#1: Interview with Brad Davis, Founder of Nomad

Welcome to the Nomad Cycles PDX Blog and thank you for reading! We plan to make bi-weekly posts about exciting things happening around the shop, the Portland biking community, e-bike education, and more!

our first post is an interview with our founder, Brad Davis, who has over 20 years of experience with e-bikes and has deep insight of the industry and where it is headed.

John Carter: What is the origin story of Nomad Cycles? 

Brad Davis: Nomad has been around for 10 years, but this project started with Ecospeed 20 years ago when I met an inventor that made an electric motor drive system to work with bikes, specifically recumbent bikes. When I saw this system, I realized that with a little help from the electric motor it could make human scale transportation viable for people’s daily lives, whether they’re 18 years old or 88 years old. People could ride automobile-scale commutes without getting exhausted, or carry tools, haul cargo, transport kids, groceries etc. and live a life without car dependency.

Electric assist was a new concept at the time and what we made was a mid-drive motor that used the gears of the bike as a transmission for the motor power. We applied for a trademark to name the mid-drive, as it was something we came up with during an era when there were no Boschs or Shimanos. We even printed our own circuit boards!

We got into production runs and did a Kickstarter, but at the time the market had come to enough of a fruition that all of the big players got in and we just couldn’t compete with their giant factories. We cut the ground, but didn’t catch the wave. Even with the intellectual property, I decided to close the doors on Ecospeed after giving everyone their products they had paid for on Kickstarter and opened Nomad Cycles. 

My long-term goal with Nomad was to create my own e-bike brand and give a better bike to the world that I knew was possible but the industry wasn’t doing.

I started the shop with that goal, but the day-to-day of trying to make a working bike shop and serve the customer’s needs made it challenging to afford building my own electric bike factory.

Thankfully now we’ve reached the point where we were able to hire TimTim (our frame builder) and build our little fab shop capable of making bikes that never existed before. TimTim has an artistic and engineering brain that has come up with something both unique and beautiful. 

John Carter: Nomad Cycles specializes in converting existing bikes into electric. Why do you think converted bikes are better than standard e-bikes?

Brad Davis: I’ll start with what I consider is a standard e-bike. In my mind, there’s two kinds of bikes, bike shop e-bikes and direct-to-consumer e-bikes. The direct-to-consumer (internet) market is blowing up (not literally!) as e-bikes in general are becoming more mainstream.

While e-bikes are positively changing the world, the direct-to-consumer e-bikes have a lot of problems. They’re made from cheap materials and often use systems that are proprietary and difficult to repair, with motors being built into the frame, and other issues. On the other hand, while “bike shop e-bikes” have quality components and use repairable/maintainable systems, I believe they fall short in a number of ways, including using motors made for the European market where there are more e-bike consumers. The issue with this is that European markets have really strict low power wattages and lower speeds, often not having throttles. While this makes sense in places where the bike lanes are packed along narrow streets, our roads in the United States are much wider. While the power restrictions are less regulated here, there aren’t many bike shop e-bikes that offer this sort of power. 

Direct-to-consumer bikes are a whole other thing. They have plenty of power (some of them are like electric motorcycles with pedals), they’re heavy, fast, and a lot of them are built around a fat tire hub motor. They’re a lot more unrefined than the bike shop e-bikes and use cheaper parts that are hard to maintain. They’re made to be sold rather than serviced. Most bike shops refuse to service these bikes because the track record of trying to work with these companies to get repair parts and stuff has been absolutely horrid.

These bikes can be so poorly engineered where you can’t even reach the places needed to adjust things, which is this soul-killing situation when you’re trying to do a simple thing like adjusting a brake. Who built this and why? It feels like such short-term thinking. So people think they’re getting a ‘good deal’ based on the initial price but long-term end up with an orphan e-bike that nobody wants to work on.

Another issue with the fat tire systems is that the handling of the bike makes it feel like you're pedaling through sand when the motor isn’t working. We do our best to service these bikes (and have a process for doing so) because we want to help people who got saddled with these bikes, but it is such a mess. We hear variations of “I bought this bike online and regret it” all the time at the shop. It’s easy to look at the initial price of an internet bike and see a good value, but the lifetime price of keeping it operational is tremendous.

Even with higher quality bike shop e-bikes, you’re still beholden to the manufacturer to get replacement parts and service, like batteries that need to be specifically compatible with the bike model.

I feel the end user should have a ‘right-to-repair’ and be able service/maintain their own bike. And that’s what we’re doing with our conversions and our in-house bike brand. It’s not open source, but we’re using motor systems in which the repair parts can be bought by any person no matter where they are in the world and perform the maintenance themselves. And the battery can be replaced with any other as long as it’s the right voltage. You’re not beholden to getting a specific battery from us.

In my opinion, there are just about a bazillion reasons why converted bikes are better. The battery is modular, our mid-drive motors keep the weight low, in the center, while interfacing with the gears of the bike. These bikes actually feel like bikes! And in Oregon we can put a thousand watt motor and still have it be legal. 

John Carter: How does Nomad fit into Portland’s bike ecosystem? Something you had mentioned earlier was that Nomad fixes bikes that other shops often refuse and so I’m curious to hear more on that.

Brad Davis: When I started the shop, I started it as primarily a conversion shop and then was quickly met with the situation of all these people that buy an internet bike and then have no place to take it. I didn't want to leave them with their broken bike and a broken heart after they just invested their resources into buying it. They got this thing and other bike shops say, no way we're gonna work on your bike and they get turned away at the door. I didn't want to do the same thing.

So we have built our ability to diagnose and repair and maintain all these orphan e-bikes of the world. We’ve been able to see the situation around these bikes from first hand experience of being the only shop that's working on them.

But our primary business has been doing the conversions for 10 years now where everytime we turn it into a better e-bike than they could buy anywhere else, and that is a fantastic feeling. It’s a privilege to do this kind of work. It's so great to be able to hand something to somebody and have it be more than a thing in their life. The stories from our customers are fantastic. I think my customers put on more miles than any customer, any bike shop customers that I know. Our customers have thousands and thousands of miles that keep racking up. When I started, it was still basically unknown to people that they could convert their bike and make it an electric bike. But now on my rides, it's pretty regular for me to see a bike that we built in the city, which is always fun.

So our place within Portland is interesting. We host rides every month and provide space for people with e-bikes to ride with other e-bikes, which I think is important given the animosity that has been in the industry towards e-bikes to give people a place to ride with other e-bikes.

We've also done a lot of adaptive needs work for people that have barriers to riding a normal biking. Everything from Parkinson's, spinal cord injuries, blindness, hip and knee replacements, missing lungs, body position requirements, limb differences, the list goes on. It's a fulfilling thing to be able to provide.

John Carter: Are there any specific customer stories of how e-bike conversions have positively changed their life that come to mind?

Brad Davis: The first things that come to my mind are two different women. One of them has recently passed. She was 93 when she died and she rode her recumbent trike with a conversion motor on it every day including the day she died and at 93. Another one is Connie. She's 88 right now. She can't actually walk on her own very much, but she can ride her trike. She rides with her dog in the back. And she's like always in the 4th of July parade and riding like 10 miles a day. She gives it credit for keeping her circulation going.

Oh and Max, I just saw him at the racetrack the other day. We've outfitted a couple different projects for him that are hand cycles. He's a para, so he straps his wrists into the hand pedals. He recently did a Century Ride with battery power, doing a hundred miles. We outfitted a double battery system for him to handle the distance.

These are outstanding stories of overcoming adversity. But there are so many other stories of people that are deciding that they want to live in tune with their values and go car light (or free) and be out there breathing the air, moving their legs, and using their lungs, navigating the terrain, and being part of the earth. Living with the earth instead of off of it. The electric assist bike makes that possible.

John Carter: Why develop an in-house brand rather than focus solely on conversions? 

Brad Davis: Electric assist is a trend that's not going away. It's changing the world. But it's short-sighted for companies to be making things to be sold and not to be serviced. Our bikes are made with soul, not just made to be sold. They're made with the right to repair built into it. It's modular, it's user service, it's timeless. I want e-bikes to be future-friendly.

In the design of our bike brand, we’re incorporating modern engineering, modern capability but with workmanship that is deeply human and elemental. We're working with steel. It's made to be an heirloom item, passed through generations. 

As I mentioned earlier, when I started Nomad Cycles, my dream was to turn it into a bike factory. I wanted to make bikes, not just convert bikes. I love converting bikes. But we're making our own bike now because, quite frankly, it'll be a better option for people. We are building a bike that feels and looks great. 

One of the things that I really like about Tim Tim's aesthetic and design is he doesn't want to make boring bikes. We are building bikes with soul, not just to be sold, and every aspect of the bike reflects this. 

John Carter: So the two models that are going to be part of the initial run, the Double Down and the Kickback, tell me about them and what makes them distinct from each other. 

Brad Davis: I’ll start with the Kickback. It’s a crank forward bike, which means that rather than having the pedals directly below the seat on the bike where you're sitting, the pedals are instead further forward on the frame. You're sitting straight up and down with your legs more out in front of you and your hands are higher about heart height with no weight on them. So your wrists have no weight on them.

Your neck is straight up and down in a neutral position looking forward naturally, rather than having to crane it up in order to look forward. Which is funny because on race bikes, like the fast bikes, you're so tucked, you have to bend your neck so hard to look forward, even though you're going faster, your natural position is to look straight down. But this upright sitting alleviates a lot of pain points that are kind of arbitrary on a normal diamond frame bicycle.

By putting the pedals further forward, we put the body position in an ergonomic space that is relaxing and takes the pressure off of the spine and wrists. Also having the pedals further forward means the seat is down a little bit lower and when you come to a stop or when you're getting on and off the bike you can put both toes down. On a normal bike you have to lean to one side to put one toe down. On this, you can put your toes down in the neutral upright position.

Most people that haven't experienced chronic pain wouldn't think about it, but when you have hip pain or knee pain, when you're coming to a stop and you have to lean to the side and then your body weight shifts suddenly onto your foot that can create a jarring pressure moment. The Kickback’s design is low body impact but you're still getting the movement and the efficacy of riding a bike. But also you're riding with style! The “chopper” look is just cool. And I think that's not something to be ignored. The fun factor is one thing. It makes you want to get on it more. 

The Doubledown (our other model) is its own unique item. It's more of a racehorse that is adapted to be smooth-ride with a sporty feel with passive suspension. Imagine a commuter bike with more oomph, more power, but remarkably smooth. Both of these bikes can haul a lot if you attach a trailer. One of our customers testing out the bike has her 100 pound dog as a traveling companion! 

Our motor and battery comes with a two year warranty on its electronics and all the things. The bike itself has a limited lifetime frame warranty.

John Carter: So why have a Kickstarter for this project?

Brad Davis: We're doing Kickstarter because we're moving into actually doing production runs where we can get our costs effective and be able to provide the product to the world. Building them one at a time is not allowing us to get to that level. We want to have small but scalable production where we can build a hundred of them and keep the whole production in-house. We're making this as a service ourselves which I know is a business model that most people don't do in the United States, but that's something that is important to me, to have real bikes that are made by real people, made with real steel, and made with real serviceability.

John Carter: How do you imagine Nomad’s bike brand evolving after this initial production run? 

Brad Davis: It's my vision that we're going to be adding more models and having a complete line of interesting and groundbreaking machines. ‘Pie in the sky’ is that at some point we have a bike factory turning out our bikes but also doing contract builds for other people that want to have something made of this quality as well. A lot of people now will hit up Alibaba and have some random Chinese bikes products, put a sticker on them, and that's their brand. I want to give them the option to have a real steel, real made bike as their brand too. In the meantime, we have other models we will be releasing in the future. So probably this next year we're going to be talking with another set of bikes. 

$5,500 is not a small choice for most people. But to put it into perspective, buying a hand built analog bike would cost around the same and here you're getting a hand-built bike with horsepower on it. More than anything, I want to build something that lasts. I hate to bring it up, but I've seen a lot of companies come and go. Even if we're gone someday, this bike is built to be modular so that in the future, even in 20 years, if the motor needs a part and it's not available, it's easy to swap it out and put a different system in. I have a reputation of being able to provide help for people that nobody else will help and for offering service in an industry that is built around the idea that once you've bought something, you're on your own.