Nordic Bikes / Mid Motor Drive Update / L1e-A Certification / Batch 4

Hello Backers,

Nordic Bikes

The nordic bikes are in the home stretch. These will be arriving soon and will be contacting all the backers individually about their bikes to ensure that the right bike gets to you as soon as possible after your extremely patient wait. The good news is that summer seems to have arrived to the nordics and Stark Drive will get to you to where you are going in the sun. For those that backed a fat tire bike, we would love some shots on the beach if you happen to live near one. Along with the nordic bikes we will be sending out bikes to several other countries which would have been very difficult to ship to otherwise such as Norway, Iceland, Isreal, Turkey, and several others. If you have not been notified of a tracking number for your bike as of yet, it means that your bike will be sent to you soon.

Mid Motor Drive Update

Development on the mid motor drive is going well with the prototypes being manufactured now. We have opted for a Bafang Motor system (not just the motor but the entire system inclusive bike computer, controller etc designed to work together) to ensure complete compatibility. We hope to receive these with the batch 3 bikes for testing and final confirmation. once again our price target for Stark Drive Torque is under the 1000 USD mark, making it the most affordable folding mid motor drive electric bike in the world. Stark Drive Torque is the sportier cousin of Stark Drive with better hill responsiveness.

L1e-A Certification

Being an american based company we are abliged to follow regulations that are set out for us in the US which takes into account the correct parameters when imposing limitations on electric bikes. the regulations in the US allow you to have up to a 500w Motor so long as the maximum speed does not exceed the prescribed maximums. From this perspective the EU systems are a bit outdated as they have limited the motor power instead of limiting the maximum speed. Not very logical from our perspective but we hope that regulators in the EU will soon see the error of their ways.

That being said, we still believe that there are some backers out there that need 'more power' and based on this we have now formally filed for the EU standard L1e-A certification which will enable us to ship up to a 1000W motor based Stark Drive (be it hub motor or mid motor driven) anywhere in the EU. There are special criteria for this certification which i will not delve into now however we will in short order introduce the original Stark Drive to include options for 750W and 1000W hub motors in addition to the original 250W, 350W, and 500W. This also means that if you are in an especially strict country which does not let you ride anything higher then 250W and part of the EU, then with some minor modifications, your ride will now be perfectly legal in your region. The certification is not something we believed we needed to have from the start but we see the writing on the wall and that this is the way the entire industry is moving.

Batch 3 / 4

Batch 3 is anticipated to be complete end of May and we anticipate them leaving china mid June (as it takes some time to get them to the port, load them etc). Batch 4 backing is moving along and we hope to close this batch in the coming weeks. Updates on these batches will come as we learn more.

Sincerely

Oscar
CEO, Stark Drive LLC