Yes, exactly - unlike some companies that are going bankrupt, Yamaha are huge, worldwide. Their own ebike division in comparison is/was tiny. It always felt sort of a sideline (outside of Japan anyway) to take advantage of their existing motor designs & infrastructure. They supply ebike motor systems to many brands, Giant and Haibike among others, which are not affected by this decision (unless there are further decisions about pulling out from the e bike tech space completely which would be very shocking). This decision to pull out of their own ebike models sales in the US was surprising its such a huge market you would think. I'd love to have been at those meetings to hear the rationale, but also Yamaha have a funny method of selling these bikes by using existing Yamaha motorbike dealers, rather then through third party independent bike shops. That created a visibility issue as not many people are going to pop into a motorbike store to buy a bicycle. It looks to me that internally this (small) division wasn't pulling its weight with sales so Yamaha did some housecleaning. A shame because they are robust and well thought out bikes. The Moto has been described as a bit old fashioned in its geo, but the same reviewers loved everything else about it. And the Wabash is pretty unique, plus all bikes are built around very good indeed motors with strong reliability records and ease of repair - something brands like Shimano/Bosch could take note of and is what increasingly customers, understandably, want - you pay $$$$ and the least we should expect is a reliable motor and one that can be repaired inexpensively by third parties, not some proprietary parts system that has to be replaced with a new motor & goes to landfill. The EU interestingly now has a law called Right To Repair for the electronics industry, to change the land fill issue, but it looks like so far e bike companies are ignoring it.
