ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ => Topic started by: zap mc on June 24, 2015, 01:54:20 PM
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As reported here
http://www.octafinance.com/zero-motorcycles-3-53-million-financing-richard-walker-by-jm-lewis-attorney-in-fact-submitted-jun-23-filing/ (http://www.octafinance.com/zero-motorcycles-3-53-million-financing-richard-walker-by-jm-lewis-attorney-in-fact-submitted-jun-23-filing/)
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That sounds like good news. I hope they use the funds for improvements to their new models and not on management salaries. I am sure that they can find some useful suggestions somewhere around here. ;)
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I know nothing about finance, but that doesn't look like Zero took out a loan, I read it that they financed themselves somehow?? What does that even mean? And the balance of the funding -- the $31,000 -- seems like a very specific number. I wonder if it's like a buy-in being offered to somebody or something.
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Invus is Zero's long-term sponsor, so this sounds like business as usual for the two. A big factor of Polaris buying out Brammo is that they never found a long term sponsor, and instead had to go from funding round to funding round. You can read Ted Dillard's articles for more details on that matter.
Also, the author becomes questionable when they say that Zero is based in New York, then give the address of Scotts Valley CA.
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Invis Zero's long-term sponsor, so this sounds like business as usual for the two. A big factor of Polaris buying out Brammo is that they never found a long term sponsor, and instead had to go from funding round to funding round. You can read Ted Dillard's articles for more details on that matter.
Also, the author becomes questionable when they say that Zero is based in New York, then give the address of Scotts Valley CA.
Invus is based in NY. I guess that's where the confusion comes from.
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And latest infusion was December 2018...
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zero-motorcycles
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/invus
Hope the SR/F produces the excitement and sales Zero needs to become self-sustainable.
Looks like they are down to one infusion a year instead of 2-3, so that seems like a good sign,
especially since 2018 would have been a larger than usual R&D spend to get the new platform
ready.
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Wouldn’t it be cheaper for Invus to just give people money for NOT buying a bike?
They should just cut out the middle man and save the trouble of having to buy the bikes back a few years down the line when they break down or catch fire
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I wonder if all of the investors have been paid back over the years, or are hanging on in the hope that the company will be bought out by one of the big established ICE manufacturers some day?
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Most of the $9.7M investment is Invus so they are probably in too deep now to let it go and are in the sunk cost fallacy zone. Who would buy it when it is such a loss making sink hole? It’s never been run as a commercial company because they all know Invus will come along and bail them out instead now they fill up the cash tank with $10M at a time instead of $3.5M. Any proper company would have ditched the archaic air cooling by now and invested in a better system. Only the fact that they have no real competitors keeps them ticking over and gives the illusion that they lead a market of one. They only occupy that space because they can sustain the massive losses longer than anyone else because some Belgian wants to offset the losses on their tax bill
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^ Lots of half-baked assumptions and do I detect a hint of anger toward people with money? ;D
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^ Lots of half-baked assumptions and do I detect a hint of anger toward people with money? ;D
If you want to contribute to the duscusssion of the topic fair enough but please keep your ignorant personal comments to yourself particularly in a public forum
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You seem to have a bad customer experience, and you're not the only one. Why don't open a topic on this explaining what happened, inviting other user to share and proposing solution instead ?
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Thank you for the invitation but I have made a lot of my criticisms previously and don’t really want to be reliving past problems. My issues with Zero are outlined above and concern the fact that many of the problems stem from a general lack of accountability due to the fact that the company is financially supported from outside regardless of how it is operated the staff are free to to underperform or ignore issues with little or no consequences. We have seen the same pattern of behaviour with Brammo, Quantya, Alta ( BRD ) and more recently Bultaco who spent €10M of investors money before going bust. The Electric motorcycle market at this stage seems to be quite simply unsustainable as Zero are technically trading whilst insolvent.
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No one really knows too much about how things are going outside of the company because its private.
If you look at Amazon and how many years it took to turn a profit because they were reinvesting in the company and now they are doing pretty good.
Even Tesla may not make it on their own for say 15 more years we'll see.
Zero has three big issues in my opinion that are fixable.
1. Lack of public knowledge. Most people I talk to have never even heard of them. The press that HD gets may help get the word out as the media makes comparisons.
2. The lack of tech/maintenance support to customers and dealers in a timely manner and dropping under preforming parts and suppliers sooner (chargers). It takes money to fund an expanded support staff and the quickest way to do it without a big loan is move the company out of CA. Leave the HQ offices and RD there if they believe that is the only place they can find EEs with the knowledge for their products.
3. Sales price. The main factory/tech support center should come to the east coast, southeast coast to get really cheap, and get the operating costs down to fund bigger productions and parts buys. They would be closer to Europe which has a much bigger thirst for electric powered vehicles with better charging infrastructure and super high gas prices. A 365 support staff from the savings and a middle timezone operation for both west coast and Europe.
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I would add lack a dealers network management : basically they focus on sales, and keep bad dealer that do hard-selling and over promise.
This is not how a professional company behaves, but typical of an engineer company : focus on the product, not on the customer.
No one really knows too much about how things are going outside of the company because its private.
If you look at Amazon and how many years it took to turn a profit because they were reinvesting in the company and now they are doing pretty good.
Even Tesla may not make it on their own for say 15 more years we'll see.
Zero has three big issues in my opinion that are fixable.
1. Lack of public knowledge. Most people I talk to have never even heard of them. The press that HD gets may help get the word out as the media makes comparisons.
2. The lack of tech/maintenance support to customers and dealers in a timely manner and dropping under preforming parts and suppliers sooner (chargers). It takes money to fund an expanded support staff and the quickest way to do it without a big loan is move the company out of CA. Leave the HQ offices and RD there if they believe that is the only place they can find EEs with the knowledge for their products.
3. Sales price. The main factory/tech support center should come to the east coast, southeast coast to get really cheap, and get the operating costs down to fund bigger productions and parts buys. They would be closer to Europe which has a much bigger thirst for electric powered vehicles with better charging infrastructure and super high gas prices. A 365 support staff from the savings and a middle timezone operation for both west coast and Europe.
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No one really knows too much about how things are going outside of the company because its private.
The investment sub forum here is inactive
The links in post 5 have some information
These computers or smart phones come with calculators.
1000 bikes profit of $4000 per bike (just to put in a #)=4 million
101-250 employees say 125 employees $45,000 a year average medical insurance workmans comp etc included= approx. 5 5/8 million
Total funding amount 95.7 million from link in post 5
Just my own feeling take a company that quoted here " Since inception, Zero Motorcycles, Inc. (formerly Electricross)" and recently hired a CEO from a candy company supposedly some marketing expert, has got to be demoralizing for a bunch of the originals if they exist.
It must be an enthusiast thing more than a business plan unless I am missing something.
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No one really knows too much about how things are going outside of the company because its private.
The investment sub forum here is inactive
The links in post 5 have some information
These computers or smart phones come with calculators.
1000 bikes profit of $4000 per bike (just to put in a #)=4 million
101-250 employees say 125 employees $45,000 a year average medical insurance workmans comp etc included= approx. 5 5/8 million
Total funding amount 95.7 million from link in post 5
Just my own feeling take a company that quoted here " Since inception, Zero Motorcycles, Inc. (formerly Electricross)" and recently hired a CEO from a candy company supposedly some marketing expert, has got to be demoralizing for a bunch of the originals if they exist.
It must be an enthusiast thing more than a business plan unless I am missing something.
Zero apparently has about 200 employees, most are likely well-paid engineers. In the SF Bay Area you can hardly get a janitor to work for $45K a year. I heard recently that the typical Google or Facebook employee makes about $250K. So I would up your estimated employee cost. ;)
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Richard they're probably partially paid in stocks.
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Zero does not pay "giant tech company" salaries, and seems to use subcontracting to delegate expertise it doesn't need in-house full-time.
It is reasonable to be concerned about Zero's investment outlook, but I wouldn't worry that much. Zero's been a pretty cheap deal as a vehicle startup. Revenue as number of bikes (10,000) times sale price minus dealer share means they aren't just throwing money down a hole.
Also, SR/F R&D probably takes up a considerable part of the loans granted over the last few years. I'd guess that some form of SR/F R&D has been going on in earnest since 2015.
The concept is to sell a small range of vehicles at enough scale per year that the component costs and manufacturing overhead goes down strictly from an order batch size perspective. THEN it'd be profitable. Zero is the company closest to proving that for electric motorcycles.
BMW is the next closest with its C-Evolution scooter that matches the i3 car powerplant and battery architecture to the existing maxi-scooter form factor and components.
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> ... BMW is the next closest with its C-Evolution scooter that matches the i3 car powerplant and battery architecture to the existing maxi-scooter form factor and components.
Oh, that got me searching the web.
I found elsewhere the tidbit that "the C Evo and I3 share componentry and are built in the same German factory"
Very interesting. Good to see the potential of e-motos benefiting from the economies of scale of the much larger auto market.
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BMW C3 is well ahead of zero for sales (10x in Europe). Then comes small e-scooters makers and Zero.
Zero does not pay "giant tech company" salaries, and seems to use subcontracting to delegate expertise it doesn't need in-house full-time.
It is reasonable to be concerned about Zero's investment outlook, but I wouldn't worry that much. Zero's been a pretty cheap deal as a vehicle startup. Revenue as number of bikes (10,000) times sale price minus dealer share means they aren't just throwing money down a hole.
Also, SR/F R&D probably takes up a considerable part of the loans granted over the last few years. I'd guess that some form of SR/F R&D has been going on in earnest since 2015.
The concept is to sell a small range of vehicles at enough scale per year that the component costs and manufacturing overhead goes down strictly from an order batch size perspective. THEN it'd be profitable. Zero is the company closest to proving that for electric motorcycles.
BMW is the next closest with its C-Evolution scooter that matches the i3 car powerplant and battery architecture to the existing maxi-scooter form factor and components.
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No one really knows too much about how things are going outside of the company because its private.
If you look at Amazon and how many years it took to turn a profit because they were reinvesting in the company and now they are doing pretty good.
Even Tesla may not make it on their own for say 15 more years we'll see.
Zero has three big issues in my opinion that are fixable.
1. Lack of public knowledge. Most people I talk to have never even heard of them. The press that HD gets may help get the word out as the media makes comparisons.
2. The lack of tech/maintenance support to customers and dealers in a timely manner and dropping under preforming parts and suppliers sooner (chargers). It takes money to fund an expanded support staff and the quickest way to do it without a big loan is move the company out of CA. Leave the HQ offices and RD there if they believe that is the only place they can find EEs with the knowledge for their products.
3. Sales price. The main factory/tech support center should come to the east coast, southeast coast to get really cheap, and get the operating costs down to fund bigger productions and parts buys. They would be closer to Europe which has a much bigger thirst for electric powered vehicles with better charging infrastructure and super high gas prices. A 365 support staff from the savings and a middle timezone operation for both west coast and Europe.
Keep in mind that the bulk of Amazon's profit isn't even coming from a division that existed when it first started, and was created as an offshoot of their own internal re-engineering to share their exposure to the costs of operating physical servers in a data center. (AWS) From that basis, they were able to build unique products, and an entire industry was born.
I think Zero will find profit from things like their high-density battery monolith and motor being used in other vendors' compact EVs. That's somewhat the "Lightning" model, but there's more to Zero than their own existing product line.
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Richard they're probably partially paid in stocks.
When my son-in-law started working (as employee no. 1) for a small start-up company, he purchased stock in the company. He still has the stock and the company has morphed into another startup. Naturally, the company remains privately-held. Last year, he tried to sell his stocks back the the CEO when he and my daughter were buying their home, but none of the current stockholders were interesting in buying his stock. So much for the liquidity of stock in a private company. If it was me, I would prefer a raise, rather than getting stock. I might also add that he does make a pretty decent salary, but it still takes two well-paying jobs to own a home in the SF Bay Area. :(
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Zero needs far more than $3.5 million to cover its losses. Anyone who rides a Zero knows the sudden shut-downs, "unexpected" motor braking, and chargers that fail one after another. My first battery was replaced at 17,300 miles. I'm now at 35,844 and I can't accelerate past 75-80mph and my range has dropped to 50-55 miles from around 70 miles when new. Dealer tells me there are two bad cells, Zero tells me not to ride or charge and it'll take 2-3 months to get me a battery because they're all out. Weren't the batteries advertised as 80% at like 350,000 - 400,000 miles!
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Zero needs far more than $3.5 million to cover its losses. Anyone who rides a Zero knows the sudden shut-downs, "unexpected" motor braking, and chargers that fail one after another. My first battery was replaced at 17,300 miles. I'm now at 35,844 and I can't accelerate past 75-80mph and my range has dropped to 50-55 miles from around 70 miles when new. Dealer tells me there are two bad cells, Zero tells me not to ride or charge and it'll take 2-3 months to get me a battery because they're all out. Weren't the batteries advertised as 80% at like 350,000 - 400,000 miles!
I don't know about you, but I never believed that 350-400K mile specification, which was contained in their 2017 paper brochure for the S with PT ridden at city speeds, for a minute. But then I never planned to ride that long, much less keeping my Zero until that mileage was reached.
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\Weren't the batteries advertised as 80% at like 350,000 - 400,000 miles!
The FX modular with one battery, the lightest way to get into Zero was in the range of 80,000 miles. What you print is likely for the top of the line stuff.
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Dynomutt: The Amazon example was more to the fact they were unknown and doing something that hadn't been done before. Old style financial analysis kept harping on the fact there was no profit from selling books online but they missed the bigger picture from what it could be.
I agree using their components for other uses could be a nice money maker. Plus the new faster charging SRF platform could really make fleet sales an unbeatable option for cops or small delivery uses (500lbs carry). Why they haven't made a work/play quad yet is beyond me.
But as for what a company can do when they cut their operating and overhead costs. Cutting Tesla stores in this case. Here is an article about Tesla dropping their high end prices by closing Tesla stores and of course other cost savings in production of batteries and manufacturing.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/01/tesla-model-s-x-price-cuts/?yptr=yahoo
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Dynomutt: The Amazon example was more to the fact they were unknown and doing something that hadn't been done before. Old style financial analysis kept harping on the fact there was no profit from selling books online but they missed the bigger picture from what it could be.
I agree using their components for other uses could be a nice money maker. Plus the new faster charging SRF platform could really make fleet sales an unbeatable option for cops or small delivery uses (500lbs carry). Why they haven't made a work/play quad yet is beyond me.
But as for what a company can do when they cut their operating and overhead costs. Cutting Tesla stores in this case. Here is an article about Tesla dropping their high end prices by closing Tesla stores and of course other cost savings in production of batteries and manufacturing.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/01/tesla-model-s-x-price-cuts/?yptr=yahoo
I can see how Tesla can save money by closing their retail stores, but what about after-sales service, such as warranty, vehicle service, repairs, and other things that customers return to their dealership for? ??? Can you imagine having to deal directly with Zero without having a franchised dealership running interference for you? ::) And then you have the states that refuse to let you purchase a vehicle over the internet and require all vehicle sales to be through a franchised dealership. ??? This is going to be interesting. ;)
CSC sells small motorcycles via internet sales and ships them to you in a box. If you need service or repairs you can take them to a nearby established motorcycle shop. But apparently those Chinese motorcycles are easy to work on for any experienced motorcycle mechanic. Teslas though are a different story.
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I'd love a Zero tech coming to the house if needed. :)
I don't know that those Tesla stores were anything other than a display setup but I've never been to one so maybe they had a lift bay in the back. Makes me wonder if something else is up? A partnership with another dealer network for service?
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To my knowledge, Tesla showrooms and service centers have always been separate. The place where I work is 1/2 a block from a Tesla service center, and the only way you'd know that is by the dozens of Teslas parked around. So shutting down the showrooms will have little if any impact on getting service. The showroom is downtown where property is far more expensive, and where you need to be to attract customers.
Unless, maybe, you're Tesla. Maybe they think they don't really need to attract customers. To this day (AFAIK) they haven't paid for a single advertisement in any medium.
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Tesla did say they would be hiring more techs with part of this savings as well. So yeah Zero find money through cost cutting and up the tech staff.
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Unless, maybe, you're Tesla. Maybe they think they don't really need to attract customers. To this day (AFAIK) they haven't paid for a single advertisement in any medium.
That is interesting. I didn't know that. I guess Tesla is depending upon the general press to advertise their vehicles for free. There seems to be at least one article in my newspaper regarding Tesla every week.
Zero ads, on the other hand, seem to show up on all of the internet forums that I visit. ;)
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Dynomutt: The Amazon example was more to the fact they were unknown and doing something that hadn't been done before. Old style financial analysis kept harping on the fact there was no profit from selling books online but they missed the bigger picture from what it could be.
I agree using their components for other uses could be a nice money maker. Plus the new faster charging SRF platform could really make fleet sales an unbeatable option for cops or small delivery uses (500lbs carry). Why they haven't made a work/play quad yet is beyond me.
But as for what a company can do when they cut their operating and overhead costs. Cutting Tesla stores in this case. Here is an article about Tesla dropping their high end prices by closing Tesla stores and of course other cost savings in production of batteries and manufacturing.
https://www.engadget.com/2019/03/01/tesla-model-s-x-price-cuts/?yptr=yahoo
Tesla is different from Zero in that Tesla from the beginning had no desire to play ball with the existing power structure (dealership) and instead did all they could to disrupt and subvert. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but it looks like Tesla has run out of piss and vinegar on that. Zero OTOH is playing ball with the existing structure to try to build a network. Apples and oranges.