I talked to VanMoof's chief about building the firm's best ever e-bike

Stuff.tv

2 days ago

Given he was just days away from unveiling the first all-new e-bikes produced under his watch, it'd be understandable if Eliott Wertheimer was a little on edge when we sat down over video call to talk all things S6 and S6 Open – but the VanMoof co-CEO was in great spirits.
The new bikes are meant to represent a turning point for the Dutch firm, now under new ownership. Issues of the past have been addressed, and there's more tech squeezed inside than ever. And as I'd already visited the Dutch firm's R&D warehouse for an early ride of a prototype earlier that week, I could understand his confidence.
Read more: our first ride of the VanMoof S6
As well as exploring the S6's biggest upgrades, I also found out what it was like stepping in to run a company known for its stand-out styling, and his thoughts on the rapidly evolving electric bike market.
I went from studying nuclear energy systems for deep space to electric scooters
One of my best friends at the time, Albert (Nassar, now VanMoof co-CEO), was doing similar intensity research on robotics. We loved what we did, I loved how intellectually rewarding it was, but the academic world is inherently limiting.
This was 2016; e-Bikes and scooters were starting to become a thing thanks to advances in battery and systems electronics. We bootstrapped a company in the UK, focusing on electric folding bikes and high performance e-scooters. Then Brexit happened. That stressed the business a bit, so we initiated fundraising and got acquired by McLaren Applied.
Internally McLaren Applied had a secret crazy project where they were trying to launch a premium e-scooter for the ultra high-end market. It went a bit overboard in terms of budget and features, and they realised they needed a specialised company to take care of it. That's where Lavoie came from.
There are a ton of e-bike companies, but not many are really innovating
The bulk of the market is labelling Asian factory products. Some of the bigger brands create new frames, cool new form factors that integrate standard components in different ways. That's 99% of the market. Off the top of my head there are three companies including VanMoof that go and research, 'how can I improve that for the rider without the limitations of standardised parts?'. That's ambitious, that's difficult, but it's also necessary.
We saw that VanMoof (which by July '23 had entered bankruptcy) was important. We started studying it. The plan was incredible, the way people related to it, the way people loved it. Even in markets where e-bikes weren't such a big thing, people that never actually thought about buying an e-bike, thought about VanMoof.
The product was insane, in terms of technology and product ecosystem, electromechanical integration, back-end, apps… Everything was so impressive. There were problems that everyone knows now, like reliability and repairability. That led to issues – but we could fix that. We were like, okay, let's acquire it and restart it, because there's so much value there.
The e-bike market is here to stay and will grow for sure
The last few years have been horrible for the market. Demand stagnated post-COVID, and because of the big boom the year before everyone over-ordered. I think the bigger brands suffered less because they forced their retailers to dump that stock, which led to undercutting and underpricing. A lot of good brands died.
Now it's stabilising. If you take the average, the growth curve over, let's say, 10 years will have been the same as we initially anticipated. I can see in 10, 20 years, depending on cultures, e-bikes and e-scooters will be the main modes of transport in cities. There's no way around it. Infrastructure and regulation is going in that direction. Go to Amsterdam today and you'll see what that looks like.
Beautiful design should be at the service of function, rather than itself
It's a bit of an Iconic shape, a VanMoof. Most people will agree – I'm sure some don't – that it's beautiful. It's simple and minimalistic in a functional way. It's also characteristically integrated, because every electronic part and the battery is designed to fit nicely in that beautiful design.
Everything is really 'If I'm gonna put that in there, what does it do for my riders?' That's super hard, because most people don't know what they want. Through observing behaviour and product usage we can identify creative solutions. And then once you do that, oh wow.
The kick lock sounds so simple. I arrive, I kick the thing with my foot and it locks the bike brakes. But that product needs to take kicks all the time, in tough weather. It needs to lock the mechanical system of the bike and deactivate its electronic system; it needs to make sure the bike's communicating to the app and the servers that it's in that locked state, so then we can trigger the right alarms; it needs to auto unlock if you're close enough so you just touch the bike and it unlocks. The usage is simple but the technology behind it is incredibly sophisticated.
Doing things differently is risky, but it's the only way to push the industry forward
Way before I was here VanMoof took the ambitious decision to go with front motors. It's more aesthetic, allows for better gearing, and means you have all-wheel drive; you're putting power to the rear wheel, the motor sends power to the front one. But if that's not done properly it's not a nice experience. When e-bikes started, electronics weren't that good to really tune your power curves, so you had some joltiness. So most brands went with rear motors.
VanMoof said 'let's just develop through and innovate through the issues we're seeing, then eventually we'll have a great thing.' We've got years of positive handicap now. Even for the big companies it's not going to be easy to catch up with us. The thinking and implementation takes time, no matter how many people you put on it.
Vocal customers are super-important when developing new bikes. But so are the quiet ones.
A single person giving you feedback doesn't have much value, because it's very personal. But if you watch an entire discussion with a lot of riders, you can flesh out what's required, even when it's not mentioned. They are saying this, but if we had that then it would be gone, you know?
We've got multiple feedback channels. Sales partners provide great sales feedback; we have teams who watch online communities like Reddit and Facebook; we send huge rider surveys every six months. The app is an amazing tool it provides us with anonymised data like power consumption, speed. Then we have the beta program within the app. It all helps us decide what is good but could be improved, what is OK but no-one cares about so let's remove it, and what are the things we don't have that people would like us to have.
We've learned from the past. Sometimes it's better to let other people solve your problems for you
We partnered with Peak Design for the S6's phone mount. You won't really need your phone with the integrated navigation, but we have a great dashboard app, so if you do want that we need the best available system. We're not going to do it ourselves, we've got enough to do. So we went to all the big providers. Peak, beyond their company ethos – which is really aligned with what we do – the product is so smooth and aesthetically matching our product. I'm super happy how it's worked out.
My motorbike is black, my phone is black, my computer is black… but I think the blue S6 is the most beautiful one
Our approach was 'everyone wants a dark bike, let's go for that for sure'. We created our own Midnight Black colour combination, with peal to make sure the reflections look good. Then we had the pale mint, which we're super happy with how it enters the light. The blue was just 'OK, let's go for something flashy' in a way people will be proud to own it, that's nice on the eyes. I love it.