Has Sondors Metacycle Bill Come Due?

If you follow the electric motorcycle industry at all, you may have noticed an increase in the amount of negative talk about Sondors and their Metacycle.

Long story short:

• Sondors anounces the Metacycle with lots of hype and fanfare, says it will be released on x date
• Sondors starts taking reservations, based on the bike being released on x date
• Sondors runs into hiccups and pushes x date back
• Sondors doesn’t communicate well with reservation holders
• Sondors starts asking reservation holders to pay for bikes without providing a solid delivery date
• Sondors continues to not communicate well, continues to push delivery date back
• Many reservation holders sour on Sondors, and start online negative rants.

Of course, this story isn’t unique to Sondors, but it is the latest one to play out. This is what happens when a company gambles on the Hype table, doubles down on the “take paid reservations for a product that hasn’t been produced yet” play, then things fall apart.

Will Sondors deliver the Metacycle? Very likely. Will they have happy customers, some even forgiving the company for its past transgressions, probably. But will it take a while for Sondors to recover from this black-eye? Absolutely.

The lesson here, hype is an important part of successful marketing, but as Mordo says in Dr. Strange, “The bill always comes due”.