Premium electric motorbike company Super73 is one of the most successful businesses to come out of a Kickstarter campaign. Their ebike funding campaign under Lithium Cycles launched and ended in 2016 and raised $441,461 from 293 backers, a well overachieved amount for a $25,000 goal. Super73’s initial product, self-titled the Super73, was completely hand-built and constructed by a small team in Orange County, California with its design heavily inspired by vintage motorcycles, moped, and mini bikes made popular in the 1970s.
Super73 co-founder Jon Akers was just finishing his master’s degree in the field of engineering at Lehigh University when he came up with the ebike concept. “We love bikes, and our goal was to design a new type of electric bike that combined cutting-edge technology with design inspiration from the past,” said Akers.
By 2017, Super73 started to gain even more traction as celebrities like movie-star Will Smith and YouTube-star Casey Neistat were recording and sharing their own Super73 rides on social media. Later that year the ebike company was ready to launch their first full production vehicle that was offered globally. A couple years down the line, their product line has now expanded to three series of bikes, R-Series, S-Series, and Z-Series — and that’s not mentioning the special editions that have come along the way.
Some outstanding features and specifications of the original Super73 ebike include a top speed of just over 25mph thanks to a 1000 watt motor. Side note: to those who are worried if a license is required, it is not! The tires are 4.25 inches wide, good to ride on any terrain. Critics have highlighted some of the issues of these earlier models as they lacked suspension, but in 2020 Super73 had upgraded the build quality of their ebikes with the R model that included full suspension on the front and rear wheels.
Ebikes in the Forseeable Future
Earlier this year the Super73 team announced they raised a whopping $20 million from investors, led by Volition Capital. Super73’s CEO and co-founder LeGrand Crewse stated they plan on using the new funds to grow staff, expand product lineup, and improve operations in its customer service. With a boom in popularity due to the pandemic since early last year, $4.1 billion worth of bikes were sold in the US between January and October 2020, according to retail tracking NPD Group. That’s a 62% increase over the same period in 2019. Ebikes were even more popular and had a staggering 144% increase year over year with $490 million in US sales. In a report last year, consulting firm Deloitte estimated that the number of ebikes in circulation worldwide would reach 300 million by 2023, a 50% increase over the 200 million from 2019.
Crewse plans to expand Super73 by rolling out new products in the near future. There was no mention exactly what they were currently working on but we are excited to get our hands onto anything two-wheeled that comes out of Super73’s ebike factory.