The Swedish manufacturer Cake, which exclusively builds utilitarian off-road electric motorcycles, has filed for bankruptcy.
DiGITAL, a Swedish media outlet, reported the news last Thursday, although there has been no official communication of the filing from Cake itself.
Electrek reports that Cake’s bankruptcy filing follows on from reports of suspended salary payments in January and that the filing was forced upon it when one of its major investors withdrew from the company during a recent round of funding.
Cake had recently begun delivering its most recent model, the Bukk, and had published a press release at the end of January indicating its plans for expanding its presence in Europe.
Cake’s CEO, Stefan Ytterborn, was quoted in Swedish media saying that there were a number of reasons for Cake’s current situation. He said: “It is not one but several circumstances that have caused us to end up in this situation. Climate issues are no longer in focus, we are in a recession. It’s about us, but it’s also about the venture capital ecosystem. At the moment it is completely dead, there are no takers in the later phase Cake is in.”
Founded in 2016, Cake had become a recognisable figure in the electric motorcycle world, building distinctive, minimalistic motorcycles all with functional aesthetics and odd-looking names like “Kalk”, or the aforementioned “Bukk”, derived from an old language rooted in the island of Gotland which sits in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
Cake’s demise has come as the presence of more established motorcycle manufacturers is increasing in the electric segment, with Kawasaki’s Z e-1 and Ninja e-1 electric models, for example, and the Yamaha NEO's and E01 scooters.
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