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 back down South and quickly grew tired of the daily hour-and-a-half commute to Slough. All the while, the climate crisis was becoming an evermore clear and obvious issue.

Seb had bought himself a motorbike to combat the drudgery of his commute and soon discovered that riding every day made his daily commute 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 Frankensteinian 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 motorbike 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.

SOLVING THE EQUATION

Public transport in urban areas is often overcrowded, unreliable, late, and a generally nightmarish way to begin your day. The cost of all that travel builds up pretty quickly too. 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 to charge our custom Maeving battery from zero to hero takes under four hours, and it costs just 73p - even at current energy prices. On a full charge, you can travel up to 80 miles on both the Maeving RM1 and RM1S. Covering the UK’s average commute distance of 11.4 miles per day will set you back a mere £4.20 per month in battery charging costs. This makes our bike one of the most economical transport options out there, substantially cheaper than travelling by car or public transport. 

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 motorbike that helps to solve issues for urban transport and the planet, whilst 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.