What's up party people? My name is Sunny Ray. This is Sunny Ray Show. Oh my goodness. This is going to be third interview for the day. Today I've got like 12 interviews lined up, but today this one's going to be really interesting. I've been looking forward to it all week. My guest, his name is Trent Dingman. We're going to He's from the founder of Real Motors. He's going to join me to discuss building a motorcycle company without owning a factory. So, with that said, I'm going to bring Trent. Hey, how's it going, man?
Hey, how's it going? Good morning, Sunny.
Where are you calling in from?
I'm calling in from Greenville, South Carolina.
Cool. I guess take me into the deep end, dude. I mean, I I've I haven't been losing sleep, but I've been having some nice dreams about the machines you guys are building.
It's super cool. So, what are you building, I guess? like what problem are you solving? Why should people care?
Yeah. So, Real Motors is building what we call future machines.
And that's with all kinds of different form factors and vehicles. So, basically what we're doing is we're rethinking what vehicles can really look like and how they're made. There's a lot of layers within what we're doing and primarily we're just focusing on what's designed the team behind it and actually to how we build it. And that's insane. And I guess what am I seeing some of your vehicles in the back there? Those are some of the pieces of work you guys have built, right? That's super cool.
Yeah. What you're seeing behind me is a project Aries. That's our first future machine. It's an electric cafe racer. and it's actually a pretty good size. It's a it's 100 horsepower peak 15 kilowatt hour battery. So you can actually get a good 120 to 140 miles range and the 0 to 60 is of course fast.
I bet. Okay. So you were designing electric riding moors before this, right? So like what did that work teach you that a motorcycle company would never have taught you? know, I think if I look at that, I think what's important is having an outside perspective when it comes to engineering and designing a product. I feel like often in a lot of industries, you kind of have these like industry experts that have been there for years and they kind of have this mentality of, well, we do this because it's done that way. And I think the strength that myself and my co-founder have is that we just like to go into, you know, frankly industries we have no business going into and really kind of turning things upside down on, you know, what can be designed. It's just first principle thinking. It's questioning every single thing along the way and re-evaluating some of the things that are traditional stay there because we've questioned it and it goes, "Yeah, this actually does make sense." But there's a handful of things that they go wow okay this this should change you know it's time times are here you know for example this is electric now we can do this design so I think having that outside fresh perspective is huge you know a motorcyclist wouldn't have designed the motorcycles behind us.
So fascinating so I guess what was the specific engineering frustration that made a motorcycle the next thing you had to build.
For us. you know, frankly, I would just say that electric motorcycles are just objectively cool. it's never really quite been about the motorcycle. For us, it's been about making that statement and how can we make the strongest statement within our thesis of future machines. And for us, it's been, okay, people love sharing motorcycles. They they're very inspired by them. you see them all over Pinterest and Instagram. but when we design something that is such a statement that is also, in my opinion, quite accessible, you know, there's no clutch. You don't have to have, you know, a leather jacket and tattoos to get into this. Like, this is something where we think it's been very approachable and from the very beginning has been a signal of what's to come.
Oh, it's beautiful. I love it. you and Michael Fang started this in South Carolina, right? So not California or Milan like why does the location matter to what you're building?
Yeah. So I mean we have like a vision here to really change how auto automotive development is done. and manufacturing and South Carolina is actually a really good ecosystem for that. I'm not from here. My co co-founder is not from here. We met here. I'm from New York. he's from China originally. but really what we've found is, you know, you can drive down highway 85 or the corridor. They're here in South Carolina and it's just large company after large company. It's BMW, it's Michelin, it's SK Battery. You just have a lot of these really large automotive companies that we have a vision of as we kind of build out our ecosystem, we can have more opportunities for r shared resources and even some heavy hitters in the network.
Got it. You already have patents to your name, I guess. Like which one still shapes how you approach a design problem. I would say in general I would say probably have the same patent perspective as like Elon Musk where he says, you know, they're kind of weak. You know, patents are, you know, we're playing offense and not defense. But I mean if we really look at it we really pri prioritize moving design forward and not just we're not trying to package up license deals of what we're doing. But yeah I have a number of patents on my name and a lot of those actually my past have kind of been about making assembly or things like that easier. but really that's just through corporation. For us, we we're actually moving towards as much as possible more kind of open-source type of attitude when it comes to breaking new ground on new manufacturing methods.
I like that. That's really cool. I guess like before Aerys existed, like what were you telling people the bike was back when there was, you know, nothing to show them? So, I would say that's probably one of the things unique about us is that we started by building prototypes. we never started with like a pitch deck. You know, we're engineers, you know, from the beginning. We know how to build. We love to build. And so, actually, I think the bike up here behind me, that was that was the first one ever. And we started with it. And actually, for what it's worth, I had our one of our first investors ever, ride on the mo on our prototype when we had brought it to him. And he doesn't even really ride bicycles. And I think he was definitely over the age of 65. It was probably a risk, but I said, "Hey, listen, like you're going to understand once you get on this first of all, how cool it is, but second is how approachable it is. You have no background in riding motorcycles. you can just get on this and twist the throttle like an ebike and go. And again, huge risk, but he actually got on the motorcycle and went around the parking lot. He loved it. He had a huge grin on his face and he was doing figure eights and yeah, that actually led to our first investment.
Oh man, I love that story. That's fun. yeah, you imagine like trying to compete against like a guy who's like showing him a pitch deck. Okay. So, getting a former Harley chief technology officer to contribute is not automatic. So, how did that conversation start?
So, I think if I kind of go back to where I was talking about like industry experts versus people that are from outside of an industry, we definitely set a really solid groundwork. but I think what's important about Vance in this case V his name is Vance he we had such an aligned vision with him. So of course he is an electric motorcycle expert. You know he started Livewire part of the core team with LiveWire and become ended up becoming the CTO but you know beyond his years and years of expertise in motorcycles and then even electric motorcycles we found such alignment on our beliefs when it came to re-evaluating everything. I think he's very excited about that. and he he's actually to of course moving forward with us getting into our next products and new products and we're really doing this from scratch approach that I think is quite exciting. So to be doing that and to go into it with a combination of ourselves and somebody with so much experience but has that shared first principle mindset is actually really exciting to me.
Yeah. I bet. so you call it electric analog. Like what did the rest of the industry get wrong by putting a screen on everything? I think what it is like the most of the industry is kind of going after this like how do we cram you know features into everything you know how do we get this Bluetooth connectivity get into this iPad and you have to you know now all this all of a sudden like all your controls for air conditioning and things like that are on an iPad and I think it's not really a secret there's a lot of people that have been kind of you know frustrated with those things and so as engineers with our team of rogue engineers and those that love product and tech and gear. I think what's important for not only us but just our target market and our customer base is those that are really appreciate the mechanisms and I think a lot of the EV industry you know of course too if we go to like the Tesla Cyber Cab I think those are great and I think that's going to be a great resource for like shared transportation and would be very useful for a lot of people but then what about the people that love the machines and mechanisms right because that's converging a little bit more towards like kitchen appliances you know very automated, very utilitarian. What about the rest? Right? So, what we're doing is we're doing a little bit of a back swing to that. And we have, you know, very simple gauge. We've got a chain drive. A lot of things that, you know, again, would otherwise be eliminated, you know, to make that more utilitarian, but we're like, no, let's celebrate the machine. So, now of course where people ask, hey, does your motorcycle make noise? Is electric? Actually, it does. has a chain drive, you know, and then at the same time, you don't have this iPad giving you 15 alerts when you're driving. You have a very simplified like ox gauge that's really cool. It gives you the bare minimum information. And I think what that does is it elevates kind of your emotions as you ride the motorcycle and all the rest kind of fall away. It just eliminates all that distraction and the things that we think consumers never wanted in the first place. I love it. You describe Real Motors as an engineering initiative rather than a motorcycle company. So I guess like what does that change day-to-day?
Yeah, we the way that we work is is very project based development. you know, by no means do I usually go up to folks and say, "Hey, we have an electric motorcycle company. It's an engineering initiative." So I think this plays a little bit into our theory of how we can improve the ways in which people and engineers and our team work and we've found that structuring everything as a project base to me actually feels almost more like like Hollywood film production. It's kind of like we put a lot of heart and soul and a lot of hours into these projects and we even recruit people in that aren't really a part of our team but are just so passionate about the outcome of that particular project and then at the end we get to all look back and say wow we made we built this together. so engineering initiative is we put together these projects with some sort of scope of what we want to test in real world environments. in this case, Project Aries, we wanted to test the connection between, you know, humans and machines and what that interaction looks like. But each machine, we'll probably test something a little bit different.
Yeah. Your site says, that each machine is a like a working thesis, not a product. Right. So, what is Aries actually testing?
Yeah, so Aries is testing that connection of human and machine. it's testing a little bit of the electric analog principles. but I think what's important here I mean what what's great is I think with project Aries being the first future machine it's testing the most things right now. It's kind of three things in parallel. So where I think it would be is one is this is our first product. So we get to understand okay how can we do this product development in a very lean and mean way how can we engage our customers early so there's a lot even on the business side being tested with that but ultimately that outcome is hey we think the future of vehicles looks a little bit more different than what people might think or cyber punk or self-driving you know we think it feels actually you know comparable to some of the old sci-fi films Maybe a little bit more like Star Wars.
Yeah, I can get behind that. so, you use the phrase industrial 5.0 like can you define it in a way like a factory owner would recognize?
Yeah. So, and I think this speaks to a little bit of just the not necessarily having the factory. right now we are working on I think it's a really good time to re-evaluate how products are made because of AI because of more automation more technology you know it's no surprise to anybody that you know most of supply chains and products and everything you know made mostly in China or abroad or different areas of Asia and it's just a reality check you know things that we need to understand and talk about but at the same time you we have a lot more opportunities to really localize what can be made and a lot of the work that we're doing on our front actually comes from engineering is our belief. what I mean by that is if you design a product so that there's not a whole lot of labor or no labor involved in making that product then all of a sudden you've opened the door to a lot of new possibilities. so that is something like I said first principal thinking we're re-evaluating to even how the motorcycle is made from default you know we're not raising you know 300 million to build this mega factory and wait four years for it to be built and set up the supply you know set up the manufacturing lines you know we're not doing it that way you know we're doing it in a way that you know first to start with carriage bills but also too really celebrating you know how can this I this can trickle out to the customer. How can these be a little bit more customizable? How can we introduce a little variability, but also keep that labor time low. So, yeah, that just kind of scratches the surface a little bit of kind of the exciting things that we're exploring. But what I do know those don't involve is a massive, you know, 300 square foot building just to get started.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, I guess run by engineers, not shareholders, is a strong sentence, right? So what decision you know have you made that a board would have blocked? I think if we really focus on that I think a big inspiration to ourselves is u Steve Jobs and just kind of how he has gone through product development and how he's kind of really insisted on a certain way of you know what products are good and how they can be made in that type of excellence. you know obviously we all know he's known for being a little sharper around the edges but you know for us it's really inspirational and for our team you know how he has done his work with product development. For us we do something that we like to call like uncorp and it's again it's kind of like engineers run by engineers and not shareholders. What I mean by this is functionally we don't want investors who want to jump in and do just this quick like pump and dump and make some make a couple bucks off of us or like oh I want to come in and my expectation is we want to exit in two years we want to make our you know 100x in this time frame you know I think if we're a lot more realistic with ourselves and a little bit more aligned in principles I think it's much more reasonable to focus our company instead on we have pillars So the pillars are kind of we call it posterity impact and talent. So posterity would be you know we really want to focus on what we're doing is laid out for future generations. This is not a quick thing. We don't want it to be a quick thing. We want to prioritize how it impacts not only ourselves long term but the next generation. second is impact. We want to make sure that what we're doing is actually worth doing. you know, I don't know it like if you really can get into a business, but you know, at the end of the day, your priority was to make money or you know, make a quick buck on something, you know, at the end of the day, you know, do you look back and you ask yourself questions of, you know, was that worth it? We don't ask those questions. We know what we're doing is worth it. You know, we love what we build and, you know, I think the revenue can show from that. I think people feel that. And then talent, you know, I think that a big deal with our team is we really we think a very small team can do big things today. And you just got to find that right team. So finding that team that aligns with those values and putting them together, we think is a really a strong asset and we value that and prioritize that.
Man, I had a lot of other questions to ask. Maybe we could do a part two if you're up for it. but we're kind of getting close to the end of the time here. 250 units at $20,000 is a deliberate number, right? So, what are you optimizing for at that scale? And then maybe just tell people where they can learn about you guys and you know and.
Yeah. So, great next steps. I mean, for us we're limited to 250 units because of our intentional path to learn and explore through this. So, this is a limited number. This is something we want people to feel that the especially customers they come in early they get this first series of units and it's limited to that number you know frankly if we talk about manufacturing I mean we know as soon as we get to scales that are much larger thousand units or more you know then you get into very expensive tooling you have to set up things so we're actually going through this process of understanding how this can be done more sustainably and also do that well with our capital raise in tandem and then two we have other projects coming up and so those projects you know this project areas was not really designed to be mega high volumes it's meant to be very personalized.
Really give expression the self-expression and for people that love the ride and it's that statement about real motors and who they are.
And then the next project will certainly be high volume so that one's a little bit more crafted for that.
Dude so ex yeah sorry go ahead Trent.
Say yeah and then just to learn more about us you know or just to follow our journey and get a hold of us. You know, really I'm on LinkedIn more than I'd like to admit. I'm LinkedIn good. Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. U follow our journey on Instagram on LinkedIn. we're doing a capital raise now. we're raising for our next project and increased volume and then also too building out this ecosystem and manufacturing structure. so yeah, feel free to reach out to me for that. we've got a lot of exciting things going on.
Awesome. All right, I'm going to bring this to an end. I got a bunch of people listening live. Thank you all for tuning in and yeah, until next time. hang out one minute.
