I learned to ride long before I learned to drive. What started off as an interest in downhill mountain biking and BMXing, grew into a full blown obsession with motorcycles and cars.
In high school, my parents didn’t approve of riding motorcycles, so I hid my first bike around the corner from our house. Around the time I got my second or third bike, they had found out and realized that there was no dissuading me from this lifestyle. My passion eventually led me to study engineering at the British Columbia Institute of Technology.
As an engineer, I’m always looking for the most efficient way to do things. Walking, driving, crawling, subways, taxis; they’re all inefficient, wasting tons of time and energy. The engineering mindset goes hand-in-hand with entrepreneurship, and at the age of 24, I opened my own mod and racing shop.
Nathan Siy | Founder Evoke Electric Motorcycles
After a few years, I was given the chance to move from Vancouver to Beijing for work. Originally, I had thought that riding in China wouldn’t be difficult. But shortly after moving, I discovered that my assumptions were far from reality. Not only did most major cities ban motorcycles, but the government had stopped producing license plates in an effort to keep pollution from gas vehicles under control. The only way to drive legally was to buy a license plate off of someone who had previously wrecked their bike, and those could sell for as much as $15,000 USD. In contrast, electric vehicles aren’t bound to any of these restrictions. Knowing this, it didn’t make sense to ride a conventional gas motorcycle any longer. I decided to build my own electric motorcycle.
Nathan on the Evoke Urban S
When I first started building, I reflected on the comments of friends and acquaintances who had tried and failed to successfully get into the riding lifestyle. The majority of them had said that they didn’t understand how to ride, shift, or balance the bike; others didn’t even bother trying, saying that they loved the idea but it was too loud or too scary. All of these issues could be and would be addressed with this bike. Anyone who wanted to ride, would be able to do it. That’s when Evoke was born.
Read the article about the Evoke Urban S on EMN >
Corporate website: Evoke Electric Motorcycles >