If you were looking for clues that the post-pandemic e-bike market reshuffle remains in full swing in the U.S., look no further than the latest move by Yamaha.
In a letter to its dealers, the giant Japanese conglomerate announced it will pull out of the e-bike business in the U.S. by the end of the year, according to Electrek.
“As you know, the combination of a post-Covid oversupply within the entire bicycle industry, coupled with a significant softening of the market, has resulted in a particularly challenging business environment where it is extremely difficult to achieve a sustainable business model,” Yamaha says in the letter.
Given these market conditions, the company says it decided to withdraw from the U.S. e-bike business and cease wholesaling units at the end of 2024.
Yamaha introduced the world’s first electric power-assist bicycle motor in 1993. But it wasn’t until 2018 that it entered the U.S. e-bike market with a number of all-road, mountain, and fitness/lifestyle e-bikes. That year, it offered four brand new models in the U.S.: Urban Rush, Cross Connect, Cross Core, and YDX Torc.
In order to sell down its U.S. inventory, Yamaha told its dealers that it’s extending its Fan Promotion program, where customers can receive up to 60% off their purchase of a new Yamaha e-bike. The program will be extended until June 30, 2025, and the company will continue to provide parts, service, and customer support with its five-year warranty in the U.S.
According to Electrek, Yamaha’s e-bikes featured higher-end components, elaborate frames, and in-house motors, which tended to put them within a premium price range in the U.S. market.
But as Yamaha itself explained, it appears that the main motive for its decision is the supply overhang that followed a Covid-pandemic boom in e-bike demand.
In another sign of the market’s reshuffle, Juiced Bikes, a pioneer in the U.S. direct-to-consumer e-bike market, was last month sold at auction for $1.2 million.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.
Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.
AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.
The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.