Necessity is the Mother of Invention

Many people who travel want to be able to bring their electric bikes with them but with the current regulations by the FAA and carriers worldwide they can unfortunately not bring their electric bikes on the flight due to the batteries exceeding the limit of 160WH, a strict limit that is imposed which enables one to bring even a large laptop with equally powerful battery on board (as well as a spare) but this limit generally restricts electric bike owners from bringing their batteries when they travel. 

Due to the light weight of Stark Drive Mini and its compact size, its the perfect bike to bring with you anywhere you travel be it by boat, train, bus, subway, or even by air.  At Stark Drive we have developed a unique battery pack that stays within the imposed limits for air carriers so that you can bring you batteries on board and stow your bike as checked luggage at the same time. 

Having the freedom to use Stark Drive Mini wherever you travel has enabled a lot of our customers to enjoy their surroundings while on vacation and we will continue to develop products that benefit our customers so that they dont have to change their lifestyles no matter where they travel. 

A new batch of Airline Compliant Stark Drive Mini Batteries

We pay for Ideas! 

If you have any ideas which would make your electric bike better we would love to hear from you, email us at hello@starkdrive.com and we will even pay you for ideas if we decide to implement them in our wide range of electric bikes.

Hello Stark Drive Enthusiasts !

After a long delay due to uncontrollable events we are finally making real headway to shipping Stark Drive Torque. The Process to mass produce (even in boutique quantities) requires the factory that produces our unique and 'design registered' frames requires unique moulds to be produced and regimented tooling so that every frame is designed perfectly to our specifications. with the smaller quantity that we produced for this pre order opportunity, it meant a trade off with time to fit us into an unused factory slot. 

Here the frame is positioned for final welding with Tack-welds to hold the frame in the proper position.  After this stage the final welding is completed to strengthen all connections on the frame.

Here is a sample of our batch, ready for the final components to be added.

Of course you may be wondering to yourself at this point, how do you get the battery in there? Wasn't this bike supposed to be a folding bike, you would be correct. the folding brackets are added after the frame has been completed as well as all the required holes for access to the inside of the frame

The battery production has gone on concurrently and is way ahead of the manufacturing of the frames at this point which means there will be no delay when the frames are completed.  The next step for the frames is several layers of paint  and then it heads off to our partners for final assembly.  We hope to have video of the assembly process for you soon and of course of the boxing. 

Those of you whom have ordered torque will soon be receiving your final invoices to cover the remaining costs for the unique configurations that you have selected.  If you have to update your address or other contact information you can do so at this point.  We will then be sending them by container ship to your respective addresses with an estimated 30 day travel time to your door all taxes paid. 

Torque, like all of our other bikes is designed like lego enabling you to add or remove components as you require them.  

This is the first bike that we know of in the world that is a mid motor folding electric bike, it will enable you to easily take your bike on public transport or store it securely in your home fitting into even the tiniest of elevators.

Future Goals and Company Direction

We at Stark Drive believe in ICE free transportation as is quite apparent with our selection of electric bicycles however there are times that you are in an area where a bicycle just won't do and you need some other form of transport, perhaps one that does not require trails or roadways.  We look to the sky to enable fast efficient fossil fuel free transport which will not only get you from point a to point b in a straight line but save you time and be the most fun you can have getting there. 

Stay Tuned.

Hello Stark Drive Enthusiasts!

We are excited that our Torque Bike frames are nearing completion and final assembly is inevitable.  We have a smaller run than normal for this batch of boutique Torque Bikes (Both Regular and Fat tire Variants).  As such we have had to wait a little bit longer for frame manufacturing to complete but we are in the home stretch now and expect to be shipping in June.  

For those of you lucky enough to secure one of these limited run units, we will be in contact shortly with you to finalize your payment taking into account the deposits that you have already placed. 

Also some good news! we have a limited number of fully loaded Torque units available that were produced in excess for us to use in testing and promotion and we are able to offer these to a very lucky few that are interested.  

if you are interested in one of these few units, you can place your deposit here and we will be in contact with you shortly. 

A review of Stark Drive Torque:

Promotional Video:

Sincerely

Stark Drive Team
Stark Drive LLC

Hello!

we are so excited to be sharing this production, testing and boxing video of our latest batch of Stark Drive Electric bikes.  

The new generation of Stark Drive has been upgraded from the ground up with:

• New Color display on all units
• Upgraded Front Shocks
• Upgraded Disc Brakes
• Next Generation Upgraded Geared Hub Motor

Its been a long road to get these bikes out to our customers due to delays that were out of our control however the final result was more than worth it and we are very impressed with the determination and perseverance of our team in China that helped us through these difficult times.

Stark Drive Torque is still undergoing manufacturing, the frames are supposed to be complete this week and we hope to post a similar type of video on these next generation, patented, unique, and powerful bikes. 

Note that we have a few extra Stark Drive bikes of all models including Stark Drive Mini as well as  accessories available if you want to get your bike ready for the summer season. 

Stock bikes ready to ship:

www.starkdrive.bike/stock 

Accessories ready to ship:

https://starkdrive.bike/access...

Sincerely

Stark Drive Team

Good News

Final assembly of Stark Drive (non-torque) is under final assembly and testing. 

We expect these to ship by the end of April or early May. 

Stark Drive Torque custom frames are being completed and should be in the Assembly phase by early to mid may.  

Stark Drive Available

We have a few Units of Stark Drive City, City+ and Advanced available for immediate shipping from excess that we manufactured in this batch.

Stark Drive Torque Available

We have two units of Stark Drive Torque available for immediate purchase as part of that batch, you can pay the deposit here: https://starkdrive.bike/stock/...

Stark Drive Mini

We have 2 units of Stark Drive Mini available for immediate shipping here: https://starkdrive.bike/stock/...

Thank you

Stark Drive Team

hello,

We are happy to announce that manufacturing of Stark Drive and Stark Drive Torque are proceeding for those that ordered late 2021 and early 2022 of this year.  The global pandemic has affected all areas of our manufacturing process from sourcing materials, to batteries for our powerpacks as well as final assembly.  We are cautiously optimistic as the whole process which we had refined to run like a well oiled machine has become more circumspect due to the issues that have been caused not the least of which is the stringent chinese government policy of 0 covid meaning that entire districts if not cities of millions of people are closed down if a case is detected.  at the time of writing this post the latest was shanghai.  

Below you can see some content of production and we plan to ship all standard Stark Drive models mid april with all Torque models shipping by the end of April. 

Of note is that we have a few extra Torque models that we had ordered for review and demonstration testing for our partners and these are new and ready for sale meaning that if you purchase the 'reservation here: https://starkdrive.bike/stock/... you are able to then have it ship at the same time.

we also have several Stark Drive Mini units ready to go all tested and boxed.

Hello Everyone,

With the rising prices worldwide for the cost of materials we were working hard here at Stark Drive to keep our pricing stable and held out as long as we could but the final straw was the seemingly now permanent shipping cost increases that we were subsidizing up to now.  

Any purchase that was made before the price increase will be honored and shipped however any future orders will be at now at our new pricing structure. 

While we hope to keep this new pricing for an extended term, with the global economic situation, we are unsure how long these new prices will remain before we are forced to once again adjust our pricing again.  

Sincerely

Stark Drive Team
Stark Drive LLC

The Launch of Stark Drive

Stark Drive originally launched our unbelievably affordable and configurable electric bike on Indiegogo in February 2017.  We were immediately criticized for being a 'scam' and that our bike must have been made of 'plastic' by a notable competitor Mate.bike whom had launched their electric bike several months prior on the same platform.  Our launch must have been concerning to them as our bike was approximately half the price of their bike with a similar folding frame style. 

A week later our campaign on indiegogo was cancelled and all funds refunded to our backers, at the time this was several hundred thousand dollars.  Indiegogo at the time never contacted our team to inquire about any issues or questions that they had with our product and in fact we had been cajoled originally by indiegogo to use their platform for our product with months of back and forth with their team to hone and refine our launch to ensure success.  

Indiegogo broke off all contact with Stark Drive and would not respond to any messages. 

As you can imagine this was a devastating turn of events for our team considering the over year long concerted effort that went into all the preparations in designing our ebike, not to mention the time spent on sourcing, contracts with our assembly partners, website design, advertising....the list goes on.

This seemed to be something of a personal vendetta from one of the founders of Mate.bike: Christian Adel Michael whom even reached out to our CEO Oscar Stark on facebook and told us that we should not launch that we had no idea about budgeting and that we were going to run into patent issues

Right Christian, patent issues on a bike that had been open source since around 2011 if not earlier and sold under various brand names around the world, not unlike the Mate or Mate X. 

We took the rather unorthodox matter into his own hands and actually booked a trip to New York and went directly to Indiegogo's offices there in order to discuss 'launching an electric bike' on their platform, unannounced and without any meeting booked.

It was finally after this meeting that we heard from Indiegogo and they revealed WHY our campaign had been cancelled.  Mate.bike International Aps used their lawyer to send a DMCA notice to indiegogo claiming we infringed on their 'patents'.  These non-existent patents were not confirmed nor investigated before the platform took action to end our campaign and Christian ecstatic with the result even reached to Oscar again on facebook to gloat before blocking him.

Suffice to say, we did not give up there. After retooling our website we launched starkdrive.bike as a crowdfunding venture from our own website.  While the traffic to our website is nowhere near what Indiegogo would receive in a typical day, our sales exploded and Stark Drive was alive again. 

A few months later, we finally started delivering our electric bikes and ironically if what we have heard from the grapevine is correct we actually delivered our first Stark Drive batch before Mate had shipped their bikes out which had been delayed over a year from their originally delivery date 

While in the playground that would have been the end of it, unfortunately for Mate and Christian, we are adults running companies and when you tortuously interfere with a company there are repercussions. 

Check out this short 10 page history in graphical form below.  You are welcome to download it and spread the word.  

Stark Drive History Volume 1

Merry Christmas and All the Best for the New Year From Stark Drive!

we are pleased to announce that the limited edition Stark Drive Torque - Limited to 50 units has started production and is on track to ship with delivery early spring to all of our pre order customers that have opted to purchase this unique Mid Motor Bafang based Folding Torque Sensing Bike.  That was a mouthful even to write but the utility and novelty of this bike can not be overstated.  There exists nothing on the market that is comparable to this custom built and patented design that we are manufacturing at this time. 

We wanted to manufacture something that was not based on an 'open mould' design like so many of our competitors do on the market.  We at Stark Drive had our start in this fashion as well with the original Stark Drive electric bike which was based on an open mould design.  What we did differently at the time however was the ability to customize your bike from the ground up starting with just a PAS motor based bike and up to adding such enhancements such as the throttle, larger battery packs, and even cruise control on the bike. 

We wanted to take a different approach with Stark Drive Torque and add features that you would normally not see on bikes that cost 4-5x the base price of Torque such as Fingerprint recognition unlocking. NFC charging for your mobile phone and using the most powerful mid motors that are available on the market such as the Bafang m620 which, due to its incredibly well built components have seen some 'overclockers' out there in the blogosphere enhance the power output on this motor to 2500w and above. 

In the coming weeks, we will be posting images and possibly video of the production process and how we are coming along with completing these very unique bikes.  If you were one of the lucky ones that found the pre order page on our stock link www.starkdrive.bike/stock you can follow along with us as we manufacture these bikes. 

As always we remain available to answer any questions on the 'chat' function on our website as well as by email hello@starkdrive.com and our US toll free number.  

If you are interested in getting a torque based bike, we have gone ahead and manufactured a few 'extra' units that are destined for reviewers but we may be convinced to send one of these to you instead. 

Thank you

Stark Drive Team
Stark Drive LLC.

The history between Paypal and Stark Drive

When we originally launched our crowdfunding campaign through our website after the tortious interference caused by our competitor on Indiegogo by Mate.bike whom use their lawyers to cancel our campaign on that platform, lawsuit still ongoing, we shifted our crowdfunding campaign to our own website to launch the original Stark Drive in April 2017. 

Our terms of backing were identical to those of platforms such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter with a donation and rewards based system. In fact, in order to process the payment, the backer would need to confirm their understanding of the crowdfunding system by clicking a checkbox at the last phase of the backing process before payment was processed.

Paypal renegs on their own Terms and Conditions

Paypal's terms and conditions on crowdfunding are exceptionally clear and have not changed since 2017 to the best of our knowledge, they do not cover 'not received' claims for any crowdfunding or donation based systems which is logical seeing as how there is no purchase actually being made, this is one way that bad actors are able to steal millions of dollars from hopeful and altruistic backers whom believe in campaign owners on such platforms.  Stark Drive is not one of those bad actors, although we have not been without unexpected situations that needed to be overcome over the course of our original launch. 

Stark Drive persevered and while it took us longer than expected to deliver our original first batch of bikes, we did deliver. Paypal whom we viewed as partner became yet another hindrance for us when they started to refund backers, whom had actually received their bikes eventually, even though they were later than anticipated, as well as limiting our account meaning that we suddenly had no ability to pay our suppliers as funds were frozen on their platform.

How to Sue a Global Company and Win?

Paypal is a US Based company as is Stark Drive.  We found the way to minimize risk for our company while still being able to take this behemoth to task for their (unscrupulous) behavior and how they harmed our company through small claims court.  While the limit in this court is fairly low, it does serve as a precedent and is prejudicial when a decision is reached.  Paypal tried to deflect the suit claiming that we were 'selling' bikes not crowdfunding them at the time, all over our website as well as the launch video on the site, it was clear that Stark Drive launched through crowdfunding.  Not only that but the payments would not be able to be processed without clicking the checkbox which appeared during our crowdfunding below:

The trial occurred via video conference due to the ongoing pandemic and after 7 hours of waiting for our turn to present our case and a 1 hour trial, Stark Drive was victorious in the eyes of the honorable Judge whom awarded us full damages as claimed in this case.  Paypals legal representation pulled out all the stops including trying to deflect the fact that we were clearly crowdfunding when we launched and instead pointing to other terms and conditions in their user agreement such as needing signature confirmation of delivery for 'purchases' over $750 as well as their own backend not registering the fact that we were crowdfunding in the data that was sent to them when the customer wished to complete their order, trying to deflect the fact that to even get to the stage where payment is processed the customer 'MUST' click on the checkbox agreeing that they understand this was crowdfunding. 

A very satisfactory result for Stark Drive and it goes to demonstrate that no matter if its a David vs Goliath situation, if you have the truth on your side you will prevail.  

Paypal: if you are reading this, we will be expecting payment for your loss shortly, our accounting team will be in touch. 

Sincerely

STARK DRIVE TEAM
stark drive LLC.