Tracked and traced; stolen TC MAX recovered thanks to app!

With bike theft still a major problem in our towns and cities, it’s to some great relief that the Super Soco machines come with in-built tracking systems, as owner, Mike Philips, discovered when his TC Max electric motorcycle was stolen from outside his house in Wales one night.

Returning home one evening to discover just minutes after fitting his disc lock and heading inside that his bike had been nicked by some opportunist thieves who had been roaming the area. With use of the in-built tracking device however, he was able to not only help guide the police as to the whereabouts of his stolen vehicle, but also give the pursuing officers a running commentary of the motorcycle’s location as it moved, resulting in a successful recovery just an hour and a half later.

“I’d parked the bike up out back and put the disc lock on. About five minutes later there was a knock at my door from a neighbour who’d noticed that one of my motorbikes was missing” Mike recalled.

“It was at that point that I remembered the bike came fitted with a tracker. After informing the police of the situation, I got a call from the officer in the chasing vehicle, asking me to keep him updated with the location of the bike.

“So, I fired up the Super Soco app on my phone and updated him on the location of the stolen motorcycle every few minutes, texting the location as it changed.

“I received a message back informing me that five squad cars had been scrambled to help recover the bike. By this point the bike had travelled 12 miles south of my home in Pontypridd and was on its way towards Cardiff.

“The thieves drove down the A470, then went along the outskirts of Cardiff, then went all the way around Cardiff before dipping into another part of the city. They were driving around because the alarm was going off. I think they were scared to stop in case a police car drove past.

“After finally being stationary for a few minutes, I received a notification from the app to say that the battery had been disconnected where the thieves had tried to stop the alarm. I updated the pursuing officers before getting a message back a few minutes later telling me that they were stood next to it, after finding it in the back of a white estate car.

“It was about half one in the morning at this point, the bike was nicked at midnight. The police had arrested two individuals who’d fled the car and caught them on their driveway.

“The police officer I’d been in touch with followed up the case the next day. He said they’d had great fun that night because they’d never chased a vehicle that had live tracker data being relayed to them before. When he’d asked the thieves, they were really surprised that it had a tracker. They thought it was a 125. So, when they ripped the tank off and saw a bloody big battery, they must have thought, what the hell is this!?

“Throughout the chase the adrenaline was going when I was getting a response back from the cops, so it was quite fun. No one expects trackers on 125s, and I think anyone who nicks a TC Max thinks they’re nicking a 125, so it was an opportunist theft.

“The thieves that are clever realise that it’s an electric motorcycle and there’s not really a market for it. The thieves that are stupid think it’s a 125, and that’s what the guys that nicked my TC Max had thought.”

The bike had been stolen, tracked, and recovered in the space of just an hour and a half, proving in a successful recovery and arrest operation of a pair of known motorcycle thieves. As the bike was then declared a write-off by his insurers, Super Soco were delighted to help get him on a new machine and get him mobile again, which was handed over at Fowlers in Bristol.

The benefits of electric are well known to Mike too, besides the tacker technology. “When I lived in London, the bike probably paid for itself in the first year with what I saved on Tubes and Busses” Mike added. “When you look at £2-3 a month for electricity – it’s nothing!”

“I worked out that it would cost me £5 a day for a bus ticket to get into work and back, that’s around £100 a month! I’m charging up the bike about 2-3 times a month, so it’s costing me about £2, maximum. Giving me £98 a month that I can spend on whatever I want!”