Impossible Electric Bike (That's the name)

George S.

George S.

Well-Known Member
That road they were on was as smooth as a neutron star. While there is no comparing the price I'd much rather have or be seen on a Segway. Funny bout the delivery ;)
 
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Cool concept, thanks George! Reminds me of this little feller (only the impossible ebike is about half as expensive). There's something inspiring about an ebike that small, but I agree that the plastic seat probably doesn't feel too good going over bumps and frankly this seems more like a kick scooter because it doesn't have pedals! This is making me question the entire definition of bicycle.

A bicycle, often called a bike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.
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I noticed they have raised almost 300 thousand dollars in their campaign. The goal was $55k. That's a lot of support. You can do a lot with a small battery pack, but this seems like a concept vehicle.
 
George S. said:
I noticed they have raised almost 300 thousand dollars in their campaign. The goal was $55k. That's a lot of support. You can do a lot with a small battery pack, but this seems like a concept vehicle.
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Pretty impressive price considering it is unique. And the battery is 36v 10ah... All for less than $500?
Not sure I'd want to risk my life on an electric brake that hasn't gone thru a lot of testing.
 
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JoePah said:
Pretty impressive price considering it is unique. And the battery is 36v 10ah... All for less than $500?
Not sure I'd want to risk my life on an electric brake that hasn't gone thru a lot of testing.
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'The disc motor of Impossible is both lightweight and powerful. With ten 2900mah 10A 3.6V 44.5g batteries, Impossible can travel up to 12.4 mph for 45 minutes or at normal speed for up to 15.6 miles.'

I spent a few minutes trying to unravel this when it first came out on KS. I decided it was 10 cells in series so 36 volts, but nothing in parallel so 2.9 AH. The 10A may be the current rating. I don't know. If it's 10 AH you could buy it for the battery.;) The picture shows 6 cells. These guys on KS play pretty fast and loose with the specs.
 
I guess it was impossible after all... From kickstarter, update #7, on Dec. 21,2014:

Dear Backers,
First of all we want to apologise for our lack of communication with you. We are sorry for taking your time. From your comments and advices on Kickstarter, we have realized that we have to work on a lot of issues that we haven’t addressed in our projects and updates. We made a lot of mistakes. Among our mistakes are 1.Miscalculation of the Impossible’s price (Carbon fiber, Motor, Charger and the other smaller parts are more expensive than the prices we offered in our Kickstarter campaign to be more exact three times more expensive) 2.Mistakes in currency convergence from CAD to USD as we made our negotiations with factories in USD not in CAD, 3.Shipment prices, and the biggest one we didn’t calculate the money that 4.Kickstarter will have to take from the funding. As you see from the list of our mistakes we are not businessmen we are inventors and we were very excited to share our invention wit the world even when we realized our mistakes we still wanted to continue and deliver our product to everyone who backed us. But the other reality is that we needed money to make all those changes happen and the truth is we didn’t have it and that’s why we asked help from you Backers. I am really sorry to announce that we will have to cancel our project and come back later so we can have a better prototype, different available models, better pricing, more pictures and videos more transparency, and most important a Better communication with you backers. Thank you for your trust and patients. We are coming back to Kickstarter on April 2015 or even earlier.

Shame, it was interesting. At 3 or more times the price will it get the required backing? Time will tell, if it comes back...

 
J.R. said:
I guess it was impossible after all... From kickstarter, update #7, on Dec. 21,2014:

Dear Backers,
First of all we want to apologise for our lack of communication with you. We are sorry for taking your time. From your comments and advices on Kickstarter, we have realized that we have to work on a lot of issues that we haven’t addressed in our projects and updates. We made a lot of mistakes. Among our mistakes are 1.Miscalculation of the Impossible’s price (Carbon fiber, Motor, Charger and the other smaller parts are more expensive than the prices we offered in our Kickstarter campaign to be more exact three times more expensive) 2.Mistakes in currency convergence from CAD to USD as we made our negotiations with factories in USD not in CAD, 3.Shipment prices, and the biggest one we didn’t calculate the money that 4.Kickstarter will have to take from the funding. As you see from the list of our mistakes we are not businessmen we are inventors and we were very excited to share our invention wit the world even when we realized our mistakes we still wanted to continue and deliver our product to everyone who backed us. But the other reality is that we needed money to make all those changes happen and the truth is we didn’t have it and that’s why we asked help from you Backers. I am really sorry to announce that we will have to cancel our project and come back later so we can have a better prototype, different available models, better pricing, more pictures and videos more transparency, and most important a Better communication with you backers. Thank you for your trust and patients. We are coming back to Kickstarter on April 2015 or even earlier.

Shame, it was interesting. At 3 or more times the price will it get the required backing? Time will tell, if it comes back...
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Yep It's FlyKly to the extreme! Anyone who knows anything about electric bikes could have told them their price was impossible...lol

Can't see any buyers at 3x the original KS price, or around $1200... Just a trinket not a real bike.
 
J.R. said:
I guess it was impossible after all... From kickstarter, update #7, on Dec. 21,2014:

Dear Backers,
First of all we want to apologise for our lack of communication with you. We are sorry for taking your time. From your comments and advices on Kickstarter, we have realized that we have to work on a lot of issues that we haven’t addressed in our projects and updates. We made a lot of mistakes. Among our mistakes are 1.Miscalculation of the Impossible’s price (Carbon fiber, Motor, Charger and the other smaller parts are more expensive than the prices we offered in our Kickstarter campaign to be more exact three times more expensive) 2.Mistakes in currency convergence from CAD to USD as we made our negotiations with factories in USD not in CAD, 3.Shipment prices, and the biggest one we didn’t calculate the money that 4.Kickstarter will have to take from the funding. As you see from the list of our mistakes we are not businessmen we are inventors and we were very excited to share our invention wit the world even when we realized our mistakes we still wanted to continue and deliver our product to everyone who backed us. But the other reality is that we needed money to make all those changes happen and the truth is we didn’t have it and that’s why we asked help from you Backers. I am really sorry to announce that we will have to cancel our project and come back later so we can have a better prototype, different available models, better pricing, more pictures and videos more transparency, and most important a Better communication with you backers. Thank you for your trust and patients. We are coming back to Kickstarter on April 2015 or even earlier.

Shame, it was interesting. At 3 or more times the price will it get the required backing? Time will tell, if it comes back...
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Kickstarter is a questionable way to fund anything. The basic idea with FlyKly was completely flawed, since they abandoned the original design. Now the cost of the unit has gotten ridiculous, given what you can get just buying an ebike.

Even a simple bike, like the Riide, has been very troubled. They had a cute little video, so great marketing, but not much business savvy. You can't follow what is happening anymore, because they closed the "updates". They are only for people who bought in. They seem to have a problem with their frame. This is from the website where 'Comments' are still public.

Thanks for your comment and feedback, Anthony. We understand your frustration, and we too are frustrated with the delays as we thought we were on track for a May delivery until earlier this week when we had a very frank conversation with our frame fabricator.

At this point we are unable to give a more detailed timeline. We bought tickets yesterday to travel to Taiwan to get more clarity from our supplier so that we can confidently give a revised timeline to you as soon as possible.

The Riide is a one speed bike with an integrated battery. The frame was the one thing they had to design. I think they are running a year late. Some of the customers seem to feel they were taken for a Riide.

Anthony Campbell on May 3, 2014
So you're not making the timeline that you originally committed to making.
Got it.
What's the new timeline? When will the bikes be available?
Pro tip: a key frustration with backing a kickstarter project and unprofessional suppliers is less about a revised timeline and more about the complete lack of transparency about the new timeline. You said you'd be doing "monthly" video updates (plural). I'm hoping that there's only one more possible "monthly" update before you deliver the bike, not a number of months.
Please confirm that the bike will be delivered in June. Or July. And not in September or October. And please don't go on with monthly updates that don't actually provide the one bit of information that's meaningful: the date you're actually delivering the bikes.
 
Paul E. said:
There are no investors on Kickstarter. They're donors, and the creators have nothing but a moral obligation to give any refunds if a project falls through.
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PRetty sure when a project is cancelled during the Funding Campaign, it is no longer funded.. So everyone gets their money back.
 
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Ok then donors. I don't think I'd be inclined to take the leap on something that seems a bit pie in the sky-ish.

I participated in one KS campaign several years ago & it went fine. Easy project for a camera strap that was made from seatbelt type material & had some other nifty features. I still use that strap today.
 
The money goes all at once if the funding level is hit. The Imp was over funded, but never made it to the closing date. I believe no money changed hands. It's all or nothing, if they make it to the closing date. If the funding is achieved, KS gets 5% and Amazon Payments gets 3-5%. If Imp had gotten the money, and KS and Amazon had taken their cut, this would have been a total mess.

They now say they are coming back in April. Well, OK. They are serious, and they are real engineers, but this was not well executed.

If the money tranfers, it gets pretty murky:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/05/failed-kickstarter-projects-money-go_n_1858301.html
 
George S. said:
The money goes all at once if the funding level is hit. The Imp was over funded, but never made it to the closing date. I believe no money changed hands. It's all or nothing, if they make it to the closing date. If the funding is achieved, KS gets 5% and Amazon Payments gets 3-5%. If Imp had gotten the money, and KS and Amazon had taken their cut, this would have been a total mess.

They now say they are coming back in April. Well, OK. They are serious, and they are real engineers, but this was not well executed.

If the money tranfers, it gets pretty murky:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/05/failed-kickstarter-projects-money-go_n_1858301.html
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These guys at least figured out they had no idea what they were doing before the Funding period ended... So no fees, and 100% refunds... If KS allows them to repost it will be interesting to see if there are any new constraints.

But you're right: If they had cancelled after the funding period ended, all those fees would have been taken. . there would have been Pitchforks at the gate!

My initial assessment of all these KS electric bike electric projects proved to be correct.. The creators are well intentioned but they have no clue how to bring a consumer product to market, with their initial capital.. That's why banks, angel investors and so on, turn down a lot of great ideas with mythical business plans.
 
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