Rad Power Bikes files for bankruptcy and is looking to sell the business

Electric motorcycle institution Rad Power Bikes filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy extortion connected Monday, weeks aft it warned employees that it could unopen down without caller funding.

The institution volition proceed to run portion the bankruptcy lawsuit proceeds, and it’s looking to merchantability the concern wrong 45-60 days, a spokesperson told TechCrunch.

“This measurement allows america to support operating successful the mean people of concern portion we prosecute the champion imaginable result for the radical who trust connected Rad each day,” they said successful a statement. “Our extremity is to support the institution intact and sphere the relationships we person built with riders, vendors, suppliers, and partners.”

Rad Power is the latest successful a bid of e-bike companies from astir the satellite to spell done bankruptcy aft pandemic-era excitement for the class wore off. Some of those companies person re-emerged, though, with VanMoof and Cake uncovering caller owners during their respective court-led restructuring processes.

Rad itself had told employees successful November that determination had been a “very promising” enactment to support the institution afloat that was “likely to close,” but the woody fell apart. The institution has not shared much details astir that imaginable deal.

Weeks later, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a informing that older Rad Power batteries posed “a hazard of superior wounded and death” aft receiving 31 reports of fires. Rad Power said it “strongly disagrees” with the CPSC’s characterizations.

Rad’s pugnacious November came astatine the extremity of a reasonably tumultuous fewer years for the company. It has gone done aggregate rounds of layoffs and swapped CEOs earlier this year, bringing successful an enforcement with decades of acquisition turning astir underperforming companies. That caller CEO, Kathi Lentzch, said Rad was shifting distant from the direct-to-consumer exemplary that had helped substance its emergence and towards a retail-focused approach.

“This displacement creates caller opportunities to scope much riders, fortify lawsuit relationships, and germinate the marque successful meaningful ways,” she said successful a connection astatine the time. “[I]t’s an unthinkable clip to travel connected board.”

The institution said it entered the bankruptcy process with $32 cardinal successful assets and $73 cardinal successful liabilities. More than $8 cardinal of its indebtedness was owed to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection bureau for unpaid tariffs. (The institution has listed this assertion arsenic ‘disputed’ successful the bankruptcy paperwork.)

It’s not wide however overmuch that contributed to Rad’s descent into bankruptcy. But it wouldn’t beryllium the archetypal clip that Donald Trump’s tariffs helped propulsion a micromobility institution implicit the edge. During his archetypal term, Trump’s tariffs connected Chinese imports helped instrumentality the remaining upwind retired of electrical skateboard institution Boosted’s sails. Boosted went nether soon after.