Signs point to e-bike company SONDORS in peril, leaving riders stranded

A number of troubling developments point to serious financial troubles for SONDORS, the company behind a wide range of electric bicycles as well as the Metacycle electric motorcycle (and an ill-fated three-wheeled electric car, but that’s another story).

This isn’t the first time that SONDORS has raised eyebrows. The company burst onto the scene in 2015 with a controversial new e-bike for the rock-bottom price of $500. At the time, many questioned whether it was a scam. SONDORS ultimately delivered the bikes, though rolled in late and landed short on the published specs. And that became a hallmark of the company over the years with multiple new product launches: delivered late and under-specced but always getting there. Mostly.

This time, though, may be different. Now the company seems to be facing a number of financial troubles that have resulted in worrying signs of potential collapse.

It all started in early 2021 when the company unveiled its flashy Metacycle electric motorcycle. At a bargain price of $5,000 with a top speed of 80 mph (130 km/h) and a max range of 80 miles (130 km), it looked like a revolution in the industry.

But in order to get a ride on that revolution, customers had to front the money in advance.

In usual SONDORS fashion, the company overran its expected timeline by months and then nearly a year. Some customers were angry, ultimately asking for refunds. Many received them. But eventually, the Metacycles started rolling out in small batches and arriving at some pre-order customers’ doors. I even got a ride on one of the bikes. It was actually surprisingly good.

Sure, it didn’t meet the performance figures that were originally promised. And the shiny polished aluminum frame somehow morphed into a matte PVC-pipe-colored gray. And it was somehow nearly 50% heavier than expected. But the bike worked pretty well and was a lot of fun.

Along the way, SONDORS opened another round of orders at a higher price of $6,500. Strangely, some of those orders even started arriving to customers, despite many of the original first batch customers from more than a year earlier still sitting there empty-handed. It appeared that SONDORS wasn’t shipping based on order number but rather prioritizing customers that it could quickly reach with its deliveries or who lived in states where SONDORS had already received regulatory approval for registrations and established distribution solutions.

As SONDORS continued to take orders but dragged its feet on shipments, customer anger grew. More riders began demanding refunds, many of which had waited nearly two years at that point. The ones who received refunds often had to contact the company dozens of times over weeks or months. Many more couldn’t get refunds at all.

SONDORS was obviously in desperate need of money and set its sights on an IPO to quickly generate the cash it needed to stay afloat. But the IPO plan was beset with problems from the start and eventually unraveled.

That’s when key personnel started leaving the company, including executives. (Author’s note, and potentially spoiler alert: At this point, it is unclear exactly who remains working at SONDORS. There doesn’t appear to be anyone left in PR or marketing, and the CEO, Storm Sondors, has not responded to my requests for comment by the time of publishing.)

Basically, things weren’t looking good for SONDORS or the company’s customers, but this was also a company that had repeatedly been pushed onto the ropes and somehow always gotten back up to make it through another round. Some held out hope that it could pull off another miracle.

Next, SONDORS launched a fire sale on Metacycles, which it claimed put 1,000 more orders on its books. If true, that likely added more cash to its coffers. The final Hail Mary for the beleaguered e-bike company appears to have been the unveiling of an off-road electric motorcycle known as the MetaBeast. It was only shown in renders, but that didn’t stop SONDORS from taking pre-orders for that model too.

That brings us to the present day.

If SONDORS had pinned its financial salvation on those MetaBeast pre-orders, then it doesn’t look promising.

All signs point to a serious financial meltdown at headquarters. In fact, there may not even be any headquarters anymore.

According to Google, the SONDORS facility in Los Angeles is now “permanently closed.”

But, apparently, leaving headquarters and working from home is the least of SONDORS’ corporate issues. That’s because it can’t even take credit card orders anymore.

Visiting the SONDORS website and trying to purchase a bike brings up an error explaining that the company can’t take orders right now. That’s likely due to a status issue with SONDORS’ merchant account.

While there do appear to be hundreds of Metacycles already cruising around US roads, there are likely thousands more customers still waiting for either a refund or a bike. They gather in online communities, sharing tips on potential avenues for refunds or otherwise simply commiserating together.

“Same as so many,” says one Metacycle customer. “I paid in full in 2022, canceled my order, was guaranteed a refund, and have now been ghosted by phone and email for months. I tried to do a chargeback on my credit card, but they don’t allow it past 120 days.”

Some others have been successful with credit card chargebacks, such as another customer whose delivery window came and went last spring. This customer said, “After being told that the bike was still in ‘quality check’ and would be no more than 4 to 5 weeks ‘tops’ back in the beginning of April of this year, and then being completely and entirely ghosted by support tickets, phone calls, voicemails, and emails, ever since, I finally went and did a chargeback with my credit card company a few weeks ago, and I’ve never felt better. I wasn’t even able to request a cancelation/refund through Sondors because they were completely unresponsive to any form of correspondence, which I believe actually worked to my favor in this case.”

Many customers are now openly discussing plans online for a class action lawsuit, even as rumors swirl of a fraud investigation from the Attorney General of California.

Where did it all go so wrong?

Hindsight is 20/20, and we aren’t even on the hind end of this ordeal yet, but the major issues can likely be traced back to SONDORS’s decision to expand into motorcycles.

Electric bicycles, while not simple machines, are vastly less complicated than electric motorcycles. Everything about e-bikes, from production to regulations to fulfillment logistics, is a walk in the park compared to motorcycles, which are honest-to-goodness motor vehicles.

While the company’s goal was admirable – trying to take their expertise in contract manufacturing to the next level with a larger and more capable product – the added cost and complexity were likely something the team simply wasn’t prepared for.

It’s not the first time a micromobility company on seemingly solid ground has overextended itself. Boosted Boards, once the brand name in electric skateboards, sought to expand its market with a high-tech and highly-refined electric scooter. And that’s exactly what it did – until the project proved so complicated and capital-intensive that it bankrupted the company after the first round of deliveries. Sound familiar?

So what happens now?

At this point, the future for SONDORS seems grim but not sealed. If any e-bike company can dance its way out of impending financial doom, it’s SONDORS. No one has more experience at it. But on the flip side, we’ve never seen SONDORS dance this close to midnight, and the music is very close to going out.

Without being able to reach anyone at SONDORS for comment, it’s impossible to say exactly what is going on or just how rocky the company’s footing currently is.

And with the Dutch e-bike company VanMoof’s bankruptcy still fresh enough in the industry’s collective memory, such a quick fall from grace is no longer unthinkable.

One thing is for sure, though. If you were planning on a MetaBeast as a Christmas present, you should probably have a backup plan just in case.