The Van Moof theft protection is pretty effective. One of my friends has one and is driving (and parking) all over Berlin. Basically if you touch it it makes noise. If you touch it some more, it escalates the noise. If you keep messing with it, it will get really loud. Forget about not being seen (or heard) if you try to steal this thing.
If somehow you do, you basically have to demolish the bike to get to the tracking hardware. Until you do, basically Van Moof has a bike hunters team that comes as part of a deal that basically says they'll track down your bike and return it or give you a new one. Pretty awesome insurance.
And super effective. Thieves leave these bikes alone; just not worth the risk and trouble plus the resell value is pretty low because you basically have to take the bike apart, remove the hardware and put some other hardware in it to avoid it being taken away from its new owner by the before mentioned bike hunters. Kind of defeats the purpose of stealing it.
Another good way of dealing with this is to ensure that you don't leave the bike on the street unattended, figure out where the guarded bike parking spots are in your town, and if you can't get a spot like that maybe only take your e-bike between locations where you are in control of the space (home, work, for instance).
And keep a cheap runabout for short trips to places where your bike will be unattended on the street. The Dutch form for reporting a bike theft to the police starts with the sentence 'where did you steal the bike' ;)
Another good way of dealing with this is to ensure that you don't leave the bike on the street unattended, figure out where the guarded bike parking spots are in your town, and if you can't get a spot like that maybe only take your e-bike between locations where you are in control of the space (home, work, for instance).
Well, my wife's eBike was stolen after only a few months from the parking garage of our apartment complex, which is locked and has cameras (and obviously, the bike was locked). Thieves just wait outside with a van, drive in when some resident drives in, block the view of the camera with their van. Throw in a few eBikes and drive away.
Preventing theft is all about making it harder to steal your bike than everyone else's.
- Get bike insurance with a tracker. A visible tracker will make your bike less attractive to steal. Even when they steal it, they often put bikes with a tracker in a cool-off location near the place of the theft to check that no-one is using the tracker. So, very often, you'll have the bike back pretty quickly, because the insurance company finds it at the cool-off spot. If all those measures fail, the insurance company will cover the cost of a new bike (though bikes are sometimes hard to get during the pandemic).
- Always use two locks. Make sure that both the front and rear wheel are locked (to avoid wheel theft) and ensure that at least for at least one of the wheels is attached to the frame with a lock.
- Always attach your bike frame to a sturdy, unmovable object with a heavy duty chain lock. Again, in a lot of cases, the thieves will just throw your bike in a van and remove the locks elsewhere. If your bike is attached to e.g. a lamppost and it takes them some time to cut the lock, getting caught is a risk that they may want to avoid. Especially when there are other bikes to be stolen more easily in the vicinity.
