Angell, a French startup for intelligent electric bikes, has announced in one and -mail to customers that the company is declaring insolvency and approaches a court to request a judicial settlement.
“He ended up for angell,” said the co-founder and CEO of the Marc Simoncini company on Instagram. (It also looks like a judge of the French version of “Shark Tank”.) “A hardware problem has put an end to the adventure, despite all our efforts and the incredible work of all our employees”.
Founded in 2019, Angell decided to create an electric bike with different intelligent and connected features. Its original bike made a small color touchscreen in the center of the handlebar to view relevant information and provide fixed -term indications. It could also connect to the phone using Bluetooth.
With its integrated block and the alarm system and its integrated GPS chip and the cellular modem, the Angell bike competed with other European intelligent bike manufacturers, such as Cowboy and Vanmoof. It is also worth noting that Vanmoof himself had to present an application for bankruptcy in the Netherlands in 2023. A new owner is now trying to relaunch the brand.
With its all-in-one package, Angell suffered from reliability problems. On an e-mail to customers, the company explained that his last problem with his first generation bike was the drop that broke the back of the camel.
“The fragility of the bike frame represents a risk of breakage,” wrote the company. “We understand that it is a defect connected to the frame production process and more precisely to the welding of the pipes together.”
Angell does not produce its bikes. Instead, he collaborated with SEB, the French industrial company behind all-class, Krups, Moulinex, Rowenta and Tefal, to outsource the production process. Likewise, he worked with a third -party design company, Kickmaker.
In the rest of the -mail, Angell tries to blame these two partners for these serious design defects. However, Angell is financially responsible for these defective bikes, as it is the company that has sold those bikes. It could remember up to 7,000 bicycles or reimburse its customers.
But these two options seem too expensive for the start because the company opted for a process of insolvency. There will probably be other cases to determine who is responsible for these production problems between angell, seb and kickmaker.
As for angell bike owners, people who own first generation bikes are now left with a bike that is not sure to be guided. Customers with recent Angell Bikes will also be interested, since the company says that it could deactivate its servers at some point. We hope it will not affect electric assistance and intelligent block.
