It's over. Mission Motorcycles has, reportedly, filed for bankruptcy, ending a long, turbulent tale with a final sigh only as loud as a signature being scrawled across the bottom of Chapter 7 court documents. For those of us who keep an eye on the electric motorcycle niche, the death knell had been expected. The company has been unnaturally quiet for some time now – its marketing manager left the firm six months ago, and targets dates have slipped by without as much as a whisper.
It really shouldn't have ended this way. The product that Mission had to offer was a brilliant piece of work that checked all the boxes. Fast, nimble, beautiful, it still holds the electric motorcycle lap record at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca from its single racing appearance back in 2011. Back then, under a different leadership (a separate incarnation, actually), the bike wasn't being offered to the public and was meant to be something of a sales tool for the Mission Motors engineering team.
When our own Translogic team rode the RS in June of 2014, CEO Mark Seeger told us the bike should reach customers later that summer. That didn't happen. Perhaps the writing was already on the wall when a lawsuit by co-founder Vincent Ip was filed earlier that year. Whatever the case, that September, instead of deliveries, the company announced a corporate restructure and renaming to Mission Electric, along with plans to branch out into automotive and other areas. The loss of focus was painfully evident and "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" might as well have been spray painted on the headquarter's facade.
In the end, the final cause of death can be put down to a lack of cash in the corporate coffers. Mission's legal representative, Lowenstein Sandler, was allowed to excuse himself from the lawsuit last May after non-payment for services. After reaching a court-ordered deadline for a replacement last month, Seeger reportedly wrote the court, "I have struggled to rescue the business to find a buyer for the assets," and that "to date, we have not earned any cash/revenue of any kind."
While the bankruptcy filing may end the lawsuit against Mission Motorcycles, according to NorthJersey.com, Ip plans to continue the legal battle against Seeger personally. For our part, we can only hope that someone with deep pockets picks up the now deeply-discounted Mission intellectual property. We won't be holding our breath, though.
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It really shouldn't have ended this way. The product that Mission had to offer was a brilliant piece of work that checked all the boxes. Fast, nimble, beautiful, it still holds the electric motorcycle lap record at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca from its single racing appearance back in 2011. Back then, under a different leadership (a separate incarnation, actually), the bike wasn't being offered to the public and was meant to be something of a sales tool for the Mission Motors engineering team.
When our own Translogic team rode the RS in June of 2014, CEO Mark Seeger told us the bike should reach customers later that summer. That didn't happen. Perhaps the writing was already on the wall when a lawsuit by co-founder Vincent Ip was filed earlier that year. Whatever the case, that September, instead of deliveries, the company announced a corporate restructure and renaming to Mission Electric, along with plans to branch out into automotive and other areas. The loss of focus was painfully evident and "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" might as well have been spray painted on the headquarter's facade.
In the end, the final cause of death can be put down to a lack of cash in the corporate coffers. Mission's legal representative, Lowenstein Sandler, was allowed to excuse himself from the lawsuit last May after non-payment for services. After reaching a court-ordered deadline for a replacement last month, Seeger reportedly wrote the court, "I have struggled to rescue the business to find a buyer for the assets," and that "to date, we have not earned any cash/revenue of any kind."
While the bankruptcy filing may end the lawsuit against Mission Motorcycles, according to NorthJersey.com, Ip plans to continue the legal battle against Seeger personally. For our part, we can only hope that someone with deep pockets picks up the now deeply-discounted Mission intellectual property. We won't be holding our breath, though.
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