Thousands of SONDORS Metacycle bikes abandoned in China, bills go unpaid
The SONDORS Metacycle electric motorcycle, once the darling of the burgeoning commuter e-motorcycle market, has suffered repeated setbacks since its original launch. Deliveries slowed to a trickle earlier this year and by many accounts appear to have since ceased. Reservation holders, some who have been waiting for years, have been left in the dark.
Speculation has run rampant regarding SONDORS’s current precarious financial situation. With the brand seemingly entering radio silence, we’re now getting more details than ever before from an unlikely source. One of the company’s factories in China tells Electrek that the California-based e-bike and e-moto company has stopped paying its bills, abandoning thousands of partially and fully-assembled motorcycles in the factory’s storage warehouses.
The story actually starts a few years ago when the SONDORS Metacycle electric motorcycle shocked the industry during its unveiling in 2021. With just a $5,000 price tag, the company’s founder and CEO Storm Sondors promised the motorcycle would reach highway speeds and offer 80 miles (130 km) of range. SONDORS is well known as an early player in the budget electric bicycle category, and so the industry had high hopes for the brand’s first electric motorcycle.
The Metacycle project overran its timeline by nearly a year but eventually started delivering dozens followed by hundreds of motorcycles in late 2022. The completed motorcycles didn’t quite live up to their promised specifications, though many riders still praised the light electric motorcycle as a handy commuter.
Deliveries never truly picked up steam the way the company promised. It is unclear how many Metacycles have been delivered to customers, though SONDORS’s China-based factory tells Electrek that “nearly 2,000 Metacycles” were imported to the US.
Against the backdrop of unclear delivery figures, online forums are bursting with reservation holders claiming they still haven’t received their bikes. Most have waited many months, with some having waited for years. Still others have received refunds, though lately many riders have been more successful with credit card chargebacks as SONDORS appears to have stopped responding to requests for refunds.
To make matters worse, the trickle of deliveries appears to have ended earlier this year even as SONDORS continued to sell the bike, bringing in more revenue without any additional Metacycles reaching the US. As of today, the Metacycle is still currently available for order on SONDORS’s website.
But as Electrek has learned, production for the motorcycle ended a year ago.
According to the factory in China that was hired to produce the motorcycle on contract for SONDORS, the Metacycle assembly line has been mothballed due to what the factory claims are several breaches of contract by SONDORS and nonpayment for produced and delivered motorcycles.
The factory’s representative agreed to speak to me on condition of anonymity, providing internal documents from the factory and photographs of the Metacycle’s inventory, components, and the stalled production area.
According to the factory, there are currently around 500 completed Metacycle electric motorcycles that have spent nearly a year sitting on the factory floor. Many of them are already packaged for shipment, while hundreds more sit in rows waiting to be crated.
In addition to the completed motorcycles, the factory says it has enough components stacked up on site to manufacturer another 1,500 completed Metacycles. Some components number much higher than 1,500 and most have been piling up for over a year.
But those bikes and components haven’t just been gathering dust. The factory added that they have been consistently maintaining the bikes at their own expense even while SONDORS has stopped making payments.
The rows of complicated cast aluminum frames and the mountains of components have been left untouched for so long because SONDORS hasn’t paid its bills for over a year, the factory representative explained.
“In June 2020, Mr. Sondors, [the] boss of SONDORS Inc. approached us to find a producer for Metacycle, an electric motorcycle concept he designed. At the time, the journey from concept to product was long, with many technical issues unresolved. We devoted our resources to this project, eventually establishing a production system for Metacycle and turning his concept into reality. In November 2021, he gave us the first purchase order (“PO”) for 2,000 [units] of motorcycles, but the balance is not paid fully till now.”
The factory representative laid out the rest of the timeline, explaining that “in May 2022, Mr. Sondors discussed an order of 8,000 units.” Due to price fluctuations of parts and components, the factory says that he made a smaller purchase order for 2,000 units in June 2022 and made a prepayment at that time, agreeing that the balance would be paid before delivery. “Later, he requested an increase in production to 7,000 units per month. Trusting him, we prepared parts for more than 2,000 motorcycles, hired over 20 additional staff, and invested big money to build a new automatic production line.”
In a letter provided by the factory to Electrek, SONDORS is accused of being in breach of contract after first pressuring the factory to ship more Metacycle motorcycles before receiving the outstanding payments, then pushing the factory to lower the price of the Metacycles after they had been produced, effectively attempting to renegotiate the contract.
“From September 2022, Mr. Sondors began delaying his payments, requesting delivery of motorcycles before his payments. Considering our working relationship, we sent him three containers of 120 motorcycles, for which he has yet to clear the payment until now,” explained the factory. In October 2022, the factory representative said that they “stopped all production due to the risks he posed to our business.”
The factory went on to detail how after the production and delivery of more Metacycles ended, Mr. Sondors visited China in March 2023 and “made unreasonable demands to reduce unit cost regarding all the delivered and undelivered motorcycles or threatened to replace us with another manufacturer. We believe he was attempting to transfer his risk to us and lower his costs by reducing the purchase price. We refused these demands as they were essentially requests to alter the existing contract. Since March 2023, our relationship with him has deteriorated due to his failure to honor our agreement and his unreasonable demands.”
According to the factory, they have discovered that their experience with the company is not unique, adding that “several other suppliers (e-bike suppliers) have had similar encounters with Mr. Sondors.”
Around that time in March 2023, Electrek hosted Storm Sondors for an interview on our Wheel-E Podcast where he put on a positive face for the company and claimed almost 2,000 Metacycles had been delivered. While we weren’t aware of the extent of these SONDORS production woes at the time, we likely should have pushed him harder at the time on specific issues and complaints regarding slow deliveries.
But the saga didn’t end there. “Since May 2023, Mr. Sondors has been pressuring us to agree on prepayment deliveries,” explained the factory representative. “His attempts to harass us in China and defame us to our suppliers have been relentless.”
The factory claims that since July of this year, Mr. Sondors has “erroneously claimed that no contracts existed between SONDORS Inc. and us and demanded a return of the prepayment.” The factory indicates that it has since sent three formal letters clarifying the existence of their contracts and the ways SONDORS has breached those contracts.
Electrek also received a copy of a “Letter of Censure and Warning” from a major electric bicycle industry association in the Chinese city where SONDORS contract manufacturing occurs. The local industry association, which represents many large electric bicycle factories in the area, made several claims against SONDORS.
The association indicated that SONDORS “failed to comply with contracts, made false promises, defamed enterprises in the electric vehicle industry and their senior management personnel, spread false information within the electric vehicle industry, and instigated unnecessary lawsuits between enterprises in the electric vehicle industry.”
Multiple requests for comment were sent to Storm Sondors, but no response was received by the time of publishing.
All of this comes during a period of extreme uncertainty for the company. SONDORS canceled an attempt at an IPO earlier this year and appears to have lost many of its employees as more clues to financial issues have stacked up. However, no official statement has come from the company regarding the fate of the Metacycle project.
Recently a verified now-former Sonders employee posted in a Sondors Facebook group to let everyone know his situation. The post was deleted soon after.
The claims of a deteriorated relationship between SONDORS and the Metacycle factory, as well as the reported financial distress of the company, seem to imply dim prospects for the company.
However, SONDORS has a history of bouncing back from major problems, and it is not inconceivable that the company could pull one more rabbit out of its motorcycle helmet with a major cash infusion or by selling the company.
If this is truly the end for SONDORS, it will mark the last major blow in an unfortunate slow fall from grace for the often-acclaimed low-cost electric bike provider that quite literally kickstarted the budget e-bike trend in the US back in 2015 with its $500 fat tire e-bike, as well as inspired many with interesting designs while even venturing into three-wheel automobiles.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
![Italian DC fast charger maker Alpitronic enters the US market [video]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/09/Seite-1-KeyVisual_alpitronic_2hypercharger-scaled-1.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
Electrek‘s Seth Weintraub went to Alpitronic America’s new HQ to speak with CEO Mike Doucleff about its plans to roll out its ultra-fast chargers across the US.
Bolzano, Italy-based Alpitronic was founded in 2009, and it specializes in the development and production of DC fast chargers. The global company’s best-known product line is the Hypercharger, an ultra-fast EV charging station that can deliver charging power from 50 kW to 400 kW, depending on the model.
Alpitronic Americas recently announced an agreement with Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging to become the first DC fast-charging network to deploy Hypercharger 400 units at scale in the US.
Alpitronics Americas’ new headquarters’ 68,000-square-foot office and industrial space in Charlotte, North Carolina, includes a diagnostics laboratory and repair center, a spare parts warehouse, a training center, and space for as many as 300 employees.
The Bolzano, Italy-based company’s Hyperchargers achieve, on average, an efficiency rate greater than 97.5%, and that its repair and service network can service chargers anywhere in the US.
Alpitronic cofounder and CEO Philipp Senoner said, “As a natural part of Alpitronic’s growth, we are anxious to expand our industry-leading Hypercharger network from Europe, where we are market-share leader, to North America. We are pleased with the talent we are finding in North Carolina and look forward to setting a new standard for the EV charging network in the US.”
Alpitronic chargers support all EV brands. Pre-production units have been tested publicly in Rock Hill, SC, and Portland, OR. The first US-built, public chargers are expected to be installed and available in October.
Seth and Mike Doucleff discuss what Aliptronic’s main driver was to come to the US, what attracted them to Charlotte, and what the company thinks the future of DC fast chargers is in the US, among other things. Their conversation begins at 00:41 on the Electrek podcast below:
To limit power outages and make your home more resilient, consider going solar with a battery storage system. In order to find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. They have hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and you share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisers to help you every step of the way. Get started here. –trusted affiliate link*
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
![Volvo CE rolls out some new hotness at Volvo Days 2024 [part 1]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/09/IMG_3231.jpg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
This week, Volvo Group held its once-every-three-years “Volvo Days” event in Shippensburg, PA for the first time since the pandemic, showing off tons (literally!) of new equipment, new trucks, and new concepts – including a couple of “world’s first” debuts.
What is Volvo Days? That might require a bit of background …
The heavy equipment world operates on something of a three-year cycle. ConExpo, the industry’s biggest trade show, happens every three years. That sets the tone, with companies showing off all their hottest concepts and forward-thinking new projects. That’s year 1. Year 2 is typically when shows like Volvo Days typically take place, with manufacturers rolling out the production versions of the concepts they showed at ConExpo and inviting a mix of dealers, end-users, and journalists in to try out some of what got showed at ConExpo. Year 3 is more insular, with the manufacturers bringing in salespeople to get them trained on new products and prepare them for how to talk about what the company is planning to show at next year’s ConExpo.
ConExpo was last year, so this year we get Volvo Days – for the first time since 2018, in fact, since the 2021 event was canceled due to COVID. That makes this the first Volvo Days in six years … and expectations were high.
The kickoff
Volvo kicked off the week’s events with a drone display highlighting the company’s construction equipment history – appropriate, given that the event was held at Volvo CE’s Pennsylvania engineering and production campus. The drone show was followed by a genuinely impressive, highly choreographed equipment ballet that featured new electric equipment shown for the first time in North America, as well as the new-for-2025 Volvo VNL and Mack MD Electric trucks doing some heavy lifting and hauling.
The show lasted well over thirty minutes, and it was impossible for me to keep track of everything that was happening, but you can get a sense of it in the video (above).
Compact electric equipment
Volvo had its new, in-production L20/120 Electric wheel loader and ECR25 Electric excavator front and center in its reception center, along with information highlighting their competitive advantages in the compact equipment space.
The best thing about Volvo Days, however, isn’t that they have interesting vehicles on display – it’s the fact that nearly every one of those interesting vehicles is available to experience first hand … including the 30-ton EC230 Electric excavator.
All the electric excavators (even the mini) were incredibly smooth and quiet, with noticeably fewer vibrations than their diesel counterparts … which we also got to play with.
That said, I’m not a “real” equipment operator, which means my seat of the pants impressions are probably worth less than those of the people who use these things every day. That’s why I was glad to have Mike Switzer, my co-host on The Heavy Equipment Podcast, along for the ride.
“It’s really impressive, and the articulation on the Steelwrist is incredible,” Mike told me, after hopping out of the demo EC230. “I’ve seen it before, obviously, but I’ve never had a chance to use it. I think every municipality needs to take a look at that.”
Electric compaction
Over on the compaction side, Volvo had its DD25 Electric vibrating drum compactor on display – where the all-electric tandem roller was joined by two all-new siblings being shown off for the first time ever: a pre-production DD15 Electric “mini” compactor prototype seemingly designed for sidewalks and driveways, and the TC13 Electric trench compactor.
The TC13 Electric is designed as a walk-behind unit that uses its heavy batteries to provide the compaction mass – but those heavy batteries won’t get depleted in the hour or so of operation that most trench compactors see on a busy day. To keep the little TC13 useful throughout the day, Volvo gave it a pair of 110 and 220V outlets.
Specs weren’t released, but Volvo’s compaction brand manager claimed those outlets were more than capable of keeping the rest of the job site’s battery-operated tools running all day long, and even packed enough juice (in a pinch) to power a portable office, table saw, or drill press.
“Did you see his face when I asked if it could run an arc welder?” asked Mike, smiling. “He said, ‘It’s not something we’d advise,’ but you could tell he liked that question.”
Yeah, he did!
Electrek’s Take
Somewhere around the twenty minute mark of the “equipment ballet” show, something broke inside my brain. I think it was the sparks flying off the bucket when the L20 Electric scooped up a few thousand pounds of gravel and sand at full speed, scraping its bucket along the ground. Maybe it was the hydrogen-powered articulated loader, or the open bar.
Regardless, one thing that was made very clear at Volvo Days ’24 is that, while other companies are still developing the initial entries into the electric commercial vehicle space, Volvo has not just a full line of products – but an expanding line of products, with the company entering new spaces specifically because of the unique advantages electric offers.
As Volvo’s North American President, Scott Young, explains, the future is electric, and Volvo’s vision for the future has the company firmly in the leadership position … but more on that in part 2.
ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM ELECTREK.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
EV maker Lucid Motors (LCID) opened its new office in Detroit this week, hoping to attract engineers from “one of the biggest talent pools in the Western world.”
Lucid sets up shop in Detroit for engineering talent
Lucid celebrated the grand opening of its new office in Southfield, Michigan, roughly 15 miles northwest of Detroit.
At its new office, Lucid is “growing our team of hardware engineers, R&D, operations, and more” as it looks toward its next growth phase.
“We need talent quickly, and that’s what this hub is about,” Eric Bach, Lucid’s senior vice and chief engineer, said at an event at the company’s new office.
Bach explained that as Ford and GM take talent from EV startups like Lucid, Tesla, and Rivian, Lucid looks to attract traditional engineering skills that are central to Detroit.
The company has already hired 24 engineers at its new hub, according to Lucid’s vice president of vehicle engineering, Charles Wildig told Automotive News. However, it plans to hire another 30 by the end of the year while growing its engineering team “exponentially.”
Wildig said that Lucid gets double the number of applications for every engineering position in Michigan compared to California.
“Michigan is one of the biggest talent pools in the Western world for automotive,” he said, adding, “It’s very difficult to find that kind of talent in California.”
The next growth phase
Lucid is adding engineering talent as it prepares to launch its first electric SUV, the Gravity, later this year.
Last week, during its Technology & Manufacturing Day, Lucid revealed that the Gravity will feature an NACS port in 2025, unlocking access to over 15,000 Tesla superchargers.
Lucid also showcased how the electric SUV and advanced future technology will enable “mass savings.”
CEO Peter Rawlinson claims Lucid is already “years ahead of the competition” but promises new tech, like its next-gen “Atlas” drive units, will be even more advanced.
The drive unit’s smaller, more efficient design will unlock more performance at a lower cost. The next-gen tech will power Lucid’s new midsize EV platform. Lucid teased its upcoming midsize electric SUV during the event, due out in 2026.
The midsize SUV will be the first to launch on Lucid’s new lower-cost platform. Last month, the company confirmed to Electrek that it plans to launch three lower-cost models on the midsize platform.
Lucid is already backing up its claim of being “years ahead,” with the 2025 Air Pure being the most energy-efficient mass-production car ever, with a record 146 MPGe and 5 miles per kWh efficiency. The cheapest trim starts at $71,400.
The Lucid Air is the longest-range EV on the market, with some models offering over 500 miles range.
Lucid’s Gravity electric SUV will launch later this year, starting at under $80,000. The midsize electric SUV is expected to launch in 2026, starting at around $50,000
Bach said Lucid is in talks with “many” automakers about sourcing its EV powertrain tech. The company already secured a deal with Aston Martin to provide EV battery and powertrain tech last June.
Because of its compact design, the powertrain can easily fit into rivals’ systems. “That means everybody can just plug and play technically,” Bach said. He added, “We are open for business,” and Lucid wants to “embrace” the competition.
Source: Automotive News, Lucid Motors
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports6 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports11 months agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Environment1 year agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Environment1 year agoTesla advances Powerwall pilot project with German electric company