Just when you thought the SONDORS story was over, Storm Sondors appears to be mounting another comeback.
The entrepreneur behind one of the most influential – and eventually most controversial – electric bike companies in the US has resurfaced with a mysterious new two-wheeler being teased on the SONDORS website.
For now, details are exceedingly thin. The SONDORS website has been stripped down to little more than a dark teaser image showing what appears to be a new moped-style electric bicycle, along with “001” and a September 3 date.
Admittedly, it doesn’t show much. But after I cranked up the exposure on that teaser image and tweaked the lighting a bit more, it’s easy to see that there are several clues hiding in the shadows.
The bike appears to feature a long bench-style saddle, relatively small and wide tires, an upright riser handlebar, and what looks like a large triangular central frame section covered by a distinctive slotted panel. There appears to be a bicycle crank and chain, suggesting at least an attempt at a landing in the three-class electric bicycle system in the US.
A substantial-looking dual crown front suspension fork is visible as well, and the overall silhouette falls squarely in the increasingly popular moped-style e-bike category. Basically, it’s pretty obvious that this will be the type of bike we have often referred to as a SUPER73 competitor, though at this point SUPER73 is likely more of a fellow member of that group of e-bikes than the leader it once was.
There simply isn’t enough visible yet to make any useful guesses about the motor, battery, performance, or even exactly how SONDORS intends to classify the vehicle. But if September 3 is indeed the reveal date, we shouldn’t have to wait long.
And perhaps the bigger story isn’t even the bike. It’s the name behind it.
The complicated history of SONDORS
Storm Sondors burst onto the electric bicycle scene way back in 2015 with a proposition that seemed almost too good to be true: a $500 fat-tire electric bicycle.
At a time when most decent e-bikes in the US still cost several thousand dollars, the original SONDORS bike was disruptive in the truest sense of the word. The crowdfunding campaign raised millions of dollars and quickly turned SONDORS into one of the most recognizable names in the nascent US e-bike industry.
And despite plenty of early skepticism and the many detractors calling it a scam, the comapny delivered. Sure, the bikes came in late, cost a bit more than they should have, and didn’t always live up to the full specs originally promised. But they arrived. And over the following years, Sondors did something important that shouldn’t be erased by what happened later: he actually put a lot of people on electric bikes.
It’s unclear exactly how many bikes were sold under the SONDORS name over the years, but company statements and SEC filings put the number in at least the high five figures, if not the low six figures. Whatever number you choose SONDORS made various larger marketing claims over the years – we’re talking about tens of thousands of real electric bicycles that reached real riders.
SONDORS also helped demonstrate just how effective the direct-to-consumer model could be for inexpensive e-bikes. The company developed everything from fat-tire bikes and folders to more sophisticated models, often offering eye-catching designs at prices well below the established competition.
But there was another side to the SONDORS playbook.
Delays became something of a recurring theme. Products often arrived later than originally promised, and sometimes with specifications or designs that had changed along the way. For years, though, SONDORS generally managed to pull it off. As I wrote back in 2023, the pattern was often something along the lines of “delivered late and under-specced but always getting there. Mostly.”
SONDORS expanded into folding bikes, full-suspension bikes, scrambler-style bikes, and even crazier projects like an ill-fated three-wheeled electric car.
Then came the Metacycle.
When SONDORS unveiled the Metacycle electric motorcycle in 2021, it looked like another potential industry disruptor. The $5,000 motorcycle was originally pitched with an 80 mph (130 km/h) top speed and 80 miles (130 km) of range.
The motorcycle was late – very late – and the production version changed considerably from the original concept. But eventually Metacycles really did start reaching customers in 2022. By early 2023, Storm Sondors told Electrek that nearly 2,000 had been shipped.
I rode one myself, and despite the missed specs and changed design, it was actually a fun little electric motorcycle.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story.
Deliveries eventually slowed to a trickle while customers continued waiting for motorcycles and, in some cases, refunds. I later learned from SONDORS’ Chinese manufacturer, and revealed in a detailed exposé, that hundreds of completed Metacycles and large quantities of components were sitting in China amid a financial and contractual dispute between the factory and SONDORS. The factory accused SONDORS of failing to make required payments on bikes already shipped to him and others still in production; Storm later disputed the characterization of the situation and showed Electrek records of millions of dollars in payments, arguing that funds he had already paid on future orders should have been applied differently to settle current debts.
By the end of 2023, SONDORS had entered receivership and its assets were being offered for sale. Documents from that process said the company had sold more than 63,000 electric bicycles and held more than 10,000 Metacycle cash deposits totaling over $19.9 million.
At least hundreds of paying Metacycle customers, but potentially more, were ultimately left without motorcycles, while an unknown number of SONDORS e-bike customers were also caught up in the collapse.
So… is everyone ready for SONDORS 2.0?
That’s what makes this new teaser so interesting.
Storm Sondors has always had an impressive ability to identify the kind of electric two-wheelers people want and package them in designs that generate attention. The original $500 fat-tire bike was the right product at the right moment. Even the Metacycle, for all of the disaster surrounding its rollout, was an incredibly compelling concept. It was the motorcycle that the US needed, at the moment it needed it, and at the right price. A stylish, lightweight, highway-capable electric motorcycle for around $5,000 was exactly the sort of product so many riders wanted.
The question has rarely been whether Storm can make people want the product. He’s repeatedly proved that he can.
The question this time is whether he can convince them to pay for it.
And the market he’s apparently returning to is considerably different from the one SONDORS helped create a decade ago.
Moped-style electric bikes were once a much smaller category dominated by a handful of recognizable brands, particularly SUPER73. Today, that market is packed with competitors ranging from tiny direct-to-consumer startups to established e-bike companies. Even the reborn Juiced Bikes has returned under new ownership with its new Scrambler lineup, offering exactly the sort of motorcycle-inspired electric bicycles that this mysterious SONDORS machine appears positioned against.
In other words, Storm isn’t coming back to an empty field.
He may still have one advantage, though: the guy knows how to get attention. I’m writing an article about a mostly black photograph of a bicycle, after all, and all because his legacy is pages longer than almost anyone else in the industry at this point.
But attention and trust aren’t the same thing.
If this new SONDORS project is going to succeed, the most convincing launch strategy should probably have less to do with outrageous specifications or an irresistible introductory price and more to do with demonstrating that finished bikes actually exist, production is funded, and customers won’t be asked to bankroll another ambitious production run with an open-ended preorder like the last few rounds of this game.
Remember, there are still tens of thousands of riders out there who had perfectly good experiences with SONDORS bikes. But on the flip side, there are also many former customers for whom the SONDORS name represents money paid for a product that never arrived.
That’s a cargo e-bike’s worth of baggage landing squarely on the rackless frame of yet another moped-style e-bike.
For now, all we’ve got is a silhouette, the number “001,” and September 3.
Whatever Storm Sondors is planning for his next act, we’ll apparently find out next week.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
