22 A new market of opportunity The concept is simple. Tran says Ryvid’s bikes are “glorified scooters – and I say that lovingly” with “twist and go” capabilities. They are easy to ride, easy to manage, lightweight and have good range. They do require a license to ride, but Ryvid will cover the cost of that “because we want responsible riders and we want this to be a transportation tool, not just a toy.” This, however, is a bike that could never have existed until recently. In the last 10 years, the supply chain base has become “a whole different place,” says Tran, because the explosion of China’s EV component supply has led to better, cheaper motors, more efficient batteries and a gamut of controller and software options. Everything is now a proven commodity, and that is what gave Tran and his two fellow co-founders – who also hail from different areas in the automotive and aerospace design and engineering sector – the confidence to grow Ryvid from a conceptual idea in 2018 to shipping almost 1000 units in their first year of production last year. “When Zero Motorcycles started in 2006, they didn’t have a bunch of controllers to pick out; they had to do their own motors, their own battery management system (BMS),” explains Tran. “Now, you can go to 10 different vendors and pick out a motor controller or a BMS, everything is pick and choose and that drove the price down tremendously. “The self-build market, where people are buying these things and converting their own bikes, has matured to the point where these parts are proven; they’re used by hundreds of thousands of people, so they became a commodity. What you can control is the BMS, which ultimately is the modernday engine, so that’s a really important thing on the bike.” Just collecting a selection of components together to create a bike for the target market was not what Ryvid was about, however. Each of its founders had different passions and different areas of expertise, but all were aligned on one thing: to take a holistic approach to sustainability by creating an electric bike that was also easy to manufacture and maintain. “The biggest aim was producibility, if that’s even a word,” offers Tran. “I’ve been in a lot of start-ups and companies that raise a lot of money, do amazing concepts, and they get to the point where they have to manufacture it and they fall flat on their face every time. It comes down to designing something that’s not producible and not easily put together. “We wanted to avoid that mistake, particularly given we initially had to put these together in California, one of the most expensive places you can make things! We needed to reduce component costs and labour costs, and the aim was to design it so it Dossier | Ryvid May/June 2025 | E-Mobility Engineering The striking Anthem machine looks just like an electric bike should look
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