April 2011: Fox News recognizes Current Motor’s bikes are a great way to save the world!

April 2011:BELLE Capital LP Leads Series A Investment in Current Motor Company

April 2011: BELLE Capital Pulls The Trigger; Invests Up To $500,000 In Electric Motorcycle Startup Current Motor

Other press releases can be seen at the bottom of our Press Page

Everyone knows, the bigger the cup, the more juice you get. Current Motor Company uses larger battery pack to give our riders all the juice they need. Our C130 has a 5.75kWh pack. Compare that to the Brammo Enertia’s 3.1 kWh pack and the Vectrix’s 3.7 kWh.

Bigger cup, more juice.

Additionally, our batteries are long lasting. The manufacturer quotes 3,000 cycles for our usage pattern. We use a more conservative value of 2,000 cycles. For the C130, a cycle is 50 miles. That means, the pack should last 100,000 miles. Most people don’t put half that many miles on a scooter or motorcycle, so it’s reasonable to say that the batteries will last for the life of the bike.

Each cell costs about $90 to replace, so the entire pack on a C130 is $2,700. That’s for batteries only. It doesn’t include the charger or battery management system (BMS). One advantage with CMC is that the cells can be replaced individually, so you don’t have to shell out a small fortune if one cell fails. Most manufacturers make you replace the whole pack.

Another reason our batteries outlast the competition: Our revolutionary BMS monitors each cell individually, which protects it from operating outside of the manufacturer’s specs and ensures maximum battery life. Our BMS protects against over-discharge (we only use 80 percent of each battery’s capacity) and over-charging.  We also balance the pack to make sure that each cell receives a full charge. A balanced battery pack ensures the best range, allows us to identify weak cells and replace them before it ruins the entire pack.

We monitor four metrics: temperature, voltage, current draw and time. Most other BMS only check voltage and monitor the entire pack. The trouble with this is individual cells age at different rates. 

On top of all that juicy goodness, CMC offers a three year warranty on your battery pack.

All of this adds up to more range, more power and less maintenance for our riders. That’s the CMC advantage.

For most drivers looking to make their commute more economical, 30-40 miles of range on a charge is perfect. Widespread adoption of electric vehicles depends on car and motorcycle companies doing two things. First, we need to increase EV range. Second, the price needs to come closer gas-powered vehicles.

Lifetime savings on an EV is huge. There’s no stops at the gas station or oil changes. The maintenance on EVs is infinitely more affordable. After range, it’s the premium price at purchase that stops most people from making the switch. A Tesla is over $100,000 for a car that goes 200 miles on a charge. OK, it looks hot, but you’re paying $500 for every mile of range. That’s out of reach for most of the world.

With the new Nissan Leaf, you’ll pay $262 for each mile of range. Surely, motorcycles compare more favorably? Well, for a Vectrix motorcycle, you’ll pay $333 per mile of range. With Zero and Brammo, you’ll pay $200 per mile of range.

Enter Current Motorcycle, not only are our motorcycles faster, they boast 70 miles on a single charge for which you’ll pay $95 per mile of range. It’s the best value in EVs. That’s why it pays to stay Current.

This week, we started production of Version 2 of our Bike Control Unit, the computer that runs the fuel gauge and the safety features of the bike. It’s really the “brains” of the bike, so the goodness is in the software and the electronic circuits that interface the sensors to the software so it has good data with which to work. But there are all those pesky details, which includes such mundane things as cases. And holes in the cases for the connectors.

Like any other electronics experimenter, I’ve made my share of nasty-looking panels with a drill and a file. And I’ve spent painstaking hours turning knobs on a milling machine to make better-looking panels and even spent lots of money to have good panels made at a real machine shop.

This is so cool! One of the guys at A2MS, Peter Jensen, bought this huge old CNC mill and refurbished it. His excuse, er, I mean business justification, is to make his tech-retro-fashionable nixie-tube clocks.

Today, we cut 24 end panels for BCUs. It took about half an hour. That doesn’t count the lesson on how to convert CAD files to NC data and run the machine, but that was part of the fun.

Of course, cutting plastic panels is almost beneath the dignity of this big precision machine. But it’s fast, the quality is fantastic and it’s paid for, so why not?

There is so much more we can do with this machine. We’ve already made some precision assembly jigs and fixtures for building the bikes. What’s next? Motor parts? All sorts of crazy custom machined billet bling? Or more boring cases?

Here is the machine at A2MS, running our parts. The PC-based control panel is to the right, and there is a Bridgeport-style manual mill to the left.

Here’s the announcement from their site:

Entrepreneurs and innovation-based companies are a sweet spot for Stunning. Andy and I met in Silicon Valley — at a venture capital firm. Technology-driven companies are near and dear to our hearts. So when I was setting up my Twitter account for Stunning and came across Tim Draper’s tweet about a charity auction to have lunch with him at Tamarine, a Palo Alto VC haunt, I jumped at the opportunity!

It turns out that the charity, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (Bay Area chapter), had a few other auctions going on. Power Lunches with Frank Caufield and John Hummer — at Hummer’s home in San Francisco — as well as with the CEOs of eBay and OpenTable at eBay headquarters. We bid on and won those auctions, too!

How could we pass up the opportunity to help build out the funding connections for Michigan-based technology companies?

And in those last hours of fundraising frenzy, the director of the LLS team sponsoring the auctions, the Managing Director of Credit Suisse, chipped in a meeting with one of his firm’s cleantech analysts! And another team member arranged a power lunch with Ira Ehrenpreis, cleantech Wunderkind at Technology Partners! This on top of a meeting with business attorney Roger Royse, an active member of Palo Alto’s VC Taskforce.

The result? Stunning’s Summer of (VC) Love! … Sideburns and bell bottoms optional…

Our first trip is next week, and our guests are pretty stunning themselves: CEOs Eli Thomssen of Armune and Peter Scott of Current Motor Company, along with First Step Fund Managing Director Mahendra Ramsinghani. What a powerhouse of Michigan talent to present our entrepreneurial opportunities to some of the biggest names in Bay Area venture capital!

Armune is developing a blood assay that can detect antibodies to breast, lung and prostate cancer YEARS before any signs of cancer appear with imaging devices such as CAT scans. Early detection means early treatment, which means greater survival rates for patients with these diseases. Imagine the difference in people’s lives Armune’s technology can make!

Current Motor Company is the only company producing 100 percent electric vehicles in Michigan. They manufacture a scooter that can go 70 mph and up to 80 miles on a single battery charge. It only takes four hours to fully recharge the battery, and you just plug it in to any standard home electrical outlet. No gas tank and no muffler. Amazing!
Mahendra Ramsinghani serves as our “big picture guy.” As a longtime member of Michigan’s VC community, Mahendra knows Michigan deal flow and will be able to give an overview of the companies and sectors offering the best opportunities at the best valuations. We’re so fortunate he can join us!

Stunning’s goal?
Learn as much as possible about how to position our early stage clients in terms of investor relations and marketing for startups. The better we understand the VC mindset, the more we can help our clients thrive in the current funding climate.

As a new company, we also want to show potential clients that we’re always looking for ways to move their business forward. Proactively and creatively, ready to take advantage of golden opportunities wherever they appear.

Visit Stunning at StunningCreative.net.

Vroom, vroom. We’re charged up and ready to win! Current Motor Company is honored to be named a semifinalist in this year’s Cleantech Open. It’s the world’s largest cleantech business competition. Its mission is to find, fund and foster entrepreneurs with big ideas that address today’s most urgent energy, environmental and economic challenges.

“What a great honor. We’re so proud to be representing the EV industry and Michigan in this competition,” Peter Scott, president of Current Motor Company, said. “It speaks volumes about the talent and ingenuity on the Current Motor Company team. I’m so proud of our team.”

Since 2006, through its one-of-a-kind annual business competition and mentorship program, the Cleantech Open has enabled hundreds of clean technology startups to bring their breakthrough ideas to fruition, helped alumni contestants raise over $260M, and created an estimated 1,200 green collar jobs.

Founded in 2007 by electric vehicle enthusiasts Erik Kauppi and John Harding, Current Motor Company is driven by their belief that the there has to be a viable, affordable alternative to the internal combustion engine.

“Our motorcycles lead the industry in affordability, range and power,” Scott said. “And we’re just getting started. It’s such an honor to be recognized at this stage in our evolution.”

Being the only semifinalist from Michigan, the Current team is proud to be a part of the transformation of the auto industry in the birthplace of the industry. “We love cars and motorcycles and speed. Basically, anything that moves, we want to make it faster and more efficient,” Scott said. “Performance is the key to electric vehicles catching on.”

Judging for to move into the regional finals concludes October 4, 2010.

For more information, visit Cleantech Open.

What do you do at CMC?
Right now, I’m happy to be running the shop and doing problem solving every day. It’s something that I’ve never done. It let’s me treat the folks that work for us the way I wish I could have been treated (you know, with respect). The folks in the shop are truly wonderful. They’re all self starters. They want to see this business succeed as much as John and Eric and I do.

When did you first start tinkering with cars, motorcycles and / or other machines?
Oh, it was back in high school. I went through my share of old Volkswagen beetles and buses. I sure wish I had some of those now. Being from Michigan, they usually rusted away before wearing out, then the good parts came off the dead carcass and were bolted on to the next one.

What do you love most about electric vehicles? Why do you think they’re the wave of the future?
They’re simple and clean. No oil changes, air filters, tune ups — just drive and charge. The batteries are maintenance free. They’ve always been the wave of the future, but nobody outside of EV people knew it. Wind generators fall into the same category. Who knew that last year 12,000 megawatts of wind power would come on line in just one year? Well, the wind power guys that built homemade generators back in the 70s did. It was only a matter of time.

Describe your first experience with an EV. What was your first impression?
When I was laid off from Chrysler way back in 1980, I found a job working for a company called South Coast Technology, which was converting VW Rabbits to electric. These little rabbits were amazing. They could go 40 miles on a charge, if you treated them right. They had regenerative braking on deceleration, both 220 volt and 110 volt charging and hit 60 mph to boot. Things have truly changed between then and now. The battery technology is light years ahead now. We never dreamed of the changes that came along with battery charging and motor controllers.

How does a CMC bike compare to others in the marketplace?
They’re are several good electric motorcycles out there, but when it comes to scooters, we rock. Why do we rock? Because it’s the combined talents of several people that want to make this scooter work. Not only do the core people of CMC want to make this work, but we also have access to some of the finest engineering people in southeast Michigan, all of them are either old racers or motorcyclists. Every day, I go to work not because I have to (I’m retired from Chrysler), but because I learn something every day.

What are you most proud of in your life?
My last big job for Chrysler was to go to Spain to convert 15 small trucks to electric for the World’s Fair a few years back. I’m a 30 year member of the Sports Car Club of America. Built and raced sports cars from 1979 to 2000. I built an electric motorcycle seven years ago that I will finally replace this year (with a scooter). I also built an electric tractor for a local community farm a few years back (www.communityfarmofAA.com).

Why do you hate gas so much?
I was starting to drive in the early 70s, just when the first emission regulations and the first “gas crisis” were happening. Even in high school, I kept thinking, “Man, there’s got to be a way to either run a car on electricity or another alternative fuel that doesn’t pollute. Emission controls on gasoline engines are just a Band-Aid.” Don’t get me wrong, I’ve jumped back and forth between alternative energy vehicles and race cars for the next 25 years. The best part is that going fast and alternative energy can go hand in hand as we are now seeing with competitions like Electrothon, TTXGP, etc.

What excites you most about CMC?
Change. Fast change. Don’t wait for a decision — you are the decision. Right now, no one can touch us for range, driveability and fun. Other ideas are in our heads. There’s nothing that can stop us from implementing these ideas. The biggest thing now is to speed up the assembly process, then we will really have this thing by the tail.

Where do you see CMC in five years?
Probably building a basic scooter for our “bread and butter,” that is, something fun to drive with good range that is really affordable. Build lots of those, then some really cool “cult” scooters and other small production projects.

Was there an “a ha” moment for you in terms of moving towards EV development? Please describe it.
For me, the big moment was finishing the first prototype, running it up to 60 miles per hour, then handing it over to the others and saying, “OK, it’s safe to drive”.

Tell me what inspires / drives you most about CMC’s mission?
I finally get to build emissions-free, transportation for the masses. It doesn’t get any better than that.

How long have you been riding motorcycles? What do you love about riding? Describe the first time you rode a motorcycle.
I had my first gas mini-bike at 12 or 13. I’ve had a few bikes in my life, but it was never a passion like cars were until now. I’m building my own scooter now, part of it is just to have fun with and be my day-to-day transportation, the other is to prove out a couple of new ideas. Maybe they’ll work, maybe they won’t, but the fun is in the learning.

Who inspires you (public figures)?
Wow. I can’t say that I’ve had a lot of heroes in my life, but there are several people that inspire me.
If I had to say a public figure, it would be John Shuttleworth. He’s the guy who started “The Mother Earth News” with his wife Jane on a kitchen table. The articles in that magazine showed me I wasn’t alone with alternative energy ideas. To this day, I still live in the country, at the end of a dirt road, with five solar panels to help make power (and now charge the scooter).

What are your proudest accomplishments?
Back around 1991, I rebuilt my old Dodge Omni race car, organized a team with four drivers and crew, and ran a 24-hour endurance race. I managed the car during the race and drove. We finished 4th in our class. We were still running at the end. I got to start the race and took the checkered flag at the end.

Current Motor Company president Peter Scott is passionate about saving the world he loves to explore. This Royal Oak, Mich., native has visited 30 National Parks, 25 states, three Canadian provinces and seven wine producing regions. He’s crested two 14,000 foot mountains with his beloved dogs, too. In his spare time, he’s earned more college degrees than you can imagine (seriously, a bachelor of science in engineering, master of science in engineering and master of business administration from the University of Michigan).

When did you first start tinkering with cars, motorcycles and / or other machines?
I took apart my first lawn mower at six. I made the leap to aircraft engines later in life. Actually, I designed the turbine for the GE90 the world’s largest jet engine.

What is CMC?
CMC is a designer and builder of all electric two-wheel vehicles. Our motorcycles and motorscooters help urban commuters reduce their footprints while having fun.

How long have you been riding motorcycles? What do you love about riding?
Ok, so I am a rarity on the CMC team, I do not ride motorcycles, but bicycles which is probably why the quietness of our bikes really speaks to me.

The first time I crashed a bike, a bunch of friends and I were trying to be like Evil Knievel, we had built a trench in a baseball diamond at our school, put up a ramp and were trying to jump over the “Grand Canyon”.

What do you love most about electric vehicles? Why do you think they’re the wave of the future?
They’re quiet, like riding a bicycle (I am a big sprocket head). It’s a sense of freedom, no gas, no noise.

Describe your first experience with an EV. What was your first impression?
I did a test drive of CMC’s moped, it jumped when I turned the throttle and I almost hit someone. It had torquee. Hooray.

What excites you most about CMC?
Creating a new company, a new market and a new product.

What inspires you most about CMC’s mission?
I see CMC as a business with an eco-mission. As an avid outdoorsman, I don’t believe people were put on this earth to muck it up. I love coming up with a solution that helps people reduce our footprint, preserve our beautiful planet for future generations and still deliver the power and performance people expect.

How does a CMC bike compare to others in the marketplace?
We go faster and farther than our competition. It’s much more powerful.

Where do you see CMC in five years?
I see us as part of a bigger company in a better position to replace gas scooter with our electric scooters. If all works out, Current will be acquired by a large scooter or motorcycle company to help really drive adoption of two-wheel EVs.

What are you most proud of in your life?
My role in developing the world’s largest jet engine (oh and none of them have crashed, so mission accomplished). It is so cool to see a plane with GE90s at an airport. My wife hates it when we are at an airport and I point out all the airplanes with my engines. My wife also hates it when I tell aircraft accident stories when we are taking off. I can see her point on the latter.

I my business life, when I work with any engineer and turn them into an entrepreneur. It’s what we are doing at Current Motor.

In my private life, having 3 incredibly happy little gerkins (a four-year-old boy and twin one-year-old girls). Not sure if it is genetics or how we interact, but I must be doing something right.

What do you do in your spare time?
Kids, dogs, wine, beer, in reverse order.

Who inspires you (public figures)?
• Aldo Leopold, author of “A Sand County Almanac,” my favorite book
• John Muir, Sierra Club Founder, who helped pass the National Park Bill and established Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks
• Bill Gates, the ultimate geek entrepreneur

As a teen, CMC founder John Harding won on a popular British TV game show, “Blockbusters.” The prize: A race car driving course at Silverstone (a famous British racing circuit). And so began Harding’s love affair with powerful vehicles.

What inspires you most about CMC’s mission?
I like the ability to march to the beat of our own drum and to challenge folks (ourselves included) to make a positive impact. We’ve only got one world and a limited supply of resources so we’d better use them efficiently.

What is CMC? What do you do?
We’re an electric vehicle manufacturing company. As dopey as it sounds, I supply vision and big picture direction and problem solving. I also do the software in the bikes and a ton of other things like procurement an legal registrations.

Where do you see CMC in five years?
I hope to see us as a recognized name in the scooter industry. Ultimately, I want us to be seen as the Vespa for the iPod generation.

Why do you hate gas so much?
Actually, I don’t hate gas. I do hate waste. I do hate big companies skewing the facts (car companies and oil companies). I hate the artificially low price of gas in the United States. But gas itself will be here for a long time yet. We just have to use less of it. For the vast majority of journeys gas isn’t necessary. I want to make things more efficient so that we can have a more sustainable society.

When did you first start tinkering with cars, motorcycles and / or other machines?
My earliest memories would be “helping” my older brother work on his motorcycles when I was about 10.

What do you love most about electric vehicles? Why do you think they’re the wave of the future?
EVs are just plain better. It’s the old KISS principle at work. Gas engines are incredibly complex and getting more complex every year as extremely clever engineers make them more efficient and cleaner (but it’s all relative because gas engines are inherently inefficient and dirty — you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. That complexity comes at a cost. Electric motors are dirt simple by comparison.

They will be the wave of the future because when folks realize that they don’t need 120 mph and 300 mile range to commute or go grocery shopping, they’ll see the convenience benefits of electric. Far less maintenance. Never having to go to a gas station. No smell. No noise.

Describe your first experience with an EV. What was your first impression?
A cheap Chinese import called an XM-2000 by X-Treme. First impression was actually pretty positive. For the price and for the person willing to jump through a few hoops, this little bike could be used for clean commuting. But I knew that most people would never jump through those hoops or be prepared to compromise in some of the ways you have to with the XM. That’s why CMC was born.

How does a CMC bike compare to others in the marketplace?
We concentrate on what we think is important to the customer: affordability and practicality. From that basis, we’ve built a great bike with great features at a great price. To put it another way, if you don’t build a useful EV or you build one that’s too expensive, you’re not really doing anything to address the need.

What are you most proud of in your professional life?
Building a stong and cohesive team of green engineers who developed and delivered an extremely complex product where several others before had failed.

How long have you been riding motorcycles? What do you love about riding?
I’ve been riding since I was 16. I love the sense of independence, the exhilaration and the affordability. Most $8,000 sports bikes perform as well if not better than $100,000 sports cars.

The very first time I rode a motorcycle was a friend’s junior sized dirt bike when I was about 11 or 12. I remember pulling a wheelie and being scared witless (too much gas and letting the clutch out quickly). I only rode a couple of times before I was 16 when I got a moped and my first motorized independent transport.

Erik Kauppi, founder and chief engineer of CMC, doesn’t remember a time when he wasn’t tinkering with some kind of machine. So it’s not surprising that when he and co-founder John Harding put their heads together, they created a revolutionary electric motorcycle.

When did you first start tinkering with cars, motorcycles and / or other machines?
Maybe four? One of my earliest memories is of “helping” my dad in the garage with his Porsche 356. Since then, I have always been working on mechanical and electrical things — bicycles, cars, motorcycles. I wired my kiddie-car with a battery and lights, horn, etc when I was in kindergarten. In my teens, I welded together an aerodynamic racing tricycle from old bike parts. I sewed my own packs and sleeping bag for a summer-long camping trip. I worked as a mechanic in a sports car shop, then ran a software business and fixed cars on the side,
before I went to engineering school.

What is CMC? What do you do?
One cool thing is that when I describe what I do, people get it. They say, “Wow, that’s what the world needs” or “Hey, you should meet so and so” or “I want to help.” That’s very different from my previous jobs and businesses. We have this really cool project that attracts really bright people who want to work on it. The team or movement or whatever it is, it keeps growing even when we’re not hiring anybody. The result is a lot of unexpected new ideas, collaboration and synergy. We all have a lot of fun. This is personally very rewarding for me. We’re part of something that is growing organically and reaching out, instead of being locked in a cubicle both physically and mentally. The new challenges and new ideas are very invigorating.

Why do you hate gas so much?
I don’t. But petroleum is a limited resource, we have better things to do with it — like build things — than burn it. I don’t like sending so much money to the Middle East. It hurts our economy and supports terrorism. Whenever I see one of those signs on a big truck that says “No aid or comfort to the enemy, no way,” I always think “What the hell do you think you just did at your last fuel stop?”

If we have to burn something (for now) I’d rather burn coal produced here, than oil produced in the Middle east. Of course, we need to do everything we can to increase our use of renewable sources as well, both for carbon dioxide and for sustainability.

How does a CMC bike compare to others in the marketplace?
Electric vehicles are elegantly simple. That really appeals to me. Much of the complexity of ordinary cars goes away — oil changes, pistons and complicated reciprocating motions, valve train, hundreds and hundreds of parts rubbing against each other and wearing out, complicated transmissions, all the complexity inherent in intermittent combustion and the flow of high velocity gasses, all that stuff goes away. A couple hundred years from now people will look back at internal combustion cars as these crazy Rube Goldberg contraptions. “They did all that to move a few miles?” It’s a wonder they work at all.

I’m not anti-car. I love cars. I love the freedom and mobility they have given us. But our current path doesn’t look sustainable for my son’s generation and my (hypothetical) grandchildren. There isn’t enough fuel. There isn’t enough room to build roads, garages and parking lots for all those cars in the world. How to retain that freedom and mobility so loved by Americans, in a more right-sized and ecologically sound way? I think the scooter and the motorcycle are a
big part of the solution. You keep all the individual mobility, the ability to go where you want, when you want, as fast as you want, but with a much smaller footprint. The electric scooter is a perfect extension of that, you reduce your ecological footprint as well as your space footprint.

The thing about the Current bike is that it’s reasonable. Reasonable price, reasonable technology, reasonable performance, all adds up to a lot of fun. It wasn’t the Hispano Suiza that changed the world, it was the Model T. The Hispano Suiza had better technology, but the Ford worked fine. It was affordable. Millions of people loved it.

Was there an “a ha” moment for you in terms of moving towards EV development?
Realizing with John, “We can do this! It’s not all that hard. And we can do it better than anything else available now.”

Where do you see CMC in five years?
We will be a leader in the electric vehicle business, which will be going mainstream. We’ll be selling bikes to thousands of riders. Our technology and ideas will be used in larger vehicles as well.

CMC is a values-based business. Tell me what inspires and drives you most around that mission?
That we can change the world in a big way, a bit at a time, without billions of dollars, massive government programs, etc. Relatively ordinary (but smart) people can build an electric vehicle company, and ordinary (but smart) consumers can choose to ride electric. We can change the world in a grassroots way, not from the top down. And we can have fun and build community while doing it.

Who inspires you?
Colin Chapman, founder of Lotus Cars, inspires me. He believed in lightweight elegant simple design, then built a successful company around his vision. Runner up: Soichiro Honda, for the same reason.

How long have you been riding motorcycles? What do you love about riding?
I’ve been riding seriously for more than 20 years. I’ve toured much of the country on bikes. I like all rides — half a mile to work, or 2,000 miles in a long weekend, it’s all good. My first ride was in the 1970s. I had rebuilt a friend’s bike, so I needed to test ride it. It was a long test ride.

What are you most proud of in your life?
I’m proud of raising a happy, healthy and very smart kid, even after the death of his mom. And I’m very proud of CuMoCo, especially that two ordinary guys in Michigan started a real motorcycle company. It’s fantastic.

What do you do in your spare time?
What’s that? Ride motorcycles, ride a tandem bicycle with my son, windsurf and work on projects.