To start with this is no longer a $500 electric bike. So lets start taking this $500 bike apart to see what it really costs. We know that many of the performance numbers are exaggerated (more on that later), and who knows how well Sonders researched this to know what this bike would really cost to produce, and what type of after the sale support he will be able to offer. So how is it possible to offer a $500 fat bike with a complete electric kit to the public and not lose money? The answer is it probably isn’t. Fat bike components are more specialized and more expensive to source than regular-sized bike parts. Selling an electric fat bike at this price is even harder ( read our story on electric fat bikes). Sonders is offering a deal that seems too good to be true…a $500 electric bike that performs great and looks great too. And they don’t want a dorky looking ebike…they want their ebike to look good.
He has proven that thousands of people want ebikes and are willing to pay for it right now…but they just don’t want to spend much more than $500. Yowsers!… One thing that is undeniable is that the Sonders Electric Bike has made a significant impact on the public, and has been great exposure for ebikes.
I would boldly state that this is the best selling electric bike of all time…and not more than 5 of them have been produced yet. Never has there been this much attention on an electric bike in the mass press. There has been a lot of excitement and speculation lately caused by this campaign, which turned out to be the most successful in Indiegogo’s history, selling thousands of bikes and raising 5 million dollars at a very fast rate. There have been many successful Indiegogo campaigns where the buyers happily got what they paid for, but also many that went bust and backers lost their money or got a product that was much less than they were promised. Indiegogo is a company that offers start ups such as entrepreneur Storm Sondors to offer their products and get investor who are pre-buyers of the product. And diving deeper, I started wondering if I spend $500, since this is an Indiegogo campaign, there is a chance that I might never get my bike at all. But I soon realized that the snazzy looking prototype in the photo with sweet anodized components is not at all the fat electric bike I will be getting. My first thought when I saw this picture is I want to buy one at $500.
It seems someone with some aesthetic taste is coming in and teaching the big boys like Currie, Pedego, and Prodeco-Tech how good a bike can look at only 1/6th of the price of what they offer. Seems too good to true…lets dive deeper.
Wait…how is that even possible? It seems an eccentric and charismatic man by the name of Storm Sonders (previously a McDonalds happy meal toy tycoon, believe it or not) has released a $500 electric fat bike toting some spectacular performance numbers, a slick marketing team, snazzy videos, and I have to admit it, the bike looks good… really good. Now, in 2015, the Trail-Z has been blasted…and there is a new best selling beast in town…and it doesn’t even exist yet. The Currie Trailz was probably the best selling electric bike of all time because of that $500 price point… I said in that article and I say now that there is a place for a $500 decent performing electric bike. This bike was powered by lead-acid batteries, it was very heavy, and was as ugly as sin…but performed decently. A few years back I reviewed the $500 Currie Trailz and thought that this was a decent bike for $500. I have been building, riding, and writing about electric fat bikes for years now…way before they became the hot new thing.
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