Edison Electric Bikes

me ride on his bicycle. Ryan Hirsch, Welcome to the show. What's up guys? Honored and obliged to be here. It's great. Yes, yes, we uh, we made sure that there was a direct obligation for him to appear on tech Stuff. So Ryan, you you've the founder of Edison Bikes, and Edison Bikes is located right here in Atlanta, and uh, you were very generous with your time and you brought some of

the Edison bikes here the office. Uh. Multiple people here at hell Stuff Works have had a chance to write it as in bikes are electric bikes, pedal assist bikes, which I've talked about a couple of times on tech Stuff.

But it's so great to actually have someone who developed one of these right here, so we can even talk about what that process was like from the point where you thought of it to the point where you started kind of just getting your hands dirty and work shopping this to getting to an actual shippable product, something where you can actually put it together. People can order it by it right it you see them around Atlanta. So

we're gonna go all through that journey. But before we jump into your personal story, I thought, in order for people to really kind of understand, uh, some of the things that inspired you to do this, it's good to sort of talk about the city. We live in Atlanta. Now, this podcast goes all over the world, and there are a lot of cities out there that are similar to Atlanta. I would say Atlanta is like cities like Houston, Texas, where tipically, the way people get around is by car.

It's slowly changing in Atlanta. We're starting to see more pedestrian walkways. We're starting to see more bike lanes, which is fantastic, But traditionally cars were the way the way of the world. For places like Atlanta. You just public transportation while it exists, it just cannot measure up to cities like New York or Chicago. Right, So that means that we've live in a in a city that has been plagued by traffic problems. We're constantly in that top

ten in the United States for worst traffic cities. And so seeing a that as the backdrop, we're in this world where a commute is easily forty minutes or more, even if you're living relatively close to where you need to go. Uh, that gives a very strong impetus to come up with alternative solutions. And as I understand it, that's kind of where your story begins ends. Right, absolutely, absolutely nailed at, Jonathan. And it's it's a little bit embarrassing,

right that we're always on the top ten for worst traffic. However, when you look at our population, we don't have that many people, right, it's the five point five million people. Uh, and we're being compared to cities that are, you know, almost ten times our size. It's like, what in the

world are we doing wrong? Right? Yeah? And and I mean yeah, the solutions tend to be We've seen it over and over, let's build more roads or let's make the roads more wide, and that just doesn't that's that's just not how the world works like if you make a here's the secret. If you add more lanes to a road, what you have just done is just added more cars to that road. At that one time. It feels like you're increasing capacity, but it just means that

there's just more cars there during rush hour. It really doesn't seem to help. The best way to get rid of traffic is to remove the need for using cars in the first place. So the more you can reduce that need by giving alternatives, the smoother everything is. It's not just the people who are actually using the alternative forms of transportation, for the people who are still clinging to dear life to their cars. There are fewer cars

on the road. Absolutely. So you were you were tell me the story about why you started thinking about going with this route, this sort of electric bike pedal assist route. So back in I took a job with Emery and uh I was living O t P at the time, which is a dirty, dirty word. Yeah, that means outside the perimeter. For all of you folks who are not in Atlanta, there is a highway called two eight five

and it's circles. Uh, not just the city of Atlanta, but some of the little surrounding areas like Decatur, and well, I could go on forever, localizing this podcast and alienating all of my listeners who don't live in the A t L. Yeah, but no, it's no, no, it's important for this story. Uh. There is also not that it's directly related to this somewhat of a stigma for those of us who live inside the perimeter or I t P and those who live outside the perimeter or O

t P. There's some snooty nous involved. And I admit, though I was born O t P, now that I'm an I t P person, I have been known to be snooty. So you were living O t P. So I was living an ot P. I took a job at Emery and the commute was like twenty two miles at the time, and it was just impossible by the car. If you're O t P, it's impossible to get an I t P. So um, So I did what anyone would do. I moved closer to work, and I moved

to a cool little neighborhood called Kirkwood. It's about four miles south of where I worked, and believe it or not, my commute times were still just about exactly the same. It was taking me an hour to get to my desk. And this is ridiculous because it's like, it's only four miles, right, I could I could pretty much walk that speed, right, But by the time I found a parking space, fought for that space, paid twelve bucks a day for that space, it was still taking me the same amount of time.

So that involved in uh, evolved into riding a normal pedal bicycle, which I would call an analog bicycle. Yeah. Um, and my commute time dropped from an hour down to

twenty minutes. And that was great. But frequently I have to give presentations and stuff, I have to wear a tie, and uh, I would you know, on a day like today, even in October it's super hot outside, I would show up sweaty, and a sweaty guy wearing a tie is like the worst thing ever, right, You're immediately immediately everyone's like, this guy is not confident, he doesn't know what he's talking about. He's sweating it too much. Very I'm a sweater,

he's got something to hide this. We're gonna we're gonna nail this guy to the wall with our questions. So Atlanta is a very I mean we're in the southeast. Our climate, especially like late spring all the way into late fall, you can get really high temperatures, really high humidity. I've I've experienced I walked to and from work, and I've experienced the same issue where by the time I get to the office, I have to have a change of clothes with me because otherwise I'm just roast. Yeah. So, uh,

I'm now riding my bike to work getting sweaty. Quick Google search, it turns out that electric bikes is a thing because I I loved, you know, being liberated from traffic, but now there's this new set of challenges showing showing up to work sweaty. Now I gotta find showers, all that kind of stuff. So electric bikes was a thing back in twelve and um, you know, looking back on on bikes back then, Um, they were always like a standard bicycle frame that was outfitted with three components. You've

got three components to an electric bike. You have a battery, a motor, and a controller. And we can geek out about those later, but um, you know, so you have a bike and you could clearly see those three components connected to the bike, and the result was not very pretty, um uh. And I actually test road a bike at a shop, and I fell in love with the feeling of riding a bike. It's it's addicting, it's empowering, and um, I didn't care how the bike looked. It fixed my problem, right.

So I get back from this test ride only to learn that that bike that I was riding was Bucks. And I've always been like a tinker throughout school. I was that guy that could fix your router or I could fix your boat like I just love taking things

apart and making them better. So after that test ride and really being discouraged by the price tag, I was like, I know, one, I can build something that's better looking than this bike, but two, and definitely more importantly, I knew that I could build something that was more affordable. So that's exactly what I did. Fast forward about six months,

and I didn't really achieve the better looking part. I had imported a bike from Canada bicycle like um you know, standard fixie frame, and I outfitted it with those three components that I was telling you about. And it wasn't pretty, but boy didn't work great, and um people started to notice, right I'm showing up to where early, Um, you know, I'm in a better mood because I'm not sitting behind

the wheel. And uh, I was more than obliged to start building bikes, you know, for my coworkers, colleagues, friends, family, and you know that's when like the little light went off, right. I started getting feedback from these people that I had built bikes for, and uh, it was just it was really encouraging, right, I mean it was something that was born out of pure selfish needs. I was just trying to fix the problem that I have, and now all of a sudden, I'm fixing problems for for all these folks.

And um, a few months after that, I'm looking at my iPhone and I get inspired by it because like I've always just been like a clean lines kind of guy, and um, you know, when you look at an iPhone, it's just it's a beautiful product. Apple Apples nothing if not amazing with their aesthetics. There they are and even if you open one up, it's like it's like opening the hood of a catillact. Just everything is so tightly tightly packed. Everything fits precisely, like there's not, uh, not

a millimeter of spare space. It's all very neat how it all fits exactly. So I was like totally inspired by that. I was like, all the electrical bits that make this thing work are inside of the product itself. That's what I want to do with a bike because I'm not seeing that. Uh. So that's exactly what we did. Uh. Instead of starting with a bicycle frame, we started with

those components. We started with the battery pack, which is forty They're called eighteen six fifty battery cells about the size of your index finger, and our packs have forty of those in them. And then on top of that, we have a controller, and we wanted to design a

frame that would accommodate UM those two key components. Those are also some of the most expensive components, right, so by uh integrating them inside of the product, you're protecting it from crashes, from the elements from a pack of wolves. You know. Like however, right, it's all the expensive stuff is inside the frame. Uh. And then that third component, which is the motor, is actually sealed. It has a waterproof ratings, so it will work underwater. Um because it's

totally sealed, that means that it's self lubricating. Uh. They rated at fifty miles without needing any kind of service. So we really spent money on the parts that make these bikes electric because we figure if you're buying an electric bike, you're gonna be using them pretty hardcore. Um. So then, uh, speaking of money, UM, we're trying to make these things affordable. Right, that was like the biggest barrier for me. Right, I found a solution, but I

can't afford it. And um, you know this isn't this isn't a toy. This isn't uh for someone you know that's just gonna park this next to their tesla and their garage. And you know, like this is for the guy who, um, he has two jobs and he's got a twenty five year old car that he can't afford to keep running. And all of a sudden, this becomes a more viable means of transport. We're spending less than two thousand dollars on a bike, and um, you know that's you don't have. It costs ten cents to charge

one of these things, right. You get twenty to thirty miles on a single charge. So you talked about half of any per mile. You don't have to ensure it. Um, you know you don't have to pump it full of gas. You don't really have like maintenance and oil changes and all that kind of stuff. Um. So if we could actually get people to like pull the plug on on their cars, right, that frees up a lot of funds, um, you know, for uber and left on those rainy days. Right. So,

and like that's we're all about. Like if we were really honest with ourselves on how much money we spend on car ownership, uh, speaking of which Georgia actually leads the nation um in cost of ownership on cars. Uh, then we can really like start to um you know, see transportation in a new light. Absolutely so. And this is a ripple effect. I talk about ripple effects all the time on this show, about how a change in one area ends up having further effects out from that

immediate source. So, for example, you talked about how this was originally a personal project for you. You were literally trying to solve your own issue of getting to work not being all sweaty, you know, not having to deal with traffic the way you had been doing, uh with classic engineering issue. Right, You you have a problem, you start asking yourself what does it take to solve this problem? You then go forward the steps to solve that problem.

You test it, you throw out anything that doesn't work, you keep everything that does work. And then from there you say, all right, here's here's mark one. If we're gonna use like Iron Man suit technology, so mark one right here. It's like, it's not the finished product, but this is the thing that does what I needed to do. Then you have your classic second step, which is that other people take notice. This, by the way, reminds me your story is remarkably similar to the story of the

guys who founded the PC gaming company alien Ware. Now they build like those crazy gaming rigs that cost a couple of thousand dollars, and they when I had them on the show, it was the same thing. It was people who were they were building these rigs in the nine indies when all these crazy graphics cards are coming out, and it just was difficult to build a system that could run the brand new games, the ones that were

just coming out with three D graphics. It was hard to do that because there were just so much, so much, so many different products on the market and it was very confusing. So what they did was they built one for themselves and then they had all their friends say, hey, what if I if I paid you, would you be able to build one for me? And it became a little boutique industry which eventually grew into what it is today.

So you're and you're you're talking about the hacker ethos, the idea of taking things apart and then seeing how they work and then make it work better than it did before. I mean, that's totally a hacker thing. That is hacking. So, like you're talking the language of tech

stuff all throughout this already. The ripple effect I wanted to talk about is how you get to the point where for personal savings point of view, uh, it becomes clear if you're able to say, like, this is actually a replacement uh in and many of the use of where you would rely upon your vehicle, this could be a replacement for that for the majority of those. Uh. You know, obviously some things being outside of that, if you're taking like a long road trip or whatever, those

are obviously outside of it. But for daily commutes, it's it's easy to say, all right, this is a transportation solution. This isn't just recreation, right, This isn't just I've got a bike that I want to ride on Saturdays, so I can ride around the park. I mean, you could do that if you wanted to, but this is more seriously, you could you could use this to get to where your work going. You can use this instead of a car.

So that's the direct one. But the ripple effect is that again it starts to relieve traffic congestion because you're taking a car off the road during those peak travel times. It begins to relieve other issues that are related to traffic congestion, like pollution. It is taking off more wear and tear on city infrastructure. It's crazy to think about when you start looking at big, big picture, but you begin to realize that this is a much larger uh influence than just I got to work way faster and

I'm not sweaty. Uh. So now I don't like to get grandiose necessarily, but I do like to to acknowledge the fact that sometimes UH things that you're looking at like in a narrow focus, while they are true, it's not the whole story. And if you start peeling back, you realize this has potential to make truly transformative changes

in various communities. We're starting to see that again in Atlanta and I think it's largely because we have companies like Edison that are leading the way into providing actual alternatives that work within a city. And now we're starting to see communities say we want to have that, So we want to build more bike lanes, we want to build more dedicated pathways. The belt line that Pont City Market is right off of has not existed for very long at least, especially the stretch that goes by Pont

City Market. It hasn't been opened for very many years. It used to be disused railroad tracks. So we're starting to see those kind of transformations In Atlanta, that's just one city where we're starting to see that happened. So, uh, let's kind of dive into some of the tech of the Edison bikes and like sort of how they actually work. If you were to ride one, and and I had the opportunity to ride one, I will admit I was

doing the equivalent of training wheels. I did not go above the assist level one and it goes up to five. So let's talk a little bit about what you can do on one of these bikes and and how that pedal assist actually works on a practical level. So first I want to kind of set an expectation of, like what kind of power, uh could you expect because I've sold bikes to like people who ride Harley Davidson's and um, I got a big guy get on a bike and he goosed the throttle and he's like, why aren't I

going Ryan? Come on man, And I'm like, come on, dude, this is a pedal assist, uh, a penal assist thing. Um it produces five watts this motor, and uh it'll run it five dred watts. Uh. So if you ran this thing like full blasts, it would go just over an hour. Top speeds about twenty five miles an hour, so you're looking at a range between twenty and thirty miles. UM. So, like if I started, I wagh a little over two

hundred pounds. If I started at the base of a hill and I goosed the throttle, it would give me to the top. I'd probably be only going ten miles an hour or so. But if I pedaled along and just helped out that motor like ten percent of what I would like on a normal bike, you know, I'm just very gently penalting. I can easily carry twenty miles an hour up any hill in Atlanta. Right, So I just want to be clear with the list, or is it like we're not selling like a motorcycle or a scooter.

This is a bicycle that weighs forty five pounds, rides very much like a bicycle. You just feel superhuman when you're riding. Right, Yeah, you you hit one of those hills that normally, if you're riding a regular bike, you just feel your heart sink and you think, by halfway up, I'm gonna be off of this. I'm just gonna be I'll be pushing. I'll be pushing the bike because I won't be able to make it all the way up. I'm just gonna get to a point where I'm at

a standstill. But pedal assist because you have that that electric motor that can kick in and provide additional power so that you can keep on powering through something like that means that you you know, you don't have to you don't have to sweat it literally in this case. So uh yeah, I mean this is one of those technologies that um I love because it allows you to augment your experience, but it doesn't replace it. As you were saying like, it's not like it's an electric motorcycle.

It's about augmenting so that things that might have previously been a challenge, maybe it would even be a barrier to you adopting a bicycle are no longer a hurdle. Right, You don't know if you're sitting there and thing like I've got four hills between me and work, it's not so big a deal if you've got something that can kick in so that you're peddling just you know, you don't have to peddle any harder than you did on the level stretches as you do on the inclines a

thousand percent. That actually reminds me on the way home, I want to take an Instagram photo where I'm holding up a dime and I'm holding it up to our city, right, because like, with a range of twenty to thirty miles, that's how far we could go on a single dime. Right. These bikes, they really provide like a key, uh to your city. It really unlocks your city. Um, we're investing so much. Um when I say we um talking about Atlanta. Um, but we signed off on a bill of a billion

dollars to make our bike and pedestrian infrastructure better. Atlanta is striving to be one of the best bike communities in the world. Um, however, Atlanta is not going to be any flatter, right, but we have some pretty serious topography out there, right, So this kind of removes that final barrier, um for somebody you know that that is thinking about maybe riding a bike or like, you know,

alternative transportation. This takes that last barrier around, you know, and really it makes it easy, and it makes it something fun, right like um, and and everybody's you know,

kind of grown up riding bikes, right. Uh. I know you said you haven't ridden in fifteen years, but perhaps you wouldn't know if we were a flatter area, right right, Yeah, if if we were definitely that and uh, you know, it's it's again like when I first moved into Atlanta, it was early before anyone had really seriously started looking at putting in bike lanes. But over the years that i've I've been living in the city of Atlanta, that has been it's been. It's yeah, it's changed very quickly.

And like I said, there are a lot of communities that they jumped on board that early. Right. There's certain ones that you know, you just saw that immediately, and other ones are following suit all the time. Even places where traditionally, you know, you would never expect to see it, You're starting to see bike lanes pop up. So it's now at a point where maybe back when I first moved into Atlanta, I wouldn't have considered it. But now, I mean, I've talked about it a couple of times

and I just haven't jumped on it right. Uh. And part of it was that I had never had the experience of actually writing one of the electric bikes. I've I've seen them, I've Yeah, it was great. It was great to have a chance to do it. So let's let's talk about the different levels and kind of how that translates into experience. So someone gets an Edison bike, they get on it, they see that they've got this digital controller, a digital readoubt that that gives them information. So, uh,

you know, let's let's start with the levels first. Yeah, So what that looks like. You hop on the bike and you have five different levels of assists UM, and you have like a controller UM on your left hand. It's all very intuitive, like you have a power button in the middle and then you have up arrow in a down area and um, like on level one, Uh, you hop on the bike and you start turning the pedals and it's gonna feel like you're riding down wind.

You're still doing most of the work. Um, probably of the work. And um, you know level one is really something more like if if you're wanting to exercise, or let's say, um, you're going on a sixty mile ride. So um, my uncle he just turned sixty recently and he was like, I want to ride in Edison sixty miles. I was like, dude, I don't think you could do it, Like that's that's a long way, and uh, I'll be darned.

You know. He stayed like on assists level one and two and his average pace was about ten miles, so he wasn't going very fast. But um he got back and he still had half a battery left. So um.

You know, when I talk about range, I like to set expectations low because I always ride this thing like a madman, like I want to be going twenty you know, like I want to be passing those Spandex riders and I want my tie to be flapping in the wind at them, you know, saying uh so, um, so you have that lower level of assists and then you can arrow that puppy all the way up to level five. And like I said, level five is like superhuman mode. As soon as you start turning the pedals, you're gonna

take off. Um. So then on top of that, um, when you feel comfortable with the power and everything, you also have a small thumb throttle on your left hand. Uh. It's similarly placed to like which you would find like on a four wheeler or like some motorcycles have thumb throttles, and um, that thing is just totally variable. So you push it a little bit, it goes a little. The hearty push it, the faster you're gonna go. And like I said, five watts is um to give you a

perspective on power. Um, like those Tour de France right tis they're averaging Now you know they're going a long way, but they're averaging about two fifty watts of output and usually a question I get, Well, you know they're like going twenty five plus miles an hour, but they those guys also weigh like a hundred pounds in their bike's way like literally nothing. Um, so you know, just to kind of give you a perspective on power. These are putting out twice as much as that, right, And I

can tell you from experience. When I was taking this for a spin, I used that throttle. Uh. It is an exhilarating feeling. It's It's interesting because again I had never experienced that, having only ever written traditional bicycles or analog bicycles, as you said, I had only ever ridden those. And so to have that experience where I knew what was going to happen, but knowing it and feeling it

are two different things. And that first time you feel it where you can feel the acceleration and you're that's all coming from your thumb, right, You're not peddling harder at all, You're just suddenly going much faster. Um. Yeah, that could that I could get used to that too, because it was a really fun experience. And uh, you know, one of the one of my fondest memories as a kid is riding bikes. Like I lived on a hill and so going down the hill was great. You know,

you just said that exhilarating feeling. Going up the hill not as great, but going down the hill was fantastic. And so being able to ride a bike where you could have that same sort of experience whether you're going up or down the hill. It's kind of cool. Uh. So you got to the point you you developed all the technology, You've got the batteries. Um, how long does it take typically to to charge one to full? Once you have four hours? Not bad at all, not too bad.

And the charger is very reminiscent of like a mid nineties laptop charger, and it's it's all intelligent, right, so that the charger, it's got a light on there, the illuminates red when it's charging, and guess what, it turns green when it's done, so like people don't have to

worry about overcharging it or anything like that. And then on on off of that, we also have what's called a BMS or battery management system, and that won't let the cells discharge below ten percent or overcharge above ninety uh. Tesla does the same thing. I think their numbers are eight twenty, but kind of keeping the cells in those in that butter zone, if you will. That's how we're able to get so many charge cycles out of a single pack, which is about a thousand charge cycles right now.

So if you use this bike every day for three years, you could expect to see about a degradation in performance. Right. And then the million dollar question that I always get after I say that is how much does a replacement pack costs? Bucks? So it's not terribly expensive. Um, We basically just charge what it costs us to produce the pack. Um. You guys know eighteen six fifty battery cells are very expensive. We use ones made by Panasonic. They're the same ones,

uh that Tesla uses. Um. You can find them in your MacBooks. Uh, they're ubiquitous. Um, So we don't make any money on those. We figured. You know, if you buy one of our bikes, you're you're coming into our family. We're not in the battery business, right. We just want to get more butts on bikes, right. So Uh, and I'm glad you brought up the degradation too, because that's

something we've chatted about on tech stuff as well. I mean, it's a chemical reaction in batteries, and over time that chemical reaction, Uh, it just becomes less and less potent. I mean, you you lose your technically, you're running out of the chemicals that are reacting over time, over the course of of hundreds of charge cycles and so having those limitations built in so that you don't more rapidly exhausted.

It makes a lot of sense. Then I want to talk a little bit more about what the experience has been like once you've got to that final form factor, you've got your own business. How how was that? What? What was that experience like? Because it's one thing to develop a product, right, It's one thing to go through all the engineering and to figure it out, and then to even go further and say, all right, well this was good for me, but how can I make this

something that that a person would want to buy? You know, it doesn't look like it's going to be a conversion kit for a normal bike. It's its own thing. Clearly, there are a lot of parts, like literally a lot of parts that you have to deal with to go from concept to prototype to shippable product to manufacturing. Can you talk a little bit about what what that's been

like and maybe some of the learning experiences. Absolutely so absolutely, like developing the product um was was an incredible experience, right, Like I've I've grown up on two wheels, um so I feel like I've brought the product a pretty long way right. Um. And then when I actually came to the point where I'm like trying to um like give it deliverable right to someone else and fix their problem, It's like I'm this is my design, and I take it like very personally, and I wanted to be perfect,

like I'm a perfectionist. Um. And I was is building these things in my house, Like my house smelled like sawder Uh. We had like taken over like a bedroom in our formal living room and we're expecting a baby on the way. It was pandemonium. Um. But I was selling these things off of my front porch, right, and

like that was kind of like validation um to my design. Um. I I have like a spreadsheet, uh, and every single person that rides the bike, I just write their name down, you know, their contact information, and um, of the people that ride the bike buy it right away, because when you ride it, you get it. And um, I always tell every single person that buys a bike from me, I say, uh, we'll always consider ourselves to be in

research and development. Like if there's anything anything like that bugs you or just doesn't feel right or sound right, I want to know about it. About a month ago, I had a lady come into the shop and she was like, Ryan, I get this weird noise. I think it's coming from the motor and it's only when I'm going for twenty miles an hour and only when I'm going into the head wind. And I was like, oh, man, I gotta see this, Like what could that possibly be?

So like we we uh, you know, I couldn't replicate the issue, and We're like going back and forth and she's like, no, no, I hear it, I hear it. It turned out that it was her helmet strap, so when her helmet strap felt like a certain amount of wind, it would buzz in her ear a little bit. But like, um, you know, I'm just always like I'm always curious and like I said, I'm a tinker, right, and I want these things to be perfect. I think the biggest challenge

for me was actually branding this company. There's a ton of technology that goes into these bikes, and I wanted to kind of convey like a technology feel to our company. Um. So I designed our logo and I'm not a designer by any means. Uh and uh. I thought it looked very cool. Um most of my friends did too, But I think it's because they like me for some reason. But uh so, we actually we partnered with like a marketing team and they were like, Ryan, we've been to

your house, like we've seen your bikes. You like clean lines, Like you're a clean lines guy. We got to clean this up. Uh So, Um that's actually like if you go on the website Edison Bicycles dot com, you can see they did a really good job cleaning it up though, and it's like it's just it's very nice. You know, there's a little lightning bolt is our signature, um, and it's it's just, um, it's like a really good feel

to it. It's it's a personal feel and um, like when I sell bikes to people, like I said, you're buying into a family, right, this is a community, and it's like we're all figuring this thing out together. Um So I think personally, the biggest challenge for me wasn't developing the bike or figuring out logistics and um technology, like I love that. I'll stay up all night playing with that, but it was getting the company to where

it felt human and felt good cool. Yeah, It's see it's interesting because I never really get the opportunity to talk to people who have gone from an idea all the way to the point it's crazy. It's crazy, right, yeah, because because it's interesting to see where challenges present themselves. Right Like, for a lot of us as consumers, we're thinking about, oh, it must have been hard to come up with that idea and some and then you'll chat with someone like, oh no, the idea part was easy.

The hard part was this other thing that you hadn't even thought about. So as another example, uh, you know, we were chatting before we came in here just about how unpredictable things that are outside of our control can sometimes have a big impact. Uh. So we were talking about how a hurricane could disrupt a supply chain in a way that you just there's no way to plan

for it. And so like when you're sitting I imagine when you were sitting there in two thousand twelve and you were tinkering around, and maybe even at this point people are actually saying, hey, I would like one of those bikes too, if you ever would think about building one. I imagine that there was no point where you were thinking, one day, a hurricane will hit and disrupt my entire supply chain. Thus making it a challenge to get things

to put bikes together. Absolutely, that's definitely been a challenge to or Like I used to use Samsung um as d I battery cells, and like I think that they're very good, Like I got Samsung TV all that kind of stuff, and not to throw any shade, but like then they had all those phones that come right and this was right around this time when all the hoverboards were catching on fire, right right, I was like, this would not be a good time to advertise that we

use Samsung cells, right, So, um we had since jumped over to Panasa, so you started sourcing other possible But I mean there's a million unforeseeable like that that we've you know, come into and it's just, uh, it's it's a wild ride. It's fun though again taking the engineering approach where you're like, you know, you look at every

every problem as an opportunity to find a solution. Um. It's one of the reasons why I love talking to engineers because when I chat with them, if I present them with some something that is in the minds of a lot of people, a problem, they're immediately just thinking how would I go about solving this? How would I what would be my approach, and it it to me. It's very telling about that individual person, you know, the

the pathway that they take. And again it gets into that sort of hacker ethos, the idea of I need to know how this works so that I can make it work better, because the way it works now is not as good as it could be. I am convinced to that. And every time I talk to hackers, whether they are software hackers, hardware hackers, bike hackers, I know a few bio hackers. Those guys are crazy. Yeah. They

also call them grinders. Grinders who will oh yeah, yeah, people who will implant um magnets under neath their fingers so that they can feel electromagnetic fields because it vibrates. You know, you have an electromagnetic field and magnet comes in contact with it. The the attraction starts to tug on the magnet which is under the surface of your fingertip, which means you can actually sense when you pass through

an electric field. Yeah. There are people who think that's awesome, and then there are people who realize, if I ever have to have an m R I, this is going to be a problem. I'm going to have the skin of my finger is going to be ripped off, but doesn't stop them from trying. UM. So, to me, it's always exciting just to to meet folks who have that kind of mindset because it again gives us an insight as to how some of these products come to be. UM and do you have big plans for Edison? Is Edison?

Or is this is this something where you're you're really let's focus on Atlanta or is this something where eventually we're going to see this expand to who knows where?

That's a great question. It's kind of top secret. No, I think right now, I just want to I want to perfect our model here and like I wanna because like right now, you know, we have like bike shops and stuff courting us like wanting to carry Edison bikes and uh, we really like controlling the buying process, right because like we like if you come into our shop at Kirkwood. Have you heard of Warby Parker Glasses company? Super cool? I love them. But like if you walk

into a Warby Parker, um there's two things. One like you're you're greeted and it's just a cool place where like you can put your hands on their product. It's the opposite of sales e right, and to they're they're affordable, right.

So like I wanted to create like an environment like that, um, which is again not to throw any shade, but like, um, like have you ever been into a bike shop and like you just kind of get this feeling like, uh, you know, a technician be like what you don't know what a drail your cable is or something like that. I wanted to be the opposite of that, so approachable and not and no pressures as opposed to you are stupid because you don't know as much and you need

to buy this exactly. So like you know, like if you're going into our shop, you're gonna find comfortable couches, you're probably gonna smell some good coffee brewing, and it's just like a place where like we can just geek out on the bikes and and have fun with them, like we're right on a bike path, and like we'll never we'll never push anyone like to to purchase a bike because like we want this to be like a comfortable, fun place to be, right, Like we don't have price

tags hanging from the bikes or anything like that, right, So um, like that's our model, right, and like I wanna really try my best to control that, and I just don't know how I feel about, you know, just seeing Edison's you know, like in a in a bike shop next to a bunch of other bikes. Um, So of course we want to grow, right, I mean, like there's plenty of other cities that have identical logistics issues to ours, right, Um so what that will look like,

we're not quite sure yet. Sure, We just we really want to focus on ground zero right now, and that's gonna obviously present all new challenges. Right. There's always there's always issues with scaling, like what works on one scale? You know? It's again one of those things that I think. I mean honestly, I as a consumer never really considered it until I started really doing research into tech manufacturing.

But it's never as simple as you know that thing you're doing, do more of it, right, Like you know, like, oh you've got that, You've got this way to build those just add more people. And that's not how that works typically, you don't. You don't scale up just by throwing more resources at it. There's a lot more that goes in and h the reason why I even bring that up is just again looking at that ripple effect,

you have to think of the bigger pictures. So we hear about technology all the time that big companies even will have shortages of products because manufacturing is hard. It is not a simple thing. And whether you're talking about a bike or you're talking about I don't know an S and E S Classic that you can't buy anywhere because they're all gone. Even Nintendo has these issues. So uh, but I'm glad you were able to answer that honestly, because you know, the desire to grow, obviously is something

every business owner has at at some level. I mean, you know you clearly have ambition to even get into something like this in the first place. But it's also good to know that it's gonna be uh, it's gonna be a challenge, and that you have to gather as much information and weigh all your options as best you can before you jump into it, because otherwise you're just gonna end up making promises that will be really difficult

to deliver upon. This has been fascinating. I thank you so much for coming in here and chatting about this, and um uh, I do recommend if you get a chance to try the experience of writing a pedal assist bike in general or in Edison in particular. If you're in the Atlanta area, definitely come by and check it out. Because it was my first time. I had been talking

about these for a while. I actually did a podcast with Scott Benjamin who is the co host of Car Stuff, and we talked about pedal assist bikes in the technology behind it, and various implementations and approaches to it, including things like conversion kits or there are some that are like the self contained wheels that you can attach to

an existing bike frame. Um. Clearly you can't control the whole experience that way because you're really just selling one element to it, which is a little different from your approach where you've got the whole package. Um. But this was the first time I actually got a chance to experience it, and uh, it was kind of ideal situation. Beautiful weather, not too many people on the belt line,

for which I was very thankful I was there. Was there was a moment early on not gonna lie, where I was getting real close to the edge of the belt line onto the what would have been like maybe an inch drop, not enough to maybe make me worry except of the fact that I was my confidence issues were not kicking in yet, or rather they were kicking in. My confidence had not kicked in. But after after a little WOBBLI start due to the fact that I am

so out of practice. Uh, it was. It really was an interesting experience, that feeling of being able to do more than what you typically would be capable of doing. Um, it's very compelling and uh. And also just as a way of getting from point A to point B, the idea of cutting down my commute. I like walking to work, but it's an hour and getting forty five minutes of that back a day, it was an hour and a half.

When you look a look at both ways. Um, that's I mean, it's a that's kind of a hard argument to shoot down significantly. Yeah. No, I mean an hour and a half. I mean, that's that's so much more Halo time. Man, I can, I can. I can be a bullet sponge for an extra hour and a half. Awesome. But Ryan Hirsh, thank you so much for joining us on text stuff. I really appreciate it. Pleasure to be here.

Excellent guys. If you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it is a specific technology, a company, a person. Maybe there's someone you would like me to interview or get on as a guest host. Let me know. Send me an email. The address is tech stuff at house stuff works dot com, or you can drop me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for both of those is tech stuff h s W. Remember, typically I stream these shows live on Twitch dot tv slash

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