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In January, 2021, the dark COVID clouds parted with a bright ray of futuristic hope. Storm Sondors, who launched his first electric bicycle as part of a crowdfunding campaign in 2015, announced an electric motorcycle with impressive specs and features, but what blew our collective minds was the price: just $5,000.
My friend Jerry alerted me to it and I thought it looked "tasty." Was it as tasty as keeping a spare $5,000 in my checking account for a rainy day? Good question, as I already own two motorcycles that cost less than the Sondors and have much greater capabilities. So why would I want something like this?
I rode my first electric motorcycle in 2009; a 2010 Zero S. It was futuristic in looks, silent in motion, and snappy in acceleration, but it was also spendy, had a limited top speed, and very short range. I was unimpressed, but I knew someday electric motorcycles would replace internal combustion engines (ICE), and when that happened, it would be great. I figured it would be about five years, but certainly no more than 10.
The next decade passed in a stew of disappointments and mild successes in the electric motorcycle industry. The trend was towards bigger, heavier, and much more expensive rides, motorcycles built to compete with high-end ICE models. We got Energica's $22,000 600-pound Ego and Eva and the $30,000 Harley-Davidson LiveWire. Cool, but not my thing.
And then Sondors caught my eye. The Los Angeles-based company had achieved some recognition with distinctive fat-tired electric bicycles, but founder Storm Sondors kept it going by introducing a concept he called Metacycle. It had eye-popping looks, with a hollow cast-aluminum frame and low-slung removable battery. Sondors claimed it could go 80-plus mph and weighed 200 pounds, with a range of up to 80 miles.
Waiting for the Sondors
I waited, choosing Facebook's Metacycle Owner's Group as my waiting room. At first the mood was optimistic and friendly, but as the days and months flew by, things began to turn ugly. Participants fell into two main factions, tearing into each other like vicious, slavering wolves with Facebook accounts.
On one side were the loyalists. They would see the process through no matter what. They didn't think Sondors was lying, deceitful, or in financial trouble. They understood supply-chain issues and felt they'd get their bikes eventually, happy to watch Sondors' stream of press releases and videos and endlessly discuss component availability and container shipping until a truck arrived in their driveways with a shiny motorcycle.
The other camp is a group endemic to all social media, the haters with an unclear agenda. These were buyers who had either paid a deposit or paid in full for the bike and had asked for and gotten a refund. But instead of moving on, they still regularly checked into the Metacycle Facebook group. Why they did this is mysterious, and an answer to this question would explain much of our nation's angst and turmoil over the last decade.
The hataz usually harped on two things. Delivery delays were and are number one, as the expected delivery times for the pre-paid orders went from late 2021 to first quarter 2022, to second quarter 2022, and then to fourth quarter or maybe early 2023, to the latest estimate from Sondors, which is all preorders delivered by the end of 2023. Perfectly reasonable reason to get cold feet and back out, I think, given the company's chirpy e-mails, which never made excuses, only promised new delivery dates.
The other complaints mostly dealt with the changes between the production bike and the prototype. The first show bike had a sleek, low-profile seat, a minimalist tail, lustrous polished-aluminum finish, and a slim, removable battery so you could charge it at home or in your office. People were excited.
And then pictures of the production version started popping up. I've been riding motorcycles since the 1980s and seen plenty of concept bikes transform into production models, so the shrieks of outrage and dismay about the clunky DOT-mandated lights and reflectors from the various social-media peanut galleries seemed odd. What did they expect? And what's the problem? That's why God invented hacksaws and trash cans. They even complained about mirrors. I haven't left the stock mirrors on a motorcycle since the Clinton administration. The seat was no a longer a tidy little pad, but a hideous puffy sausage; nothing a good upholstery shop couldn't fix. The rear caliper got moved to above the rear hub, and there was now a rear fender — the nerve!
Maybe most grievously serioius change was the battery, which had gotten wider and, though Sondors didn't say anything in its news releases, was no longer designed to be quickly removed from the bike as shown in the Sondors videos. Instead, the user would have to unscrew some Torx fasteners, unplug and slide the 54-pound lump out the side, and haul it away to charge.
Camel, meet straw
Storm Sondors himself sent a lengthy e-mail just in time for Christmas apologizing for the delays. "The challenges presented by the global crisis and supply chain breakdown have simply been overwhelming this year." March, 2022 came and went and though we all celebrated another year of the COVID-19 epidemic, there was no Metacycle in my garage. Spring turned into summer, and finally word began trickling in that production had begun and a shipment of bikes was on its way. Just not mine.
It became clear I wouldn't see my bike until 2023. Meanwhile, my money had declined in value thanks to record inflation. Straw, meet camel's back. I canceled and within a week the money had been sent back to my credit card.
Since I canceled my order, some Metacycles have been delivered to customers, mostly near the Sondors warehouse in Southern California. The new owners are enthusiastic about their rides, seem to enjoy them, and are doing what they can to promote the brand and product.
"The craftsmanship is stellar," owner Cory Walton told me. "Haven’t tested range and that's not a big deal... I got it as fun weekend thing to do. Got the bike to 81 mph. The handling is great."
The Metacycle looks great, is fun to ride, and appears to offer good value for the money. Or does it? Objective testing, which is starting to crop up on the YouTubes (and I'm happy to do a full road test if you're listening, Sondors), suggests Sondors is under-delivering. Acceleration, top speed and range are significantly less than what was promised last year and the weight isn't the 200 pounds Sondors promised. The Sondors website says it's "~" 300 pounds, and when I did a Google search for what "~" meant it said "about" or "not." Walton told me the shipping invoice said 328 pounds (13 pounds more than my modded Suzuki DR650); more "not" than "about."
And that battery. Instead of unlocking it, quickly sliding it out of the bike, and carrying it with one hand like a gallon of milk as we see in a Sondors video, you get down on your hands and knees, unscrew two Torx fasteners (which screw right into the sand-cast aluminum, so I'd expect doing this a limited number of times before those holes would need to be retapped), remove the left-side cover, undo two more Torx screws, disconnect two cables, and then pull the lump out. Easier than getting the engine out of a VW Beetle, but a far cry from the easy removal that Sondors originally promised.
And don’t get me started on regenerative braking. When Electrek interviewed Storm himself and product director Matt Irish in early 2021, they were asked about regenerative braking. Irish responded, "All of those things will be programmed and set." What he or Sondors should have said was, "It won't have regenerative braking."
So what is the Metacycle in the flesh? It looks like a cool, fun, around-town machine, like a 125 cc scooter or motorcycle, but more money and less range. If this was a traditional motorcycle, Sondors would be pilloried like a Goth girl in 17th-century Salem. Instead, the nascent manufacturer seems to be getting a pass due to its good looks and trendy e-bike lineage.
| The Sondors Metacycle Chart of Disappointments | ||
|---|---|---|
| What was promised | What we got | |
| Weight | 200 pounds | 328 pounds |
| Battery | Easily removeable, lightweight | Removeable with tools, not designed to be removed regularly |
| Speed | 80 mph top speed | Testing shows 60 mph sustained speed, 81 mph in short bursts |
| Range | 80 miles in Eco mode | About 40 miles of real-world city riding |
| Delivery | Early 2022 | 2023 for most buyers |
I contacted Sondors to offer the company the opportunity to explain or rebut these differences, but I did not get a response. Sondors does address some of the appearance changes in an FAQ on its home page, but not the performance issues.
So what will I get instead of the Sondors?
I'm still all in on the EV revolution, but I'm glad I dodged the Sondors bullet. I think there will be better and maybe even cheaper models arriving in the next few years; in fact, I just put down a $73 deposit on a Super73 C1-X. Ryvid's Anthem looks promising and the crew from Cleveland Cycle Works has launched a new brand, Land, with a groovy USA-built scrambler/cafe sort of thing called the District. In fact, I think we're not far from a company like Honda giving us an electric Grom, something with a 60 mph top speed and 50-mile range, a great way to bring new riders into the sport.
Then there's this strange vision I keep having. Say you're a troubled individual like me who wants to have a lot of fun on a very twisty road or a go-kart track and doesn't want to deal with two-stroke smoky messiness. Imagine an aluminum-framed version of, say, a 1970s 50 cc GP bike, with a simple tube-aluminum frame and heavyweight downhill mountain bike suspension. It should weigh about 50 pounds without a motor or battery, which will add another 30 to 60 pounds. There's the potential for a 15-horsepower, 110-pound machine with decent range. Use swappable battery packs so you can much ride as much as you want at a racetrack and have plenty of range for having fun around town or commuting, if that's your thing. Maybe the best part is there's already economies of scale with this stuff, as they sell millions of lightweight EVs in India and China every year. Millions. Parts, including all electronics, hardware and batteries, shouldn't exceed $4,000.
Sounds like a very, very long and complex project for me (or a short one for a competent person). I'm still looking forward to my first electric motorcycle — even if I have to build it my damn self.
