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Dirt, Fun, and High-Tech: Dust Moto's Game-Changing Electric Dirtbikes
Today we are going to be focusing on technology that really makes life fun, so stay tuned.
Hey everybody, this is Chris Brandt here with another FUTR podcast.
We have with us Colin Godby, CEO & Founder at Dust Moto. Dust Moto is building the electric dirt bike the industry wants, and needs. They are now taking limited pre-orders fir their Hightail, A lightweight, powerful, and effortlessly intuitive electric dirtbike built right here in the U.S.A.
So we are going to talk with Colin about what inspires him and what makes the Hightail so much fun.
Welcome Colin
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Today we're gonna be focusing on technology that really makes life fun, so stay tuned. We have with us Colin Godby, CEO, and founder at Dust Moto. Dust Moto is building the electric dirt bike the industry wants. Needs. They are now taking limited pre-orders for their hightail. A lightweight, powerful, and effortlessly intuitive electric dirt bike built right here in the USA. So we're gonna talk with Colin about what inspires him and what makes the hightail so much fun. Welcome Colin. Yeah, thanks for having me, Chris. This looks so cool and I so desperately, you know, want to be out on one of these right now, uh, you know, riding around, but I, I, I guess we'll, we'll just have to wait for the pre-orders to get filled first, right? Um, yeah, we're getting there. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure it looks, it looks super, super fun. But before we get into to like all that fun, could you talk a little bit about. The journey that brought you to create Dust Moto? I mean, 'cause you've, you've, you've had kind of an interesting background, you know, everywhere from, you know, starting off in the world of BMX, which I, I did, you know, when I was a kid and, and, uh, you know, and, and, uh, to rally racing and, you know, all the engineering background you got. Could you just kind of cover, you know, like the journey that brought you to here? I, I feel like I'm quite
Colin Godby:lucky because, um. Where we're at with dust and, and my role in, in helping found the business is a bit of an amalgamation of the personal side as well as the professional side of my life. Right. And, you know, on the, the personal side, um, I grew up in Southern California, kind of exposed to the action sports lifestyle in a lot of ways as well as standard team sports. I always. Enjoyed being outside more than inside. Um, and pretty early I found that I really liked to ride bikes and just explore the neighborhood, that feeling of freedom. Yeah. Um, and you know, even flying, like, especially as a kid, as close as you get to feeling like you're flying through the air and so. I discovered that you could actually, you know, kind of compete with BMX. Um, I think right around 10 years old I started to do some racing, kind of combined with, um, playing on, on soccer teams and, uh, traveling around Southern California for tournaments and stuff like that. Um, and I guess in parallel with sort of the sport side of things, I started to realize that I was, um, fairly analytically minded, um, was. Doing pretty well at math and science, and I like to, uh, get into the weeds, understanding how things worked and sort of that cliche story about a lot of, you know, engineers coming from, taking things apart and, and figuring out how to put 'em back together. Um. And so that, you know, as I, I went to college at uc, Santa Barbara, um, for a mechanical engineering degree. I, I guess to make the long story short, I didn't quite understand through most of my career what engineers or my, my, uh, childhood, what engineers did. And it wasn't until basically I had to make a decision about which college to go to and what major to pick. That I finally understood that, oh, engineers are the people that help design the things that we use and the objects around us. Yeah. And that clicked for me, I said. If someone's gonna have the chance to design a bike or, you know, other piece of sports equipment or a car, um, I want to be, I wanna be that person. So, um, I also kind of on the. You know, um, entertainment side of things. I'd, I'd find myself watching, um, auto racing fairly often and, and probably from an early age, you know, you ask the 4-year-old what they wanna do when they grow up is my answer probably would've been race, car driver. Um, but I think that evolved into, uh, but race, car engineer. Um, so, so that kind of was the basis of my, I guess, my outlook and, and as I got through. My college career starting to think about what I wanted to do professionally. Um, I like a lot of people, really wanted to find that balance of things you're interested in and things you're good at. And, um, I. I managed to find a role coming straight outta college in automotive crash reconstruction. So it was kind of adjacent to automotive design. It was actually, uh, figuring out how cars reacted when they'd get crashed, um, and setting up tests and analyzing the test results. That, that's a pretty fun
Chris Brandt:activity there. Like, you know, like wrecking them and, and taking 'em apart and seeing how, how they, that's totally high speed. That's a little kid's dream.
Colin Godby:Yeah. High speed footage and seeing how it crumbles. Yeah. And all this stuff. Um, but I, I realized pretty quickly I actually just wanted to do the design side of things. That testing was interesting, but design was really where I wanted to get to. So I, um. I looked, kept an eye out basically for the best thing, next, best thing that would pop up that would get me into design. And that took me back to Orange County from Santa Barbara and actually into the bicycle industry. And unfortunately it was a short-lived role. Um, I learned a good bit about, um, you know, kind of being a junior engineer and taking responsibility and, and how to, um. Navigate sort of a, a more open, loose kind of management environment. Um, but I, I think the silver lining there was it, let me find my next role, which was, um, with a company called Millworks doing, um, high performance vehicle development. And that was. Really fast-paced environment where the engineers were adjacent to the shop and we could really quickly work on a design and take it over to the shop to get built and, and learn, um, without any, I think, uh, you know, commentary withheld basically how bad you design was. Um, and, and so that turned me, um, into a much better engineer than I entered over the course of the four years there. And I got a lot of it. Exposure to race, car development, to concept cars, theme park rides, and military vehicles. And a good chunk of those projects were actually around electrification and, um, kind of drivetrain, powertrain, um, development. Um, it just so happened that the owner of that business was kind of a legendary rally racer named, um. Rod Millen, uh, Kiwi Rally racer. He had done world rally, um, short course, uh, off-road stadium trucks, and then Baja and we, we still participated in Baja, sort of at the business level for fun and um, kind of marketing. And I ended up, um, developing a friendship with his son Ryan, who's also a professional driver. And that's kind of what got me into. Being able to do co-driving, um, in Baja and some other rally events and, uh, wow. So it's, yeah, an amazing experience where on the technical side, I'm kind of geeking out about working on these projects. But then on the, you know, personal, um, kind of recreation and and entertainment side, just having a. A ball getting to go to these races and, and actually participate.
Chris Brandt:And so that is some really wild stuff. I mean, those rally car driving is a whole nother level of crazy and I don't know how, you know, like, and, and I know, you know, the, your, your co-driving, so it's like one person like sort of spouting out the, this peculiar language of, you know, where the next turns are and how sharp they are and things like that. What I don't understand is how can you be in that car reading those notes and not throw up all over the inside of the car? No, it's a really
Colin Godby:good question, and I think, um, at a certain level, you're just sort of genetically, uh, you know, predisposed to, to handle it or not. Um, I will say, um, I did a couple. More traditional rally events where they have a much higher cadence on pace notes and, and like you said, calling out the features, um, off-road, like sort of cross country, whether it's Baja or, or some of the other, um, longer distance rally events. It was a little bit less, uh, you know, sort of dense in terms of the notes. So it, I got some breaks and, you know, it's more about calling out the gotchas or the things to look out for rather than Right. You know. You know, specific turn by turn. But, um, no, it was a lot of fun and, and got to travel the world to do a little bit of that and yeah, get, uh, get to call it my job at a certain level as well. So that was, that was super cool. And you know, I think I. If I wouldn't have expected to be able to do those things. So early in my career, I, I kind of figured it was something that I'd have to work towards or even never get to do. Right. Um, but I think it was, you know, not only in, in terms of having fun, but also in terms of the professional side, it taught me a lot about, um, developing. These, these vehicles and, and while I wasn't doing a lot of design work on these vehicles, I was a part of, um, you know, the field servicing and fixing stuff and being in the pits and Sure. Seeing how things break and how hard things get beat up and, um, used in sort of the race and off-road environment. And I think I. Um, it kind of falls into the theme of my career, which has been trying to grab these learnings and tools, so to speak, and add 'em to the tool belt along the way. And, and so I got to add a lot of tool belt or tools to my tool belt, um, kind of early in my career, uh, that related to vehicle development and, and these harsh environments.
Chris Brandt:What a great background. And, and you know, I saw something else. I was, I was perusing your LinkedIn and I I saw you also were involved with the Glow Forge. Back in the day. Mm-hmm. Which I thought was such a cool product. You know, I, I like just, I, I, I desperately wanted one of those. I never, never was allowed to have one in my house.'cause I don't really have a place to put it, but it was a really cool product. Um, for those who aren't familiar, do you wanna talk a little bit about like what that was?
Colin Godby:Yeah, totally. Um, glow Forge super cool. It kind of took an industrial technology and CO2 laser cutting and if you haven't seen a CO2 laser, it's. Uh, feels like sci-fi because it's basically a super high voltage, um, arc that's created across a glass tube filled with some plasma gas base. It creates a plasma laser and it looks like this purple, um, pink sort of, um, laser beam inside of a cool. Hand-blown glass tube and it shoots across the mirrors and then eventually gets focused to be able to cut through a variety of materials. Um, and that was, you know, a little later in my, my career, I guess, coming out of Millworks, jumped into consumer product development. Yeah. And especially around startup scene. And it was cool to kind of jump between different types of. Product companies, and I think there's this trend in, in my career, as it kept going, the the technologies of the companies, the products we were offering got more complex and more integrated with software and hardware. Yeah. And, and sensing. And so, glow Forge. On the end of the complexity scale for consumer product is at the top. It's got optics and linear motion and laser high power, um, power supplies and connected to the cloud and, you know, all this path planning. Super, super high tech and, uh, had a lot of fun helping. Um. Lead the hardware side of things. So, um, yeah, making sure that the product was ready for, you know, consumer market and, and also the manufacturing side of things. So we, we have one in the shop here, actually, we still use it. Oh really? For some prototyping tasks. Yeah. Um, it's super helpful for the professional as well as for the consumer side of things. Super cool
Chris Brandt:product. Um, so, alright, so now you're, you know, you've got this wild background that involves, you know, extreme sports and engineering and, and you know, like a lot of adrenaline. Um, could you talk a little bit about like, you know, what you saw that was missing in, in the dirt bike market and, and, and like, why, like why you, you said like, this is the time for an ev dirt bike.
Colin Godby:As I was kind of saying, I, I think dust is a. Culmination of kind of these threads of professional and, and personal coming together. And, um, actually the job we kinda have to roll back to the, the role previous to Dust. It's a company called Upco. I was the chief product officer and we made electric motorbikes. Basically these off-road utility, two wheel drive motorbikes, originally designed for New Zealand farms. And, um, then kind of expanded their use case into hunting and ranching and, um, camping and stuff like that. Yeah. And so within my role there, um, I was, uh, tasked with the strategic portfolio, basically the product roadmap. And so a big piece of my job was actually just expanding my, uh, understanding of the industry at large. And that included rolling back sort of into the history of, okay, some of these. Companies that have tried and failed, what were their products like? What caused them to fail? What were people really excited about on the technology side? Um. What are the new trends coming up within the industry? What should we look at jumping onto? And, um, we started to put together basically the basis of an idea for product adjacent to the utility bike, which is more recreationally oriented. And we had started to see some trends with these low cost, lighter weight, um, Emoto bikes coming from Asia, as well as sort of. Some companies, um, trying and, and continuing to try the really high performance side of the spectrum. Right? And, um, in, in my role there, you know, obviously I had to try some of these competitive bikes and, and these other bikes that have been in around and, um, you know, from BMX to, um, getting older, I continued into, you know, too low recreation. I kept racing mountain bikes and, and got to a decently high level and. One of my frustrations, like having ridden dirt bikes as well, but never very seriously in terms of competition. I always felt like my skillset on, on bicycles did not fully translate into dirt bikes, like as, as a better rider on bicycles. And I get on a dirt bike and I was kind of like a goon and um. Then as a part of my role at Upco, I jumped on some of these benchmark bikes or these competitor bikes, and all of a sudden I had this moment where it clicked was I'm a much better rider on the electric motos than I have ever been on gas bikes. And there's something about the, um, user experience being, um, much simpler. Yeah. And basically it lowers the barrier of entry of learning how to ride and, and even just ride well and lets you kind of focus on, on. You know, just the act of riding rather than juggling all these handed foot controls. And so that was kind of, you know, why now, why EV dirt bikes or electric dirt bikes was sort of this realization in my previous role that, um. There are some trends in, in market opportunities. This, um, accumulation of knowledge of what has failed and why, and, and why. I think there's still a really unique opportunity because of the nature of the experience, um, that electric provides to actually grow the industry. And basically the, the root of it is. Power sports has been flat, essentially, especially dirt bike sales for the last 25 years. Um, and we kind of developed this realization that it, it's. Really coupled with the lack of innovation in terms of the user experience, and by offering electric, all of a sudden we could get a lot more people onto these bikes. And so while we weren't able to see that through at Upco, it gave, uh, myself and my other two founders who I worked with there, um, the opportunity to start fresh and say, okay, there's this gap in the market around kind of a performance middle market. Middle, middle size, middle market bike, sort of where price to performance is maximized. Um, you know, almost like the Dyson vacuum in a way. Right. Um, you know, there's higher end products than a Dyson vacuum, but you don't get much more performance, basically. Right, right. Um, but then if you go down market, you actually pretty quickly trade performance and reliability for, you know, a cheaper product. So there's. There's this opportunity to slot in at that performance middle market, develop a real brand based on American kind of insights and understanding. You know, in the reality there's no American Dirt bike company right now. Um Wow. Servicing our big market. So that was, that was the why. It was like right in the middle of it, saw the, um. Very visceral connection with the product, and then also had the insights in our role. You know, having to understand the rest of the industry and seeing that there's a gap there.
Chris Brandt:You know, when I look at the high tail. The thing that, that, that's like really appealing to me is like, it doesn't seem like it's a lot of, you know, like some, sometimes you, you get into a sport and it becomes such a, the, the maintenance and, and care and feeding of your activity gets to be more of the hobby than the hobby itself. And this doesn't seem like that. This seems like, you know, this thing's gonna be ready. You just slap a, slap a battery in and you just get on it and go and you have fun and then you come back and you. Pack it away and, and, and, and rinse and repeat. Right? Yeah. You know, so it, it, it really seems like, you know, from sort of the modern, busy lifestyle. That this is a really good, you know, thing to integrate into that.
Colin Godby:Yeah. It, there's a, there's sort of a, an insight that was pulled up from one of our colleagues, um, pretty early on when we're working in this concept space, which is like, time is the most precious resource that we have, and I. The last thing you wanna be doing when you're trying to partake in a hobby is spend more time sort of servicing the hobby or the item than actually doing. And I think that's what a lot of, um, the ownership experience of a, a typical gas, dirt bike is like, especially if you a family. For sure. For sure. Because it's like, okay, if my bike's not broken, then one of the kids bikes or the wife's bike's broken and, and then it's like, okay, we're never really getting out, or the riding opportunities are farther from home because they shut 'em down due to noise. Um. And the, then the other side, like you said, is sort of flip the switch and go like, um, in a lot of these situations, you turn on the, the gas bike and you discover something, oh, dang it. I need to change the air filter or whatever. You know, it's like the, it's like the lawnmower like finally comes out of the shed. After, you know, a winter and you're like getting ready with the grass growing spring. It doesn't start, it doesn't work. And you're like, oh. And so that's why everyone's moved to these electric power tools, right. Is just I have both a, a lawnmower and a snowblower like that. Yeah, exactly. So you don't do anything with them. Right. And yeah. And uh, you end up getting out the hand shovel to, to clear the walk, you know?
Chris Brandt:Yeah, totally. Well, and, and I remember when, you know, when I was younger, we used to ride dirt bikes and things. It was. Every time something was, it's like, oh, the clutch lever's broken, or, oh, the brake lever's broken, or the, or the, you know, the, the brake pedal is, is just bent. Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. Unnaturally, for some reason it doesn't start today. Who knows why. It could be water in the tank, it could be an air filter, it could be anything. You know, it's like, it just seems like every time we wanted to do something, it. Required so much effort just to get out there.
Colin Godby:Yeah. And we, we had really similar experiences and so, you know, the, the value proposition for electric is kind of a combination of those elements around maintenance, um, you know, a, a big reduction in the part count and the types of ongoing service that's needed. The other pieces related to the learning curve, um, much easier to learn on electric because you're not juggling. Clutches and gear shifts and foot breaks. Right. You know, it's all more intuitive. A lot like riding a bicycle just with a throttle. And, um, the other piece is, is the availability of the riding opportunities. You know, back in the sixties, seventies, eighties, and sort of the golden era of dirt biking because, um, as the country was starting to kind of, uh, build. The network of roads and, you know, communities and stuff like that. We basically were, um, able to have kind of these suburban areas with dirt lots and backyard tracks and all this stuff, you know, sort of semi-rural, semi suburban. And as things kind of got more and more dense through the eighties, nineties and two thousands, there's a lot more like nimbyism or you know, like, let's get rid of these. Dirt bike tracks 'cause they're loud and annoying and, and I get it. Um, so that's kind of the third piece of, you know, the, um, improved value or improved experience value proposition for electric for
Chris Brandt:sure. Yeah. We were always being chased outta somewhere, that's for sure. Well, um, one thing that I think is interesting, so, you know, I, I'll let you kind of describe the high hightail, but. Um, you know, one of the things I think is interesting about it too is that it's, it's kind of customizable, like the, the writing experience is also customizable, like, you know mm-hmm. You can either be super aggressive or not as aggressive, so it can fit a lot of different styles and skill levels too, which is really interesting. But, I mean, maybe you could, you know. Kind of talk through, you know, like what, what goes into the hightail and what that experience is all like. What's
Colin Godby:interesting about the electric side of things is, you know, some of this kind of comes for free to a certain extent when you have a digital control system, you know, electric vehicles naturally have this, you have a lot more access to the various sensors and data, and you can use that, um, in a variety of ways. So in a, in a gas vehicle, um. Especially older ones that might be carbureted or don't have very advanced kind of, um, electronic control units, you're sort of fixed on, like, okay, throttle input goes directly to output, right. With our digital control systems, electric, you could do everything from, you know, mapping the shape of the throttle input to how much torque is allowed, you know, changing the power based on battery levels. You can. Go in reverse or forward. Like there's a lot of interesting things that you can do. And so, um, while, you know, I think it's worth saying we're not unique in this in terms of an electric vehicle platform. I, I think we can, um, use our sensibilities around product development, product design to apply this in the way that's best for our customers. So, um, you know, customizable rider modes where you can have a learner mode, which is, um. Nearly impossible to, uh, you know, sort of wheelie over or, um, so you don't dump the clutch
Chris Brandt:and flip it over? Yeah,
Colin Godby:exactly. Loop it out. Um, or, you know, the, this is sort of a, I love this phrase, whiskey throttle, which is like a lot of people, if you, if you give it a little too much throttle, there's this. Um, positive feedback loop in the sense of throttle makes you go backwards, which makes you pull more on your throttle hand and which gives you more throttle and it just all of a sudden you're going a hundred miles an hour and you can't stop. Um, so we could have ride modes that just totally prevents that. Right, right. Um, and then at the same time, it can be sort of this jeko hide type of situation where in our highest mode the bike can be, you know. A, a true ripping machine for a, an advanced rider and, and get out on tracks and, and hit big jumps and, and, you know, accelerate like some of the larger gas bikes. Right. And so it's, it's a really cool opportunity where. You can teach someone to ride. And I've literally done this even with our prototypes. Um, teach someone to ride in, in a matter of a couple minutes, see them having a huge smile on their face because it's the first time they've ever ridden a motorcycle and felt that sensation. Um, and at the same and then, you know, have them come back, let their their friend jump on who's a, an experienced rider but never ridden electric. Jump on, open up all the available power, and then they have a huge smile because. The feeling of an electric vehicle feels like magic and, and it's, yeah, the same for people jumping into a EV car for the first time. Um, they're fast. It just feels Yeah. Lot of tore. Exactly. You know, the, the other thing side of the experience, I think that we're working to offer, which allows for that, um, approachability and rider kind of designed experiences actually just. Um, what you might call the passive features. So just the, the size itself is unique to our bike. Um, you know, if you take a typical gas bike, um, kind of size range, it's usually matched to engine output. Mm-hmm. And, but once you get to a certain point in the modern era. A 1 25 cc bike and a two 50 cc bike and a four 50 cc bike and a 500, they all are the same basic seat height. Right. And roughly wheel bases. So like, it's not like you're getting small, medium, large, you're just changing the, the horsepower output and torque and the weight. Um, we and the weight. Exactly. And so we saw the opportunity actually maybe fine tune the sizing. Make it about two inches shorter on the seat height, a little bit shorter on the wheel base, create a more kind of nimble, agile riding experience, but also allow for a wider range of riders to feel comfortable on the bike in terms of being able to throw a leg over it and touch the ground. Yeah. Um, and so we've had riders from five two to six four be able to jump on and have a lot of fun on the bike and, um, well, yeah, it's not necessarily the right. Um, format for winning the highest echelon of races, but it, it is the right equation in our eyes for having the most fun. Um, and kind of back to that, you know, we're short on time. Like, let's design an experience that doesn't waste time having fun. Like, let's get to the fun faster.
Chris Brandt:Yeah. Well, and, and, and I know like, you know, the other advantage of electric is it's just fewer parts. So it's, you know, like we talked through this kind of a little bit lower maintenance, but I mean, can you talk about. You know how like that plays out in, in sort of the design and engineering of, of the spike.
Colin Godby:It gives us a bit more flexibility around, um, how we. How we package things. You know, we have fewer subsystems we don't have, uh, in our bike. Um, you know, this is an aired air cooled system. We don't have coolant loops and radiators and, and hoses to deal with there. Um, we don't have exhaust pipes that are, you know, um, if you burn yourself on burning. Yeah, exactly. I've got scars on my legs from those. That's right. Yeah. Everyone does. Um, and then, um. We can also look at sort of the overall aesthetic of it, right? A lot of motorcycle design is sort of shrink wrapping around all of these, um, unique to gas bike features and, and parts. So, um, in. Simplifying the system. It's great for maintenance, it's great for packaging density, being able to get things really tightly packaged, but also it gave us more flexibility to make a bike, um, that looks a little bit more. Um, I think it's a mashup of kind of consumer product, automotive and bicycle design more than. Traditional dirt bike design, right? And in a sense, like we're not race first. We're more about having fun. We want a, a product that looks really appealing and, and fast, but at the same time, maybe a bit more sophisticated and clean and modern. And so we've got this new pallet that's our electric components, you know, battery and a motor. And then, um. The ability to kind of make these surfaces cleaner without exhaust pipes and radiators and all this stuff.
Chris Brandt:Yeah. It's a beautiful looking bike too. I mean, I, I, I think that's another thing about it. The aesthetic of it is very cool too.
Colin Godby:Yeah. We saw that opportunity to differentiate there too, which is like, Hey, if we're coming. With a little bit more flexibility here. Let's, let's make it look nice. Um, but there's this, there's this fine line in, in making those decisions around, we wanna be able to sell our motorcycles to existing enthusiasts as well as new riders. Right. Right. And so we've seen other companies come in and, and. They swing too hard towards like this new customer innovation and it, and it's a polarizing design for existing riders. They're like, that does not look like a dirt bike. And we, we saw that and we were able to learn from that and said, okay, how about we make something that looks like a real dirt bike, looks fast, looks fun, and then it also looks clean for maybe an audience that wouldn't t typically be drawn to a standard dirt bike. So, and, and that's kind of where we see the big opportunity for the industry too, is, and we talked about this kind of static growth. Kind of position the industry's in is we've gotta bring new people into it, and we can do that through an easier experience and learning curve. It's a naturally fun thing to do that, that feeling of flying the flow state that you enter, it's really desirable. Um, so if we can get people liking the look of the product, able to learn it quickly, not having huge headaches and owning it or maintaining it, um, all of a sudden we think we can help tip up that growth curve.
Chris Brandt:Yeah. I think what's cool about it is, you know, and what you're talking about, I think in terms of like sort of the design and the aesthetic of it is sort of embracing the nostalgia of the past, kind of, you know, thing that was so fun and great that we all enjoyed, but just bringing it into like a more modern sensibility, you know, so that. You know, you still, you're still connected to the whole history of it.
Colin Godby:That that's one thing that we wanna be really good about is we don't want to be coming, you know, from outside the industry saying, we're here to revolutionize the industry and everything you loved about it is dead. Right. Right. Like, we actually, you know, I look fond, like I grew up in Southern California and was surrounded by motocross tracks and these pro riders and it. It's such a rich and passionate, um, kind of culture and community and fan base, and there's a lot of great stuff about that. Like, you go to these races, these national amateur races, and there are thousands of families, you know, camping for the weekend. Kids are outdoors, swimming in the rivers and then racing and giving it their all and getting hurt and learning grit and all this stuff. It's, it's a really rich community that, that we wanna help keep going. We don't wanna come in and say like. Throw all of that away because now is the future, right? Um, but at the same time, the external perspective that we can bring could maybe help in other ways, like bring new riders into the sport to help the overall ecosystem thrive. You know? Um, the more new riders entering races or buying gear or, you know, going to rental experiences, that's good for everyone that's in the industry. And I think. One thing that we can help do with our product is actually create a bridge into, you know, actively participating at a deeper level. And so I, I wouldn't be surprised if people that come into the sport through a product like ours actually end up buying gas bikes eventually. Um, but it is pretty clear looking at the data that any new rider, any kid that's starting under sort of 15 years old, they're all starting on electric.
Chris Brandt:Yeah. So obviously. There are unique challenges that you're gonna have.'cause you know, one of the things we talked about when we were talking earlier, um, was the, you know, like the benefit of an electric bike is that it doesn't make noise, but that's also potentially a big problem 'cause you don't hear somebody coming. Right. You know, so there's, there's, there's, uh, unique challenges to, to the, the industry. Could you talk about like some of the. You know, the, the technology you've had to develop and, and, and some of the, some of the kind of unique challenges you've had to overcome. You know, for the ev there's probably a whole segment on,
Colin Godby:on. The difference between like street electric, street bikes and electric dirt bikes. Right. And the noise is a big piece of that. Right. And, and kind of comfort on roads and all these sorts of things. But kinda more specifically to our application, I think some of the biggest challenges are with the current state of battery technology are always going to be range. Mm-hmm. Um, and you can't right now, you know, sort of the best, um, comparison is, is when you factor in. Um, you know, sort of the two and a half to three x improvement in efficiency of an electric system against the lack of energy density against the gasoline of. You know, gallon of gasoline, you end up basically at this sort of like one 20th, the energy content in the same volume, right? Um, and it's, and it's a, so it's a, it's a, it's a big, uh, it's a big difference. And so that means you have roughly two gallons of gas. You make a battery that big and you're gonna go, you know, sort of one 10th or one 20th, the range. And so. There's a big piece of the industry that have expectations around, okay, I want to get out for six hours of riding. Um, and you simply can't do that on, on most electric bikes, um, depending on how you're riding, especially at high speeds, right? Where the efficiency falls off pretty fast, right? And so. Street bikes that are on the highway doing 70, 80 miles an hour are really tough to get you electric range. Um, 'cause a motorcycle has worse aerodynamics than a car, right? Um, and, and then, uh, you know, dirt bikes that are in the desert going a hundred miles an hour, you know, trying to cover 200 miles or something in a race is also really hard. So for us, we kind of said, let's lean into the benefits. To find the right compromise on these limitations. And so for us, making it about fun and more about like the one to two hour sort of experience set, which is like an after work ride or, or playing in the backyard with your family or you know, getting to the track and maybe having this as in a second bike for fun,
Chris Brandt:if it's more reliable and you can just count on it being ready to go. You don't have to be like, I'm gonna. Spent all week working on the bike and then I'm going definitely get six to seven hours of riding on this weekend. That's right. Yeah. You know, you can kind
Colin Godby:of do it a little bit every day, you know? That's exactly right. Like get the wiggles that we like to say is like, yeah. Even just getting 30 minutes of riding does a lot like that. Flow state really is great for the brain and, and it's fun to, you know, be able to twist the throttle and throw a little dirt. And so if you do that a couple times, two to three times a week rather than one big ride every couple weeks, um, that's a piece of it. The other side around how we kind of compromise or found. At the right equation is thinking about swappable batteries. Mm-hmm. One thing we've done in our design is allowing for a swappable removable battery. Um, so that if people really did want more ride time, they could invest in a second battery pack, um, so that they could keep going. But what we're trying to find is the balance of the typical kind of rider and experience I. Um, they're looking for, we meet that and their physical capabilities. So it's like, you know, if you're pushing really hard and you're getting a really kind of hardcore 45 minute ride, your body's feeling that workout. Yeah. Or if you're going at a, you know, kind of more chill pace and you go two, two and a half hours, you feel really stoked on, on that experience as well.
Chris Brandt:So let's, let's dig into that a little bit. Like, you know, who, who, who would you say this is built for? Like who, who's like your. Prime market for, for this, this spike.
Colin Godby:It's sort of, um, three different pillars we like to say. And, and we actually refined this idea and understanding of our potential market through our early crowdfund campaign that we hosted called Founders 50. Um, and basically we gave the opportunity for 50 people in a really early stage of building the business to jump on, crowdfund the business and get bikes basically for half off and. It was pretty unique because, you know, typically in like a Kickstarter, a lot of times you give your money and then you just sort of wait and hold on, maybe get a email once every, you know, three or six months. Yeah. Um, we said let's actually invite these people along the journey. Every month we actually host a Google. Meeting with all of them if they wanna join. We tell 'em about the updates, the design choices we're making, you know, what's new, what, what we're learning. Even also about the business, not just the product, like how we're building the business and fundraising and stuff like that. And, um, what we learned from that audience was, is kind of three. Distinct groups. Um, the first group was existing Emoto customers buying some of these lower cost bikes and getting into upgrading, and they were excited about the hightail because we sort of had taken the performance level, like we talked about, kind of finding that optimization of price to performance and found a point where, if. We met our goals in terms of our performance targets. It's a better, much better value and experience than trying to upgrade these existing low-cost bikes. Interesting. And so we were kind of the logical next phase of, um, of, um, improvement for them in their, their ownership, uh, journey. The second category were existing dirt bikers that were interested in sort of adding to the quiver of bikes, right. And. Um, they liked the idea of a more playful, kind of nimble backyard track and single track type of bike, rather than, um, us trying to tell them they gotta replace their big gas bike.'cause, you know, we're better than it all. And so these are people that were interested in electric, not anti electric right. But maybe not fully. Committing, you know, to throwing away all the gas bikes. Um, and then the third category is probably more similar to, to me personally, and, and, you know, our, our general kind of founding position, which was the action sports enthusiasts that were adjacent to Modo. Had some time, probably at, you know, one point in time in life to jump on a dirt bike, had fun, but never got into the sport, right? And finally realizing that there might be the product. Equation or the product offering that would get them into the sport, um, with the right sort of level of features and design and, and brand behind it.
Chris Brandt:That's awesome. Well, so, so, um, alright. So you're, you're taking pre-orders on this. I mean, if somebody wanted to, to get in on that, where, where's the best place to go to? Put their pre-order in.
Colin Godby:Uh, www.dustmoto.com is our, our primary website. We are running pre-orders through there. You can sign up a hundred dollars refundable, um, deposit basically gets your spot in line. Um, we're looking to fulfill those production pre-orders towards the end of this year as we ramp production through the summer. Um. And our, if you wanna consume some of the information about us, we've, one of the things we've been working really hard to do from the beginning of the company in 2023 is actually. Just be very open about the development process and our journey, and so our, um, Instagram channel, um, at Dust Moto and our YouTube channel, dust Moto and, and as well as our newsletter that you can sign up for on our website. There's a lot of information out there about us, like we're basically an open book. Um, so you can go as deep as you want. Yeah, I mean that sounds like a hundred dollars worth of value, just there. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And, and we. We are committed to delivering value to our backers and our, our followers and stuff like that. And so even the content we try to push out, we really try to, um, go that next level deeper and, and explaining what we're doing and why. And, and we saw that missing when we were starting the company. And, and in fact we looked to see if we could learn from any of them. And this kind of content wasn't out there, right? So, um. We said, let's share that, share the journey and, and we're sure to find kind of passionate people out there.
Chris Brandt:Well, and I think that's the sort of new trend now is sort of build in public, you know, 'cause it keeps you honest to your mission. It keeps you honest to your vision and it keeps you, um, in the feedback loop with the people you're trying to produce products for.
Colin Godby:That's right. Yeah. The best way to learn is to just be in and amongst our customers. And, um, even with our prototypes, like having the opportunity to show them, a lot of companies are really, um, precious about their prototypes and, and they feel uncomfortable showing the flaws or the issues. And, um, we've had to develop some sort of thick skin to, to just. Show kind of all of the good and the bad and Yeah. But to your point, like the learning has been invaluable. Um, and it's really shaped our production, um, specification and shaped how we're launching this thing, and even who we partner with when it comes to, you know, go to market and our, our retail partners and stuff like that.
Chris Brandt:Well, it, it looks super cool. I can't wait to, you know, see this thing in, in reality and, and you know, you know, see how you, how you go, you know, as a company and what, what you're building. You know, obviously this is the starting point for, for something you know, much bigger. Um, so, you know, congratulations on what you're, what you're doing. Congratulations on getting to this point and, uh, keep up the good work.'cause I think the world needs more fun these days. It
Colin Godby:is so true. Yeah. What's the antidote to our crazy complex lives? I think getting on the motorcycle is one of the best ones and so appreciate it. Uh, definitely been a lot of fun. And, um, the journey's, you know, uh, building a business from scratch, especially this kind of products I. Uh, not easy, but, um, you know, we're, we're excited to keep charging forward with the backing of some awesome customers and a lot more fun to come. That's for sure.
Chris Brandt:Well, we'll keep building the products I love. That's what, that's all you gotta do. Awesome. Will do. All right. Thanks so much. Thanks for watching. I'd love to hear from you in the comments and if you could give us a, like, share this with a friend and I will see you in the next one.