It needs a lot of chutzpah to manufacture electric motorcycles in California. The state is expensive when it comes to labor and environmental norms. But what if you design the product in such a way that assembly becomes easy? Ryvid did that. The whole frame is a stainless steel monocoque – everything is stamped out of 4 x 8 sheets and then fastened together with PEM nuts. The underslung battery can be detached and attached easily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is fascinating is that Ryvid maintains this cool simplicity throughout their design process. In the end they created a motorcycle that can be DIY maintained including things like removing and replacing the motor and controller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is in a time and era where everyone else is running after complexity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deepesh Rathore:<\/strong> Dong Train, its great to have you here. Ryvid has been on my radar since the very first media reports. It\u2019s a beautiful motorcycle, and I\u2019m incredibly impressed with the frame \u2014 we\u2019ll talk more about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s also interesting, as I mentioned before we started recording, is that while many passionate startups are coming out of North America, very few have actually reached the stage of commercially producing and delivering motorcycles to customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before this interview, I also took a look at some Reddit forums to see what customers were saying about Ryvid, and there\u2019s been a lot of positive feedback \u2014 so clearly, you\u2019re doing something right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m really keen to hear the full story. Can we start from the very beginning? Where did the idea come from, and what\u2019s your background, as well as your co-founders\u2019? My background is in mechanical engineering. After that, I went to automotive design school and became a car designer. I worked for a range of OEMs \u2014 Honda, Toyota, General Motors, BMW \u2014 so I\u2019ve been exposed to a wide spectrum of automotive companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually, I shifted to aerospace by joining a startup called Icon Aircraft. I stayed with them as they grew to nearly a thousand people, then left to start my own product development company. That company did a lot of design and engineering work for automotive and electric mobility firms \u2014 including companies like Zero Motorcycles and some early-stage electric two-wheeler startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s really where the idea for Ryvid was born \u2014 not initially for urban mobility but for electric powersports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Through that venture, I met my co-founders. One of them comes from a logistics and supply chain background, as well as from aerospace. Another had been working in the semiconductor industry, which is quite different from automotive \u2014 he specialized in making large tools for chip manufacturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our fourth co-founder has a military background; he was a submarine guy in the U.S. Navy on a Virginia-class submarine. He\u2019s deeply experienced in nuclear and mechanical engineering, so quality control and operation are a major focus for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, between us, we had complementary strengths: supply chain, quality, process engineering, and design. That combination helped shape the way we approached Ryvid \u2014 with a focus on differentiating ourselves through design and manufacturing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We officially founded the company in 2021, but I\u2019d been working on the idea in my spare time since around 2017. That\u2019s how Ryvid really got started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dong Tran:<\/strong> Sure. Ryvid has four co-founders \u2014 three of us are Vietnamese \u2014 and we each come from very different backgrounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n