Have Yike, Will Travel

You whizz past the traffic on your Yike Bike, jump off, fold it into a bag that you tuck under your arm and walk into your office. That vision is fast becoming a reality for one Christchurch-based business that has captured international attention. Nā Adrienne Rewi.

Photographs Adrienne Rewi

When Grant Ryan wrote 'inventor' in his high school leaving book, his teacher told him he had to "put something serious." Now he has had the last laugh as his Yike Bike, a modern twist on a Penny Farthing bicycle, has been acclaimed the 15th best invention of the year in the Time Magazine Top 50 Inventions of 2009.

For Grant (Ngāi Tahu), who was born in Ōtautau and grew up in Invercargill, it is a pleasing and unexpected accolade.

"We only launched the Yike Bike in September so when you consider we were beaten by people at NASA, you'd have to say this is a huge boost to our credibility," Grant says from his modest Christchurch office base.

"It's pretty cool for sure but right now we're very focussed on our business and making sure we can deliver to our first customers early next year."

The Yike Bike is the smallest, lightest electric folding bicycle available in the world. Weighing less than 10 kilograms, it folds down to the size of a large laptop bag and can be carried onto buses, trains and cars and stored easily under a desk, or in a cupboard. Not surprisingly, it is expected to revolutionise urban commuting internationally.

Yike Bike has been acclaimed the 15th best invention of the year in the Time magazine Top 50 Inventions of 2009.

"We've already had huge interest from European media. We had a full-page in the Daily Mail, the largest newspaper in the United Kingdom, and we've been on leading television channels like CNN. We're seriously thrilled at the response. I didn't expect to get any interest until people could actually ride the bike but we've had people everywhere putting money down without ever having ridden one. That's surprised us," he says.

Grant, 40, is the first to admit he is a big thinker and right from the start he very astutely armed himself with a degree in mechanical engineering and a doctorate in ecological economics from Canterbury University. "That was as close as I could get to inventing and that path gave me a good background in problem solving."

He initially worked for Industrial Research in Christchurch for two years and then, thinking "that was long enough in a proper job," he set to work making his first big idea a reality. The result was the Internet search company, Global Brain.net, which later sold to NBCi in the United States. Grant and his older brother Sean bought the company back in 2002 and it is now run by Sean as SLI-Systems and is based in Christchurch with offices in Silicon Valley, Florida and London.

"It's now New Zealand's largest software-as-a-service exporter (also known as a cloud company) and it services over one billion search queries a year," says Grant.

He then started the social networking company, RealContacts, which was followed by Eurekster, a social search company that was named in the North America Red Herring 100 in 2006. Some ventures, says Grant, have been more successful than others.

"When you do innovative things you either hit it or you bomb; that's the reality of start-ups. I love the uncertainty of that; I love the highs and lows. I'm an ideas person and I get a real adrenalin buzz out of big, bold thinking. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don't and I've been lucky to have had some reasonable successes."

Grant is also keen to stress that he doesn't work alone. He co-founded Yike Bike with Peter Higgins of Christchurch (originally as Project Garlic) and Grant's cousin, Caleb Smith (Ngāi Tahu), is the company's lead designer.

Caleb, 27, also has a degree in mechanical engineering from Canterbury University and like Grant, was urged not to follow an engineering path.

"For some reason my career advisor at high school in Nelson told me not to do it; but I'd always been practical and I loved problem solving, so ever since I was sixteen, I knew this was the career for me," says Caleb.

Born in Darfield and raised in Māpua, near Nelson, Caleb joined the Yike Bike team five years ago and he's never looked back.

"My first job out of university was working for another local company on a motorcycle project. I then started doing some contract design work for Grant, before joining the team fulltime as a design engineer. It's been a very cool project to be involved in – everything from concept to computer modelling and making the prototypes. Now we're working on the final stages, refining all the details to ensure the bike can be successfully and easily made in large numbers."

The company has also had significant investment from TechNZ, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology's business investment arm, to undertake research and development and to test a prototype.

Initially inspired by the Segway, which was produced in USA, Grant was keen to produce "a much-less complicated bike" – something lighter that had the potential to be the most commonly owned transport device in the world.

"After years of discussion and experimenting, we found a new wheel rider position that is as stable as the current 120-year-old bicycle configuration. The Yike Bike is simple, small, light and we've replaced the chain, gears, pedals, brake pads, cables and levers with smart electronics and a powerful light, 1.2kW electric motor capable of a maximum speed of 20-25kmph.


"I have a huge list of ideas that I'd like to work on and it's always growing."
GRANT RYAN (Ngāi Tahu).

"For the first time in history there are now more people in the world living in urban environments than in rural areas; and more people living in tiny apartments and using public transport. The Yike Bike can be stored in a small cupboard and it links to all other transport systems. In a city environment you can get around much faster on a Yike Bike than you can in a Ferrari," Grant says.

With an estimated selling price of around 3,500 Euros in Europe (about NZ$7000), the Yike Bike sits firmly at the Porsche end of the bike market. That hasn't deterred early interest and Grant says a good number of New Zealanders have also signed up for one of the first models due off the production line in 2010.

"It's made of carbon fibre and it costs virtually nothing to run – a few cents a day – and in this age of sustainability and environmental concern, that is attractive to a lot of people. And naturally, with a PhD in environmental economics, I was never going to design anything that wasn't environmentally-friendly."

Grant now uses a Yike Bike himself and says he can travel across the city on it much faster than he can in a car.

"It generates a lot of interest. People seem to be fascinated and I often have motorists winding down their windows at traffic lights to ask about it; and it's quite thrilling to cruise up beside a Lycra-clad cyclist and then just accelerate away," he adds with a laugh.

"I can't go anywhere without someone stopping me for a chat about the bike."

The bike has been designed with excellent uphill acceleration and it is the first bike in the world to come equipped with anti-skid brakes.

As he leans back in his Sydenham office chair, Grant talks quietly about the future.

"I'm always thinking, always observing. There is a huge amount of luck involved in the invention business but you don't get lucky sitting on your arse. Like a good cricketer, you have to be out in the field batting the ball around. I have a huge list of ideas that I'd like to work on and it's always growing.

"I don't specialise in any one industry. It's the start-up phase that I'm interested in and in that role you have to devote a good four or five years of focus to any one project to get it up and running; then I'm onto thinking about the next idea.

"I have a couch at home that is my thinking spot and I have a process. I'm always thinking of how much impact an idea could have on the world. That's the biggest thrill for an inventor and I'm very lucky to be able to do what I love best."