Friday, 29 March 2024
Electric BikesEV NewsNews

“Largest e-Bike manufacturing facility in USA” set for Los Angeles

A privately owned business springing up under the ROKiT MADE banner is set to build what it says will be the “largest e-bike manufacturing facility in the United States.”

The ORB Campus is said to be in the pipeline for a 2021 opening. From here ROKiT MADE will apparently rely on American labour, rather than artificial intelligence and robotics to build its electric bikes to build “best-in-class e-Bike models across all price points in each market segment.”

To date, ROKiT MADE has signed the exclusive rights to ten consumer-tested designs from established e-bike companies and is seeking to license more.

It is with these commitments that it intends to hit the ground running, proposing to make 300,000 e-bikes in its first year (similar numbers to the largest EU makers) with plans to ramp up production to 900,000.

Large enough to accommodate over 2,000 workers, the ORB is designed to be visible to the naked eye from the International Space Station, according to the company. ROKiT MADE will provide on-the-job training for its employees and assist in boosting the local economies.

“We are bringing e-bike manufacturing jobs to America,” said Jonathan Kendrick co-founder of ROKiT MADE. “ROKiT MADE is the future of American manufacturing. We are dedicated to identifying, licensing, and manufacturing cutting-edge products. The focus is on building e-bikes in our Las Vegas ORB campus, which is strategically situated in an enterprise and duty free foreign-trade zone.”

At the present time there are few electric bike manufacturers of any scale in the United States, though some production of bicycles has cropped up in recent years.

With analysts predicting that 130 million e-bikes will be sold globally between 2020 and 2023, ROKiT MADE says it sees a strong opportunity in entering the e-bike market.

In 2018, the global e-bike market size was $7.68 billion. According to a May 2020 study by Fortune Business Insights, the global e-bike market is expected to reach $46.04 billion by 2026 with a CAGR of 24.5% between 2020-2026.

ROKiT MADE will take on the marketing, and both retailer distribution and direct-to-consumer sales. The business added that it will benefit from the expertise and recognition of ROKiT, a global brand and company co-founded by John Paul DeJoria and Jonathan Kendrick, which has secured over 11 billion media impressions through its various global sponsorships.

“There is no better time than now to invest in a new American manufacturing facility, and that’s exactly what ROKiT MADE is doing,” said Dean Becker, Chairman and CEO of ROKiT MADE. “We have studied the e-car business for a several years and noticed that the existing concepts for the public new entrants into the e-car business and other e-mobility sectors are currently flawed; none of the companies show serious consideration to where their vehicles will be manufactured and built. We believe that to create a strong e-mobility business you have to start first with the facility, and then move on to the product. By ensuring that the build and assembly of our products will be done domestically we are adding American-built value to our products.”

The Rokit Group is thus far made up of businesses delivering finance, mobile phone technology, drinks, comics, radio and more.