Member Spotlight: Marko Lehtimäki

Jul 23

This week’s Member Spotlight is on Marko Lehtimäki, Co-Founder and CTO of Verge Motorcycles. We discussed how form can follow function, what gets people all-in on EVs, and how his bikes actually get better over time.

Will Hespe: What was your inspiration for the look of the bike?

Marko Lehtimäki: Many think that we started with the design first, but it actually all started from the function. We wanted to create an EV motorcycle that would be incredible in ride experience, and in order to do that, we needed to bring the battery pack to the bottom of the vehicle to give it a low center of gravity and good ride dynamics—you wouldn't be able to do that with normal architecture. So we had to invent a rim motor, which had never been done before. At first, everybody thought we were absolutely crazy, and that would never work, or if it would work, somebody would have done it. So we patented it, got it working, and then we started iterating. To accommodate the unique look of the rear wheel, we made sure that the rest of the design followed, creating this cyberpunk, futuristic look.

Will Hespe: So the environmental aspect drove the development of the bike?

Marko Lehtimäki: We saw that EVs were getting more and more popular in the world of cars, but the existing players for motorcycles had just taken the hundred-year-old architecture of how motorcycles are always built and just retrofitted an electric motor and battery pack into it. In our opinion, nobody had created full-size motorcycles that were better than the equivalent ICE motorcycle. We thought that the only way to really make people go all in on EV motorcycles is to create something that is hands down better in every aspect.

Will Hespe: Are there hardcore, “traditional” motorcyclists that push back on the EV aspect of the bikes?

Marko Lehtimäki: Of course, there's always push back from some groups of people, but that's quite marginal. You have petrolheads who claim that they will never go EV because there needs to be sound and vibration coming from the motor. However, it’s actually quite surprising how many people have their custom Harley in their garage, and then still buy one of our products. We say that there are motorcycles that are fun to customize, and there are motorcycles that are fun to ride. The one you customize may not be ready for riding because you’re always fixing it. There are a lot of people who do have very traditional motorcycles, but who love EVs.

Will Hespe: I was doing some research on one of the bike’s features, Starmatter, and I was surprised by the concept that it makes the bikes better over time. How does that happen?

Marko Lehtimäki: In a car or motorcycle, you have different circuit boards that control different aspects of the vehicle, like motor control and battery management, which manage the different parts of the driving or riding experience. Then you have the human-machine interface, like the info settings and navigation. Normally, the over-the-air updates are for the latter, and with Starmatter we wanted to go way deeper. So we built it in such a way that we can actually provide updates that go through the entire motorcycle, including how the motor operates and how efficient the battery pack is. We've been able to push performance, efficiency, even range, in less than eight months since the release of Starmatter.

Will Hespe: Why did you decide to bring this tech to 9Zero?

Marko Lehtimäki: The mission to turn San Francisco into a cleantech capital, bringing all this talent under one roof to network and create this community—it really resonated with me. I just knew we wouldn’t want to miss it. I knew immediately that this would turn into something legendary, and I wanted to be there to witness it from the very beginning. We as startups are all in it together, so it’s important to compare notes, help each other, and just get inspired by one another.