Damn Shame About Faraday

[Deleted member 803]

A disappointing statement on how dire the bicycle industry is.........................

Faraday announced that it will stop selling its wonderful ebikes in 2019. Last shipment is coming in late November and will be sold throughout 2019 with a minimal staff. Warranties will change from 2 years to one year.

Adam and his team were terrific and the folks who bought them loved them.

My best wishes to his entire team.......................

 

[Feliz]

Too bad, I loved their bikes. It's inevitable though with the hundreds of small startups trying to get in on the action. I have the feeling many of them are struggling while some like Juice Bikes are thriving. I just bought an eProdigy bike but I'm concerned as they seem to be pretty stagnant with their products and no one has even posted on the eProdigy thread on this forum for ages.

 

[Citycrosser]

Bummer, I was still considering a Faraday for my daughter.

 

[Deleted member 803]

Bummer, I was still considering a Faraday for my daughter.

I can still order one (I'm a dealer) but once year end supply runs out that's it. Our few customers who bought them LOVE them.

 

[Citycrosser]

I test rode one last year but needed more range for my commute. The low step version is nearly ideal for my daughter. I'll check with the local e-bike store to see what he has. Thanks!

 

[ebikemom]

What a shame. They are great bikes. The range is an issue for folks with commutes--my own round-trip commute would barely fit the capacity so that knocked it out of the running for me.

One reason I bought the bike I did is that the company has been in business since 2009 which is eons in the electric bike industry. I wanted to buy something from a company that (I hope) would be in business as long as I want to keep riding my bike, which is, I also hope, a very long time.

 

[rannyv]

The light weight and simplicity of the bikes was nice, but they didn't change for so long. Last one I rode was 3 or 4 years ago and it didn't seem that easy to regulate the speed and it didn't have torque sensing. But nice, elegant bikes.

 

[Deleted member 4210]

wow, that was a swift 'death'. They got acquired by Pon back in 2017. Pon owning brands of Cervélo, Gazelle, Focus and Santa Cruz.

Nice looking ebikes, but a fatal flaw of too high of price, and too small of battery and motor for that price, I think did them in.

 

[CodyDog]

Sorry to hear that. I was looking at them the other day.

 

[Riversurf]

That is a shame. Some of their bikes are moving pieces of art. One thing that took them out of the running when I was looking to buy last summer was their very low mileage ranges. I think they started adding boosters of some sort, but when the max range is listed at 25 miles, for the Porteur for example, that would seem like a hard sell. And very spendy.

 

[Jerry LM]

I looked at them as well but thought the price was to high for a level one with a small capacity battery that is also hard to access. I like the easily removed type.

 

[MisterM]

Yep, nice bikes, but not very practical. They were for short rides in urban environments, but I think the ride share scooters killed their business model.

 

[motostrano]

I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did. We had them in the store for about a year and didn't sell even one and so returned them. One day a Faraday owner came in to charge his bike half way through his commute, since range was so poor, and ended up buying a Felt and selling the Faraday. The online marketing hype around a lot of ebikes - perpetuated largely by bloggers who don't ever invest much more than a few minutes on them - often does not translate into real-world longer term use.
Joe

 

[JRA]

They are still have very active advertising on UTube, but as pop up ads are algorithm activated probably because I watch bike related videos.

 

[Ebiker01]

I'm surprised they lasted as long as they did. We had them in the store for about a year and didn't sell even one and so returned them. One day a Faraday owner came in to charge his bike half way through his commute, since range was so poor, and ended up buying a Felt and selling the Faraday. The online marketing hype around a lot of ebikes - perpetuated largely by bloggers who don't ever invest much more than a few minutes on them - often does not translate into real-world longer term use.
Joe

Q - As a dealer , Can you get this brand -“ Klever” in US ? Is a Swiss brand , high end, 860wh bat., S pedelec bikes.

 

[Deleted member 4210]

Faraday is a classic case of an over priced product, delivering subpar performance. Battery too small, hub drive is weak, and although the bike looks very classy, it just wasn't practical versus what you could get from another ebike OEM, and do so for a lower price than what Faraday charged. There are still a lot of ebike brands getting away with this sort of thing (high priced, underperformance), but eventually the market will sort that out.

Another candidate that has a good shot at suffering the same unfortunate fate, is this ebike from Zietgeist. https://www.zeitgeist.bike/

Sure it looks cool, since they hide the batteries in the frame tube, but the cells and capacity is too small for practicality, and the motor is too weak as well. They try to emphasize people use it as a 'bike' and then let it kick in when you are on hills, but the reality of how most riders ride is far different. the really goofy thing, is they actually show battery cells from Panasonic, that are the CR123A's you can buy from Amazon, and are NOT re-chargeable. Those can't be the actual batteries used, but wow, what a marketing fauxpaux that is !

I guess its 'hidden' by the fact, they are showing the ebike in front of an Audi.

Faraday had nice marketing too, and a snazzy website. Didn't help their cause though.

It's like the old Wendy's commercial " Where's da beef ?"

 

[dblhelix]

wow, that was a swift 'death'. They got acquired by Pon back in 2017. Pon owning brands of Cervélo, Gazelle, Focus and Santa Cruz.

Nice looking ebikes, but a fatal flaw of too high of price, and too small of battery and motor for that price, I think did them in.

Isn’t Kalkhoff Pon as well? Is Faraday pulling out of the US market like Focus and Kalkhoff, or is the brand gone worldwide?

 

[Deleted member 4210]

Isn’t Kalkhoff Pon as well? Is Faraday pulling out of the US market like Focus and Kalkhoff, or is the brand gone worldwide?

My understanding is Faraday is gone. They only had brand awareness here in USA. Takes too much money to build a brand anywhere, let alone Europe. Kalkhoff had long brand awareness established in Europe, and was trying to dip it's toes in here, as many other EU brands are trying to do. Problem is they are all finding out 300 different brands here in US, with new labels coming everyday from China clones, the still very small market demand here is making it hypercompetitive and tough to scale, let alone make money.

There is a HUGE cluster of brands and models in the $3000 to $5000 price range due to the fact many oems are trying to make up on higher margin on each bike, since unit sales are still rather miniscule.

Let's say the US is maybe 200k to 300k units per year. That's nothing compared to Europe, and still very small versus regular bikes. 5 years ago it was around 150,000 units per year. While the growth may seem decent, again there is north of 300 brands , and probably over 1000 models.

That's not sustainable for any one brand to divvy up market share like that. So either you duke it out until brands fall away AND market grows to something meaningful, say at least 1 million units a year, or you pull out and maybe come back later.

With the above numbers, the shake out is inevitable here in the US. Pon made a mistake acquiring Faraday, but it does the overall market a favor, eliminating another brand. Consumer confusion abounds and even purchase decisions are deferred when you have this many brands in such a small unit sales environment. You don't know who will survive, and you guess the big names will, but Pon is big, yet look how they just ditched the American consumer. Same thing could happen with brands owned by Accell. If they don't sell enough Raleigh or I zips, they could drop those lines too. And if you have too many models, you spread resources too thin and don't make much per model. Or you waste money making a model that doesn't sell well , and have to drop it.

We are still very early days here in the US ebike market.

 

[JRA]

"Kalkhoff had long brand awareness established in Europe, and was trying to dip it's toes in here"

Actually Mike this isn't entirely accurate. Kalkhoff has been selling bikes here in the US for at least the last 8 years and perhaps a few more. At one time they had a US office in Portland, OR.

https://electricbikereport.com/my-v...eadquarters-kalkhoff-electric-bike-test-ride/

They were a higher end quality brand focused on commuter type bikes that were around before higher end quality eBikes were marketable here and the Portland office only lasted a few years. PON kept them here but decided to pull them from the US market due to the more competitive market that has developed as you suggest.

 

[motostrano]

Why would you risk getting in with a system with no real dealer presence? What kind of support are you going to get on a product you can only buy online? The vast majority of bikes shops and even ebike shops aren't going to touch these products if you have an issue with them. Why not go with something with a better support network and have a functional bike?