If you’ve got a Fiido X electric bike at home, now you have a pretty magnesium sculpture. That’s because the company has issued an urgent notice for owners to stop using the e-bike after a frame defect has been discovered that causes the bike to break in two.
The Fiido X electric bike was first unveiled last summer before launching a successful Indiegogo campaign. There it raised over 1 million dollars when the $1,999 electric bike initially pre-sold for a discounted $1,099 price.
The folding design of the bike uses a magnesium alloy frame with a low-profile folding mechanism.
The design is much sleeker than most folding e-bike frames, but that fancy design apparently came at a cost: strength.
Multiple Fiido X electric bikes have reportedly shown worrying fatigue marks in the folding area, with more than one actually breaking in half at the joint.
Fiido, the Hong Kong-based manufacturer of the e-bike, said that it suspended the sale of the Fiido X model after receiving the first report of a defective frame earlier this week.
After “more stringent tests” performed in a testing lab, the company confirmed the defective nature of the frame and provided a statement urging current riders to stop using the e-bikes.
The company has promised more details to follow by early next week, including recall details, a “user protection plan” and a deeper technical analysis of the issue.
While the company is of course initially focusing on the safety of riders by urging a discontinuation of use of the e-bike, they also assure that affected owners will be compensated based on details that are yet to be released.
Electrek reached out to multiple contacts at Fiido and received direct responses from both the PR team and the company’s CTO confirming the details listed above and ensuring that more information would follow by April 12.
Electrek’s Take
First and foremost, if you have a Fiido X, don’t use it. That seems pretty clear.
As far as reaction time, it appears Fiido was actually quite quick about this. I sincerely hope no one was injured on their e-bike, and I believe that such a short period of time between first notification of an issue and the recall notice will likely help prevent future possible injuries.
Regarding the bike itself, I personally reviewed the e-bike, and, while I found some of the tech to be a bit much, I really liked the design and the ride. It’s a real issue though that this type of defect wasn’t caught sooner. Bicycles are meant to undergo accelerated structural testing specifically designed to locate issues like these through repeated cyclic loading. Somewhere along the line, there was a failure.
This is further surprising because Fiido has been building e-bikes and e-scooters for years. Most of their designs are more conventional though, using familiar materials and frame styles instead of creative but potentially more problematic innovative designs like the one seen in the Fiido X.
Here’s to hoping Fiido takes care of its customers and that no one else gets injured on a defective product.
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Author: Micah Toll
Source: Electrek
