When Dong Tran founded Ryvid Inc., he did so with memories of Vietnam at the top of his mind.
Tran, who immigrated to the United States as a 10-year-old, said as a child in the Asian county he was accustomed to seeing people getting around more frequently with cheap motorcycles than cars. And after growing up in Southern California, with its infamous traffic and congestion, he said he wants to introduce what he views as a more pragmatic way of hopping from place to place.
“We call ourselves a ‘mobile sport company’ rather than a power sport one,” Tran said. “Ryvid was born from a necessity of downsizing how people get around, with the intention of making it not boring. Typically, when you think of bicycles or (budget) EVs, you don’t think of excitement — it’s just a way to get around efficiently.”
The Hawaiian Gardens-based company is on the cusp of beginning deliveries for its launch product, the Anthem — an all-electric motorcycle with a 75-mile range, removable battery and affordable price tag. And while the company builds its vehicles and is entering the market in the Los Angeles area, Tran said he has a goal of introducing Ryvid products to the rest of the world. The key, of course, is whether consumers will opt for their product in favor of the less expensive gas-powered stalwarts.
“The aspiration of the brand is to be a global brand,” he said. “The two-wheeled market is a massive global market. It’s not that big here, but it’s big everywhere else.”
Smaller footprint
Ryvid is positioning the Anthem as a new kind of motorcycle, one that fills the space for people who need something more than an electric bicycle but don’t want the performance-oriented options on the market. Tran — whose background includes mechanical engineering, automotive design and six years at Vacaville aerospace startup Icon Aircraft — said he was particularly motivated by the growing use of e-bikes to get around neighborhoods and wanted to create a street-legal motorcycle that would be a natural transition from the e-bike.
“You don’t need to go 100 mph, and you don’t need to go that far,” he said. “When we think about the EV market, a lot of the auto companies are shooting for like the thousand-mile range, because they think people need that. They’re shooting for zero-to-60 times of a few seconds. These metrics are tied to high-performance vehicles. We want people to have fun, but the whole point of EV is to be more efficient and lower our footprint.”
And, Tran is hoping, more people will begin to realize that they don’t need a car or SUV to get around if they aren’t moving cargo with them. After all, scooters and motorcycles are the way to go throughout much of his native Southeast Asia.
“Getting around on two wheels was always a normal thing,” he said. “We never had a car or a covered vehicle. When we came to America, it was kind of a shock that everyone sat in a car or SUV.”
Affordability is also a major point for Ryvid. The discounted price tag for the limited launch edition of the Anthem is, until the end of the month, $7,800, plus a $500 discount on shipping. Starting in September, that base price will jump to $8,995. A comparable — but more performance-oriented — model from Zero Motorcycles starts at $12,995, while reservations for a similar bike from LiveWire start at $15,499.
Remaking the motorcycle
The biggest challenge to getting off the ground with this equation, Tran said, was figuring out the manufacturing process.
Assembling modern motorcycles and other vehicles involves lots of welding, which is more economically done at large scale with automated machines than it is on a custom, one-at-a-time basis by a human. Unfortunately, that level of machinery works economically only at the scale accessible to major automobile producers. Tran’s bikes are assembled and held together with rivets and fasteners, similar to the construction of aircraft fuselages. This method, according to Tran, has reduced the time it takes to assemble one of his bikes from several days to about 30 minutes per frame.
The bikes are made of stainless steel that has laser-cut holes and slots. The steel and is folded into a box frame — as opposed to a typical tubular frame made from welded tubes — with computer-controlled machines. The nature of the frame construction makes them relatively modular, and Tran said owners who wanted to swap out a panel for a different color or pattern should be able to do so with minimal effort. And with the frames weighing in at just 12 pounds, the 240-pound bikes have a lower center of gravity than conventional competitors, which makes balancing and maneuvering simpler.
The batteries of Tran’s bikes are easily removable and take around three hours to charge on a standard 110-volt system — half that on a 220-volt network. Tran said the batteries can be fully charged on about 80 cents of electricity.
While they weigh 70 pounds, the battery packs include built-in wheels and a handle, which makes moving them fairly easy.
“We really optimized for when you get home from work and plug this thing in, you’ll have roughly 70 miles on the bike for less than a dollar,” Tran said.
Early reviews of the Anthem have been complimentary. In Cycle World, Steve Anderson lauded the engineering and said “there’s a lot of other cleverness going on,” for example, the use of an insulated printed circuit board instead of conventional wiring for durability. Writing for Electrek, enthusiast Micah Toll hailed the Anthem as “one of the most innovative light electric motorcycles we’ve seen in years” and called it “a total rethinking of how a motorcycle should be built,” highlighting how Tran’s design facilitates various customizable and adjustment options.
Financial feasibility
Ryvid got its start with a seed round in 2021 – mainly from the company’s founders and a handful of outside angel investors – that generated around $1 million. After avoiding venture capital funding, Ryvid last year secured a $20 million grant from the California Competes program, which provides funding to companies wanting to locate to or remain in California. Tran said the company was able to engineer the prototype for around $600,000 and has used the bulk of the state grant for setting up manufacturing.
Ryvid is currently negotiating a lease for its physical Hawaiian Garden headquarters – a location chosen as an economically underserved community and one that satisfied grant-application requirements. Tran hopes to relocate Ryvid’s manufacturing facility from an 8,000-square-foot research and development space in Fountain Valley to a larger facility in San Bernardino.
The company’s marketing has been done primarily via social media and through a variety of trade shows. After the Anthem begins delivery, which is set to begin later this month, Tran said he is hoping word of mouth from the first several hundred customers will drive interest. He said the company expects to quickly move into the European market, which has comparable vehicle laws and price points to the U.S. market. After that, to move into the Southeast Asian market, Tran said Ryvid will have to both find ways to simplify manufacturing and establish a manufacturing site there, to avoid import costs. Outside of that, Ryvid will both have to lure cyclists who still have cheaper gas-powered options and establish its brand presence before bigger players enter those markets.
“Growth has been purposefully lean and slow. With ramp-up, it’s easy to go over your skis,” he said. “Yeah, $20 million seems like a lot of money, but it goes fast when you’re manufacturing. We’re letting demand drive the growth. Right now, we’re seeing quite a bit of demand in this space, the two-wheel electric space. Most of that demand is being driven by the international community.”
And it won’t just be motorcycles, Tran said. He hopes to include a swath of affordable and electric three- and four-wheeled vehicles – for transportation, sport or even farm use – among the company’s offerings.
“Anything that is utilitarian, that’s recreational, that’s the market that we’re looking into,” he said. “We’re not focused on high-performance vehicles. We want our vehicles to have a balance of utility and being recreational.”
