The freedom to build

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of torque

Two hundred and fifty years ago this past weekend, a small group of people wrote down and ratified, in plain language, that ordinary human beings have the right to their own lives, their own liberty, and their own pursuit of happiness. Then they staked everything to make it true.

We build electric motorcycles. But following the celebration of the United States' 250th year, we want to talk about freedom, because Shandoka exists thanks to a particular American idea about freedom of thought and the ownership of ideas.

The freedom to invent

A decade after the Declaration, the same founding generation wrote a promise to every builder, tinkerer and dreamer in the country into the first article of the Constitution:

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

That sentence, the Copyright Clause, created the American patent. A free country protects your right to speak, to worship and to assemble, and it also protects your right to have an idea and make it yours. The Founders understood that a nation of free people would also be a nation of inventors, and that progress depends on protecting the person bold enough to build something new.

What that freedom looks like here

In November 2022, after 12 years of work, the United States granted Ernest Eich a utility patent on a new idea: replacing a motorcycle's structural engine with a series of structural compartments that hold and protect an electric drivetrain. Half of the motorcycles on Earth can mate to the Shandoka power pack, whether it's a barn-find Virago, a Ninja that's been dead for a decade, or a mid-sized Honda long forgotten.

Many people use a patent as a wall to keep others out. Used well, it's the ability to control how your idea is put into the world. We took an idea and proved it over the four years since, on the road and at motorcycle events, in a country that protected our right to build it.

Freedom on two wheels

There's a reason the motorcycle is the machine we chose to work with. Nothing else in American life says freedom quite like it: the open road, the throttle under your hand, and nothing between you and the horizon except the wind.

Converting your bike doesn't ask you to give any of that up, or to abandon the machine you love, the frame you rebuilt, or the history bolted into every thread. You keep it, and it gets faster and cleaner, with no more oil changes, no more vibration numbing your arms, and no trip to the scrapyard. Reuse is its own kind of independence. We call it the retro-lution.

Detroit, building the future again

A little over a century ago, Detroit took the automobile away from a handful of wealthy hobbyists and put it within reach of ordinary working people. The city was already known for its carriages and craftsmanship, and that first revolution remade the world. The same belief, that a better machine belongs to everyone, is building the electric future here now.

We want to share that freedom with you: the freedom to build, to own what you build, and to put it within reach of everyone.

Wherever this summer takes you, ride safe, and when you're ready to give the machine you love a second life, we'll be here.

Happy 250th, America! 🇺🇸⚡