Juiced Bikes brand to be revived after surprise purchase by pair of e-bike icons
Last year we reported on the storied e-bike brand Juiced Bikes falling on hard financial times and eventually closing down. Now, in a video announcement just posted to the seemingly defunct Juiced Bikes YouTube channel, the charismatic young founders of Lectric Ebikes have announced their purchase of Juiced Bikes along with their intention to revive the brand to its former glory.
Juiced Bikes was founded in 2009, making it one of the first major electric bicycle brands in the US. Operating continuously until its closure in 2024, its decade and a half of high-performance electric bicycle building created a massive fan base and a reputation for pushing the industry towards power and speed built around innovative designs instead of mere cookie-cutter copycats.
In a candid video posted to the brand’s previously abandoned YouTube channel, Lectric Ebikes founders Levi Conlow and Robbie Deziel openly shared several details about their lengthy bid to purchase Juiced Bikes and their plans to revive the company.
Now to achieve their goal, the pair will have to rely on the lessons they learned in building their own brand, Lectric Ebikes, into the largest electric bicycle company in North America.
Founded in 2009, Juiced Bikes was the epitome of old school in the e-bike industry. On the other hand, Lectric Ebikes and its two charismatic “e-bike bro” founders are the full embodiment of young e-bike whipper snappers. But despite bursting onto the scene relatively recently in 2019, Lectric Ebikes rocketed past hundreds of other e-bike brands to snatch the title of most annual e-bike sales by 2023. Clenching the title again in 2024 and likely on track for a three-peat in 2025, Levi and Robbie obviously know a thing or two about building up a successful e-bike company.
Lectric has now become known as the go-to source for the best bang-for-your-buck electric bikes, from folding e-bikes to off-road adventure-style rides, cargo e-bikes, and more. But despite Lectric Ebikes’ success, it doesn’t look like its founders intend to merely bring Juiced Bikes into the Lectric family. Instead, the duo seems to be focused on reviving the brand as it is – or at least as it was.
“What drew us into Juiced is the same thing that drew many Juiced customers into the brand in the first place,” explained Levi Conlow, CEO of Lectric Ebikes. “That high performance, that torque, that acceleration, the thing you love about Juiced. That is our full intention, to preserve and continue that beautiful performance into the future, and carry Juiced into its next 15 years. It’s had this hiccup now, but I hope that everyone has seen what we’ve done with Lectric Ebikes and has a great level of confidence in what we’re going to do.”
As Robbie and Levi explained, the process of purchasing the Juiced Bikes brand and attempting to revive it was a long and complicated journey that still seems to be taking shape. Lectric originally placed a winning bid when the brand’s assets were put up at auction in an attempt to pay back Juiced Bikes’ creditors, but the winning bid was rejected, leaving Juiced’s future in limbo. As Levi detailed, eventually he and Robbie were able to salvage a deal where they purchased nearly all of Juiced’s assets outside of its physical inventory. That means the branding, the website, the intellectual property, and pretty much everything else that was once part of the Juiced Bikes company… other than the bikes that used to line the shipping department of its Chinese factory.
And while the pair didn’t explicitly say it, we’ve since seen much of Juiced’s inventory siphoned off by a Chinese-backed e-bike brand called VeloWave, which has been selling it seemingly dropshipped online, so it doesn’t take a lot of internet sleuthing to see why they couldn’t get everything at once.
That means there’s a lot of hard work ahead of Levi and Robbie to rebuild supplier relationships and get bikes moving again. There’s also a number of disappointed Juiced customers who had placed orders for e-bikes just before Juiced collapsed last year and never received them. Levi explained that the company had hoped to fulfill those orders, and may still be able to help those customers out, but that it would take some time to get things moving again.
But while they admit that they may not be able to immediately help many of the frustrated customers or support the larger Juiced Bikes owner community with spare parts until they can build up some inventory, they appear focused on bringing the same commitment to customer service and support to Juiced that they’ve built at Lectric Ebikes.
This is of course still a developing story and we’ll be learning more soon about the backstory to Lectric’s purchase of the Juiced Bikes brand and their plans to return Juiced to its heyday. If you have questions, put them in the comments below and we’ll be sure to find out more when we sit down with Robbie and Levi soon.
Electrek’s Take
This is fascinating. We all thought that there was a chance Juiced Bikes could be saved, but it was a long shot. It meant finding someone who could convince investors that there was still hope, and not that many still saw the hope. But if there ever was, it’s with Levi and Robbie. These guys built the modern-day equivalent of a garage startup into the biggest e-bike company on the continent and almost single-handedly brought previous titans of the industry to their knees. Yet instead of merely forcing other e-bike brands out, here they are trying to save them.
And what I love about this is that it comes from a place of genuine love for the game. If you watch the video above (which you should), you can see Levi and Robbie nerding out about how great Juiced Bikes’ e-bikes were. And they’re right. Those were awesome bikes. Saving the company isn’t just about offering another revenue stream in the high-performance market that Lectric hasn’t previously focused on, but also saving an important part of the history of the nascent American e-bike market. Juiced Bikes WAS the American e-bike market for a long time, back when it was basically just those guys and Pedego… and a few weird chainstay-mounted brush motor e-bikes that looked like they had toaster-shaped batteries strapped to their rear racks.
All of this is to say that this is a really cool story, one that is currently being written, and for which we likely won’t really know how well it will work for many months to come. But damn, am I here for the ride!
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Credit where credit is due: in a massive, 32-car multinational independent test, Tesla’s Autopilot ADAS came out on top, the new affordable Tesla turns out to be a corner-cutting Model Y, and one of the company’s original founders compares the Cybertruck to a dumpster. All this and more on today’s episode of Quick Charge!
Today’s episode is brought to you by Retrospec – the makers of sleek, powerful e-bikes and outdoor gear built for everyday adventure! To that end, we’ve got a pair of Retrospec e-bike reviews followed up by a super cute, super affordable new EV from China with nearly 150 miles of range for less than $5,000 USD.
PLUS: listeners can get an extra 10% off by using code ELECTREK10 at retrospec.com!
Source Links
Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.
New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (most weeks, anyway). 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.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you 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. It has 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 share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Tesla is again teasing the new Roadster, which is now five years late, as “the last driver’s car” before self-driving takes over.
The chicken or the egg. Is Tesla delaying the Roadster to match the development of self-driving technology, or is it delaying the development of self-driving technology to match the delayed release of the Roadster?
The prototype for the next-generation Tesla Roadster was first unveiled in 2017, and it was initially scheduled to enter production in 2020; however, it has been delayed every year since then.
It was supposed to achieve a range of 620 miles (1,000 km) and accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds.
It has become a sort of running joke, and there are doubts that it will ever come to market despite Tesla’s promise of dozens of free new Roadsters to Tesla owners who participated in its referral program years ago.
Tesla used the promise of free Roadsters to help generate billions of dollars worth of sales, which Tesla owners delivered; however, the automaker never delivered on its part of the agreement.
Furthermore, many people placed deposits ranging from $50,000 to $250,000 to reserve the vehicle, which was initially scheduled to hit the market five years ago.
When unveiling the vehicle, CEO Elon Musk described it as a “halo car” that would deliver a “smack down” to gasoline vehicles.
That was almost eight years ago, and many electric hypercars have since launched and delivered this smackdown.
Tesla has partly blamed the delays on improving the next-gen Roadsters and added features like the “SpaceX package,” which is supposed to include cold air thrusters to enable the vehicle to fly – Musk has hinted.
Many people don’t believe any of it, as Tesla has said that it would launch the new Roadster every year for the last 5 years and never did.
Now, Lars Moravy, Tesla’s head of vehicle engineering, made a rare new comment about the next-generation Roadster during an interview at the X Takeover event, an annual gathering of Elon Musk cultists, last weekend.
He referred to Tesla’s next-gen Roadster as the “last best driver’s car” and said that the automaker did “some cool demos” for Musk last week:
We spent a lot of time in the last few years rethinking what we did, and why we did it, and what would make an awesome and exciting last best driver’s car. We’ve been making it better and better, and it is even a little bit more than a car. We showed Elon some cool demos last week and tech we’ve been working on, and he got a little excited.
The timing matches Musk’s recent claim that Tesla is going to have ‘the most epic demo ever, ’ but we heard that one before.
We suspected that the comment might be about the Tesla Roadster, as the CEO made the exact same comment about Roadster demos in 2019 and 2024. You will not be shocked to hear that these demos never happen.
Electrek’s Take
The “last best driver’s car” before computers are going to drive us everywhere. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if you continue to delay the car. It might literally be the last car ever made that way. How would we ever know?
The truth is that the Roadster was cool when it was unveiled in 2017, but that was a long time ago. Tesla would need to update the car quite a bit to make it cool in 2025, and I don’t know that cold air clusters are it. You will have extreme limitations using those.
The Roadster is almost entirely in the “put up or shut up” category for me at Tesla. They need to stop talking about it and make it happen; otherwise, I can’t believe a word.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
The PV5 is already available in several markets, but will Kia launch it in the US? After Kia’s electric van was spotted testing in the US again, a US debut could be in the works.
Is Kia’s electric van coming to the US?
Kia launched the PV5, the first dedicated electric van from its new Platform Beyond vehicle (PBV) business, in South Korea and Europe earlier this year, promising it will roll out in “other global markets” in 2026.
Will that include the US? Earlier this year, Kia’s electric van was caught charging at a station in Indiana. Photos and a video sent to Electrek by Alex Nguyen confirmed it was, in fact, the PV5.
Kia has yet to say if it will sell the PV5 in the US, likely due to the Trump Administration’s new auto tariffs. All electric vans, or PBVs, including the PV5, will be built at Kia’s Hwaseong plant in South Korea, which means they will face a stiff 25% tariff as imports.
Following another sighting, a US debut cannot be ruled out. The PV5 Passenger model was spotted by Automotive Validation Engineer Chris Higa (@Chrisediting) while testing in Arizona.
There’s no denying that’s Kia’s electric van, but it doesn’t necessarily confirm it will launch in the US. But it could make sense.
Despite record first-half sales in the US, Kia’s EV sales have fallen significantly. Sales of the EV9 and EV6 are nearly 50% less than in the first half of 2024.
To be fair, part of it is due to the new model year changeover, but Kia is also doubling down on the US market by boosting local production. Earlier this year, Kia said the EV6 and EV9 are now in full-scale production at its West Point, GA, facility.
The PV5 Passenger (shown above) is available in Europe with two battery pack options: 51.5 kWh or 71.2 kWh, rated with WLTP ranges of 179 miles and 249 miles, respectively. The Cargo variant has the same battery options but offers a WLTP range of either 181 miles or 247 miles.
During its PV5 Tech Day event last week, Kia revealed plans for seven PV5 body types, including an Open Bed (similar to a pickup), a Light Camper, and even a luxury “Prime” passenger model.
Kia is set to begin deliveries of the PV5 Passenger and Cargo Long variants in South Korea next month, followed by Europe and other global markets, starting in Q4 2025. As for a US launch, we will have to wait for the official word from Kia.
Do you want Kia to bring its electric van to the US? Drop us a comment below and let us know your thoughts.
Source: Chris Higa, TheKoreanCarBlog
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike