AUSTIN–Chris Hoffman, CEO of RYNO Motors, spoke about his single-wheeled motorcycle and vision for a future with vending machine-like on-demand car rental stations at the Start@ETS event put on by ZPryme.
Hoffman was challenged by his daughter to create a single-wheeled motorcycle after seeing one in a video game.
“I couldn’t even picture what she was talking about. So she gets out a piece of paper and sketches out this thing and shows it to me,” Hoffman said.
He says that as an “aging” engineer all he wanted to do was prove that it couldn’t be done. Instead, he set off building one. After several failed attempts, Hoffman was successful in creating the RYNO.
The RYNO uses 2,000 watts of power to travel at max speeds of 10 mph for a range of between 15 and 25 miles. It uses a series of gyroscopes (like those found in your phone), a wheel and handlebars to allow riders to keep themselves balanced. Hoffman says the driver’s body becomes part of the hardware, controlling through reactions that he or she feels while riding.
The actual design of the vehicle was inspired by the unique mating ritual of the male Bowerbird, which builds a structure and decorates it with sticks and brightly colored materials in order to attract a mate (We think the RYNO looks like a sidewalk version of the Batmobile).
“This is a personal transportation product that is in-between the cracks of urban transportation,” Hoffman said. “So I can ride it on the sidewalk, I can ride it in a lobby, I can ride it in a train. I can go anywhere a pedestrian wants to go.”
Hoffman believes that innovations in urban transportation, like the RYNO, should center around saving time. He proposed an entirely different solution to do so: vending machine-like parking structures.
“No one knows where to park,” Hoffman said. “There are people driving around the city looking for a spot right now, and autonomous vehicles will never really happen.”
The CEO of RYNO said that while everyone wants their own vehicle, cars really should be on-demand. He spoke of three main benefits of going to an on-demand system in urban environments:
- Benefits low-income travelers
- Gets rid of stresses of parking
- Gets cars off freeways
- Can be built for less than parking structures
- Generates more revenue than any parking garage
