Maeving sprouted from a seed that began germinating in a pub in Durham, England. Post-university lecture discussions about shared dreams of changing the way the world moves for the better. Five years went by as Co-Founders Seb and Will went their separate ways, leaving university and gaining experience in the worlds of sales & marketing, and finance, respectively. Seb moved to London and quickly grew tired of the daily hour-and-a-half commute to Slough. All the while, the climate crisis was becoming an increasingly clear and obvious issue. Seb had bought himself a motorcycle to combat the drudgery of his commute and soon discovered that riding every day made his daily journeys unimaginably enjoyable, no matter how bad the day at work was. One day, a friend introduced Seb to the concept of electric motorbikes. A lightbulb moment: the soon-to-be Co-Founders reconnected and, soon after, Maeving was born.

THE CATALYST

The catalyst came when we noticed that China — with its enormous motorcycle market — had an 80% electric adoption within the realm of two-wheeled transport. That equated to a huge 22 million electric motorcycles and scooters sold per year. Why, though? It turns out it’s because riders had been forced to rapidly adapt to the Chinese Government banning ICEs literally overnight.

Riders innovated by making Frankenstein bikes with old car batteries, meaning they could be charged from home and circumvent the issue of unsatisfactory, and often non-existent, charging infrastructure. It was almost certainly the very same charging infrastructure issue that was preventing Southern Europe — another part of the world where motorcycle ridership outnumbers car users — from making the switch to electric, and nobody else seemed to have noticed this.

A GAP IN THE MARKET

While other electric motorbike companies in Europe and the US focussed their resources on competing with the ICE market by creating high-performance bikes, essentially attempting to win over existing motorcycle fans, Maeving turned its attention to a different market.

In the United States, around 82% of people live in cities, with an average commute distance of 16 miles. Commuters make up an enormous, relatively untapped market for electric motorcycles, especially lower-power bikes that focus on quality engineering, supreme build quality, and beautiful aesthetics.

DOING THE MATH

Traffic congestion in urban areas is a nightmarish way to begin and end your day. Maeving set out to solve this problem by providing an electric vehicle that allows the rider to travel from one side of the city to the other in no time at all, and with the added joy of bypassing all that traffic and feeling the road beneath their wheels. Not only is an electric motorbike a more pleasurable experience, but a Maeving costs just 89¢ to charge from zero to hero.

Bear with us — some math:

If you charge your Maeving once per week, it would cost you around $46.28 per year. 

The average annual commute in the USA costs $8,466.

A single battery Maeving RM1 costs $6,495.

What do those numbers mean? They mean that owning a Maeving is going to save you an awful lot of money in the long run — a treat for both you and your bank account.

FINDING OUR HOME

The last piece of the puzzle for Maeving was to find a great location for the company to call home, and there was only one place for us — Coventry. Coventry and the Midlands are the UK’s motorcycling spiritual home, with many storied British companies laying down roots in the area—BSA, Norton, Royal Enfield, and Triumph to name but a few—and it’s where some of the country’s greatest engineers are based.

We proposed our vision of an electric motorcycle that helps to solve issues for urban transport and the planet, while also being highly desirable for any fans of two-wheel transport, to the UK’s very best motorcycle engineers, and they relished the challenge and joined our team. This meant we started life with a base of truly outstanding engineers and now have the most talent-rich engineering team in the country if not the continent.

We are proud to be opening a new chapter in the story of British motorcycle design as the UK’s first electric motorcycle manufacturer. 

Next up, America. Charge on.