An electric bike store in Northeast Portland has closed without notice, and customers say they’ve been left in a lurch.
Pedego Electric Bikes on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd is empty as of this morning. The shop’s phone leads to a voicemail box that’s full and no longer receiving messages, the listing on Google Maps says it’s “Temporarily Closed,” and one customer said her email to own of the co-owners bounced back as undeliverable.
From what I’ve gathered based on emails from readers who were customers of the shop, it’s been closed since the end of December, “with no prior notice or even a note on the now empty store giving any information.” Folks who own Pedego bikes say they’ve received no email or other communication to explain the sudden abandonment. There’s no mention of any closure on the Pedego Portland website. On the brand’s main, corporate website, the Portland location is no longer listed.
One BikePortland reader who purchased a bike from the shop said the manager told her the staff were let go. “The owners just closed the shop all of the sudden,” the customer shared with BikePortland.
Pedego opened in Portland in February 2016 on SW 2nd Avenue downtown. They moved to the MLK Blvd location several years later and, based on what I’ve heard through the grapevine and read from online reviews, appeared to have a strong business.
While it’s unclear why the owners of the Portland location left without a trace, there are several plausible reasons for why the shop would close. An article published today in Bloomberg titled, “What’s killing off all the e-bike companies?” describes a very challenging market for e-bike brands as high costs and dwindling demand have hurt the industry. The Trump Administration’s tariffs are another challenge mentioned in the article.
But Pedego appeared to be on solid ground. The company made industry headlines in November of last year when they announced a new owner. That new owner, Urtopia, was billed as a way for Pedego and its dealers to save money and bring in new bike models. Bicycle Retailer & Industry News reported that the brand, who currently has about 120 stores nationwide, planned to grow its dealer count to as many as 500 stores by 2029.
The Portland location might just be part of a recalibration of dealers by the new owners. But the way they’ve abandoned our market has left a bad taste in customers’ mouths.
“I don’t know what to do. I’ve given up on getting service and I’m going to have to find another shop to help me,” one local Pedego owner told me. “I’m super disappointed and feel very abandoned. Especially the way they’ve done this, no notification. It feels really scammy.”
I’ve reached out to one of the owners of the Pedego Portland and have not yet heard back. I’ll update this story if and when I learn more.
Thanks for reading.
BikePortland has served this community with independent community journalism since 2005. We rely on subscriptions from readers like you to survive. Your financial support is vital in keeping this valuable resource alive and well.
Please subscribe today to strengthen and expand our work.
Back when BRAIN had a comment section on their article pages, Don DiConstanzo, the founder of Pedego, would often comment on stories related to e-bikes. The way he talked about Pedego, one would think they’re absolutely the best e-bikes in the world. I was always a bit suspicious of his takes, yet I never really came across any negative press or social media content about Pedego. Sadly, I’m not so surprised by this closure. Very unfortunate for the customers. Hopefully some other shops will help them.
The main employee Chase called me to pick up my bike at the end of December. But my bike was there for 5 months on a rear wheel build that should have taken one month at the most including part shipping. They seemed understaffed and never busy. The closest location is Boise ID 🙁
Looking at Pedgro website it shows a Authorized Repair shop in Eugene and a Pedgro store in Bend. Which I know is closer than Boise but not in Portland where you need it.
Eugene store closed over a year ago.
The Authorized Repair Shop in Eugene is “Eugene Electric Bicycles” and is still in business.
The fact that these “bikes” don’t use standard straight-pull or J-bend spokes laced to commonly available hubs and rims tells me they were never worth the metal (and lithium) they were made from.
How did we even get here? Bicycles are nearly perfect machines that have been refined *so much* over the past century, and these brands just decided to ignore all of that accumulated knowledge, supply chain, and work force. Absolutely wild.
This 100%. The idea that you’d have to take the bike to an “authorized repair shop” is mind boggling.
E-bikes exist that are just standard bikes plus e-stuff. I don’t know why so many brands popped up to sell weird non-standard bikes. But, maybe it’ll get better. The non-repairable brands will hopefully die off for the most part.
Was that warranty service? Regardless of the reason, if it took five months to build a wheel I’d say this was a case of euthanasia. I got same day turnaround on my hub motor wheel at a shop over on Hawthorne, and it was not the only work in the shop by any means.
My rule of thumb is that if you’re considering buying an ebike from a brand that doesn’t have storied history of making a normal version of the same style of bike, you’re taking a big risk.
I helped my partner shop for an ebike a few years back, and the thought me of being on hook for maintaining a bike from Pedago, RAD Power, or any other brand that had recently cropped up with no knowledge of geometry trying to cash in on newly cheap batteries from China was absolutely off the table.
If you feel that way about the big brands, someone buying a cheap e-bike with a PCEF rebate is completely screwed. How are they going to get their RAD fixed when the tire is flat?
The same way you fix any flat tire, plus 1 wire to unplug if it’s the rear tire, it’s not that difficult. It sounds like you have no idea what you’re talking about…
Maybe an AI hallucination??
I know my comment seemed a bit flip, but there is the reality that when your proprietary electric powered bicycle has a problem, many people are going to need someone to fix it for them.
If the nearest service point for your particular vehicle is in Eugene ooops… Bend now, and it breaks, what are you going to do?
That’s a serious question.
This is super disingenuous. There’s a reason shops charge more to change a flat on an ebike, especially on these cheap hub drive models like Pedego- it’s a huge PITA. When we get a flat on our 80lb cargo bike, it’s not as simple as just popping a new tube in there. What would take me under a minute on a normal bike will take easily 10-15 minutes in my garage will all the proper tooling and a workstand. If you’re on the side of the road you’re in a much worse spot. That said, acting like you’ll never be able to get a flat tire fixed because a low-end ebike retailer disappeared is ridiculous.
That is really interesting. I don’t have and am not planning on getting an e-bike, but learning that even something as basic as changing a flat is much more complex doesn’t exactly endear me to this flavor of bike.
It’s not specific to ebikes in general, only the cheaper hub-drive models with an extremely heavy rear wheel/wire going into the rear axle. On a mid-drive ebike you would change a flat the same way you would on any other bike.
Those times sound pretty brisk to me! The tires on my e-bike are fortunately quite sturdy, zero flats in a year. It was just by chance that I found out the nut on the rear axle was a 17 mm and not a 15. Anyone who doesn’t have road service (AAA or similar) might want to do a practice tire change in good conditions. If you are not a good wrench, it helps to have a relationship with a shop before something goes wrong. See if they talk down to you, have them install fenders or something, buy a hat or some socks once in a while. There’s no app but you can speed date them.
If your hub motor e-bike quits cold that plug or screw connector at the rear dropout may be loose.
The answer is obvious. City can use PCEF funds to purchase an e-bike license and sell e-bikes directly. No need to offer a rebate when they could control the pricing directly. Forget city owned grocery stores, this is a chance for the city to tackle the climate crisis through multiple stages. No need to seize the means of production when the city can at least control access to the product.
After all, getting more people onto e-bikes is now one of the success marks of the PCEF fund.
Just so we are clear, I am poking fun at the idea that the PCEF is being used for more and more things outside its original parameters replicating the history of the Utility License Fee from way back in pre-internet (and therefore history) days. Apparently those that cannot remember the past are still doomed to repeat it. But as least we get electric busses out of the deal. Which may or may not work well in winter.
I am not poking fun at the climate crisis which is upon us right now. The climate crisis is deadly serious and we are not taking it seriously at all.
I test rode a couple of the cheap bikes in while shopping. They were such pieces of garbage. The cadence sensors would trigger as your repositioned your pedals to execute a turn at the intersection, and then on an unpredictable lag, the motor would kick on and thrust you forward halfway through the turn.
Unrelated:
Why aren’t ebikes revolutionizing urban mobility?
That doesn’t even sound safe. An honest thanks for the heads up!
I just think it fits in with the degradation of PCEF uses lately in that performative results have overcome the desire for actual results such as climate crisis preparation.
E-transportation for everyone regardless if it’s sustainable, better than a nice (regular) bike or apparently even safe. At least money is being spent.
Why aren’t e-bikes revolutionizing urban mobility? I don’t know why, but I do know they aren’t and it’s odd to focus on them as a salvation.
This was before PCEF was even on the ballot
“Why aren’t ebikes revolutionizing urban mobility?”
Because the majority of transportational bicycle riders in any given urban area cannot afford them, or afford the cost of their upkeep.
When you can buy a traditional analog bicycle (I can’t believe I’ve just used that term) for under fifty bucks and pay someone to get it running — or learn how to fix it up yourself — for a fraction of the cost of an ebike, and you work for an hourly wage that has to pay your living expenses, the math is clear.
Hell, a cheap used car costs less to buy and fix up than some ebike models.
That ebike users seem to be more visible these days than the many low-income people who still rely on ordinary bicycles is a matter of where you live. Close-in, sure, there are more ebike users than ever before. But people who live in one of the hundreds of low-rent apartment buildings in East County not only can’t afford an ebike, they’d have nowhere to store it securely. They can’t even sneak it up the stairs into an apartment because it’s too damned heavy to lift.
If you’re low income and living well outside the most desirable neighborhoods of Portland, you’re not buying an ebike. And yet, so much of the handwringing about the ebike “revolution” these days seems woefully ignorant of this fact.
Who owned the local shop? You should be able to get the name from city records.
Hearing this story makes me glad to have supported the E-Bike Store on N Rosa Parks for almost 20 years. Wake & Co have been there the whole time and have always provided reliable service.
Call me crazy but maybe we don’t need to hunt down a small business owner who made the reasonable decision to call it quits
Just a heads-up for those who may not know: Pedego shops are independent, locally owned dealers that operate under the Pedego brand; each is a small-business franchisee and not managed day to day by Pedego HQ.
Sounds like the owners made a business decision to close abruptly. Bummer!
” … all of the sudden.”
Grr. It’s “all of A sudden,” people. With the indefinite article.
That’s well enough on the grammar but it sounds like it wasn’t sudden at all. If someone can’t tell you when a thing will be ready, if they don’t call to resolve issues, if they tell you things that do not bear out, maybe shop around.
There are some exceptions. Some painters and frame builders do not work in linear time.