Buying one of VanMoof’s stylish e-bikes is currently impossible: for a few days now, a notice has appeared on the manufacturer’s website stating that sales are temporarily paused to catch up on production and delivery of existing orders. Problems with such production-delivery delays are known at VanMoof from the past, but that the sale is paused for these reasons is quite surprising.

It is also strange that not only a single model series is affected by this sales stop, but the entire range. In addition to the VanMoof S5 and A5, which were presented a year ago, the brand new model generation of the VanMoof S4 and X4 are also affected. Both have seen price increases in recent months (see here and here) — which should have increased profits but rather reduced demand. Following this logic, the situation for production and delivery should have rather eased as a result. 

To make matters worse, all accessories, such as the racks that go with the Smart Bikes, are also currently unavailable. The link leads to a page that says on the german website “We are unable to accept orders for new bikes or accessories at this time. We apologize for the inconvenience caused, our team is already working on this.”

What’s going on at VanMoof?

On Reddit, a screenshot with the (unverified) info of an employee was published, which doesn’t really offer anything new in terms of content — but explicitly mentions that VanMoof is not bankrupt. This hint comes not without reason: already at the beginning of the year, the 2021 financial statements showed that the company was only secured until spring without further financing. Since since then nothing more was to be heard in this regard, one could assume a safe continuance of VanMoof. However, the current situation naturally raises doubts again.

So it remains to be seen how things will develop. In the best case, VanMoof will get the production and delivery under control as quickly as possible and can then return to regular business operations. This would be a good thing not only for VanMoof itself, but also for the currently waiting customers with ongoing orders.