Libel Lawsuit Filed In Denmark Against Our Lovely Competitor Mate.Bike

Hello Everyone,

When we originally started the process of trying to build and supply a super affordable electric bike to the world, I never in our wildest dreams anticipated that it would end up with me having to fly across the world to get answers for a sudden and unexplained cancellation of our project, neither did I (or my team) anticipate that we would be tortiously interfered with having our super successful crowdfunding campaign cancelled.

Its strikes us,as very odd that if one was really interested in the environment, helping people with sustainable transport, and removing the financial barriers that have been the norm in the electric bike industry for the last several years, that one would be opposed to as many participants as possible in the electric bike market with the sole aim of helping to flood the market with electric bikes which in itself would help to put pricing pressure on the well established and slow moving incumbents that have languished on their fat profit margins for so long.

Its not fair.

Imagine if flying were only the domain of the rich, there goes sun vacations, visiting relatives in distant lands or even experiencing the sheer wonder and beauty that the world has to offer.

Imagine if vehicles were only left to the rich, this was abolished quite quickly with Mr Ford building a car for the masses at affordable prices. It pleases us that some journalists have compared us to the Ford of electric bikes.

Imagine if medical care were only left to the rich. Granted some countries do have very high costs for medical care but conversely those most populous countries in the world have excellent systems in place to treat their huge populations.

By the same vein, my personal idol Mr Elon Musk has what a decade ago would have seemed like aspirations fit for someone to enter a psychiatric ward, wanting to lower the cost barrier of entry into space so that the common man could afford it (albeit, a fairly wealthy common man with approx. 200.000 USD in his pocket).

At Stark Drive, we are not interested in becoming rich from the sales of our electric bikes, our goal is to be an enabler; an enabler that allows anyone no matter from what class or social standing to be able to get and use an electric bike. No country should know this better then Denmark which according to an informative literary work that I have had the pleasure of devouring (The Almost Nearly Perfect People: The Truth About the Nordic Miracle by Michael Booth), Denmark prides itself on all people being equal no matter what their occupation or social standing. Taking into consideration the analysis provided in this novel (by a non danish person whom has lived in Denmark for over a decade) it struck me as very odd the behavior of what i affectionally call 'our competition'.

• Was the existence of another electric bike company going to cause them harm?
• What would be the benefit of badmouthing other electric bike companies publicly not only on indiegogo but other websites where articles had been written about us?
• What is the business philosophy of our competitor?
• What are the aspirations of our competition?
• Wholesome competition is of course good for driving down prices, we embrace such competition.

According to this informative novel which i recommend everyone interested in the history and current status of Scandinavians, Danish people are beacons of trust and according to an economist named Bjørnskov, Danish Trust saves the Justice system 15,000 DKK per person per year. For example they did an experiment in 1996 Readers Digest by dropping wallets in the Danish central train station and only two countries were all 40 wallets that they dropped returned, Denmark and Norway. Furthermore, according to a 2011 OECD survey, 88.3 per cent of danes expressed a high level of trust in others, more then any other nationality. (Note all this information is from the book mentioned above page 72, and 78 in the ebook).

Well, we have come a long way since 1996 it seems. Trust is no longer the status quo from what we at Stark Drive have noticed, at least when it comes to our competition in Denmark and their legal representation.

Many of you may be aware that they had our Indiegogo project cancelled after having raised a little shy of 300.000 USD in a little under a week. We were well on track to surpassing the highest crowdfunded project in Sweden, until a fraudulent DMCA notice was sent to Indiegogo.

We were also the victims of horrendous libieilous statements made not only on their Indiegogo page under the comments section but also on several of the websites where stark drive was written about in their respective comments sections. We know it was them due to the errors in english they made which are common language errors made by Danish speakers, as well as IP address information.

Its counterproductive to pay a bunch of lawyers to hash things out in court, we know this but that being said, should we compromise our integrity and stand by while a rapacious few try to limit the availability of technology to those that would otherwise not be able to afford it?

Stage one is the public apology from our competition after what will probably be a lengthy and counterproductive legal battle.
(to the effect of helping to enable the supply of electric bikes at least).

Stage two will be the lawsuit for tortious interference.

The irony of the situation is not lost on us here at Stark Drive. We are well on our way to delivering Stark Drive to our backers a mere couple of months after our campaign ended whereas our competition has not delivered to many of their backers for the better parts of a year with promises every few months that the deliveries will arrive. Yet we were called a scam? Strange but anyways, one positive note is that there are several thousand more electric bike enthusiasts in the world and hopefully this enthusiasm is contagious.

Oh, and check out trustpilot: https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.mate.bike

Seems a number of not so positive reviews keep disappearing with only positive ones remaining.

With ♡ from 

Stark Drive Team
Stark Drive LLC