We’re still building bikes with various parts and testing and when we have a bike we know will simply go the distance without fuss we’ll sell them worldwide.

A motor on a trike is even more problematic since you lose the hub gears unless you build the frame around a crank motor. Personally I’d rather have cheap and reliable gears than an expensive and finicky motor.

Thanks for the info backed by experience – pleasure to read. Don’t know whether this is the proper thread, but I wanted to ask you about electric assist on cargo bikes, especially trikes. I’m currently testing a christiania trike with (fun8 motor – gearless and brushless). Talked to them in Christiania, Copenhagen, and they say they haven’t had any problems with them whatsoever for the past two years since they started installing them. I have read that you (at workcycles) are generally sceptical about electric assist on bikes not the least due to the maintenance issues. But may be the technology has developed to be reliable enough (BionX, Heinzmann, Koga electric motors) – what do you think?
I live in a hilly area close to water, so strong headwind and uphill cykling with two kids and groceries isn’t much fun (esp. for my girlfriend), but with the motor it is…

thanks,

Alexander

Roskilde/Denmark

It doesn’t surprise me that 7000 were sold in Europe but stating that there were no complaints is inaccurate. For a while we were seeing these regularly at our two shops in Amsterdam, often having to explain to angry and confused customers that their nearly new bike was “dead and irreparable”; Broken frames, rotted wooden boxes, terminal rust cancer, broken cranks… sometimes all on the same unfortunate bike. It’s not easy to tell this to a young mom who wheels the bike in to the repair shop with kids in the box, complaining of a “scraping noise” (the frame dragging on the ground). Others were simply never able to assemble the bike to working condition from the collection of parts in the flat-pack box, or had to replace many parts to get it running satisfactorily. We’ve heard the same stories from most of our bike colleagues here in Amsterdam. We don’t see them much anymore, so perhaps the Dutch have figured out that was one deal too good to be true.

So what is the warranty on your bikes and is it different between bikes delivered assembled and those sold for the customer to assemble?

We both sell our bicycles per box with a construction manual or fully assembled to be test driven and picked up at our warehouse.

There have been a number of reviews of the bikes you sell:
http://measured-response.com/bakfiets/?p=8
http://fietsenmetkinderen.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=

…and of a very similar trike, apparently made in the same factory:
http://www.bakfiets-en-meer.nl/2008/12/08/guest-post-experiences-with-faya4you-bakfiets/

Here you can find detailed photos of new and used examples:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10392335@N07/sets/72157612693597651/comments/

Here you can find links to reviews of many bikes of this type:
http://www.bakfiets-en-meer.nl/2008/07/11/roundup-reviews-of-various-family-transport-bikes/

Seriously Daniel, I’ve generally toned down the level of criticism on my blog and I’m trying to be generous to anything that’ll get more people riding bikes around the city. However I can only be negative about the bikes you’re selling. I’m very familiar with them and they’re just really, really terrible… of negative value if you ask me. The sales proposal is that you’re getting a little less bike than the real thing for much less money. But in fact the purchaser gets something that will probably never work properly or ride safely, and will deteriorate rapidly creating dangerous situations and far too quickly add to the trash heaps of the world.

Sorry that I have to be so negative in a public forum but it’d really be a shame if anybody makes the mistake of buying one thinking they’ll be getting something they’ll enjoy using. It’d be even more unfortunate if somebody or their children got hurt as a result.