Originally Posted by berlinonaut

Well - Yan IS the manufacturer (or at least brand-owner) of downtube. As far as I know bikes imported into the EU have mandatorily to comply with EU norms. It is the duty of the importing party to ensure the compliance. So it is responsible for the testing and it is (again as far as I know) allowed to do this himself (though this is a complex process). It is illegal to sell bikes that have not been certified. Officially, bikes that do not comply with the norms are subject to be destroyed if this is discovered. But probably it rarely does due to the amount of imported goods. In any case if there happens an accident with a bike that does not fulfill those norms the seller will be in deep trouble (again if this is discovered). So any commercial importer or seller ignoring the certification process takes a huge economical risk. I'd assume that the situation is not much different in the US or Japan and am really wondering that Yan does not seem to know about this.

Regarding the Tern: Last year German "Ökotest" magazine did a test of folding bikes. The test itself was pretty ridiculous but one thing they did was to get an external institute to test the bikes for compliance with the norm DIN EN ISO 4210 (this is the norm mandantory for bikes within the EU). Some of them failed for various reasons and if I remember correctly one of them was the Tern Link C7i - the frame broke at the hinge during the endurance test (which consists AFAIK of 100.000 cycles of stressing, simulating i.e. riding out of the saddle).