Who’s the Hollywood A-Lister that got behind OjO Electric? And how does a small group of retired guys go from kicking around the idea for creating something ‘cool’ and keeping themselves busy turn into a global deal with Ford Motor Company? Find out as OjO Electric co-founder, Dale Seiden, joins Tom Smith to talk about the latest SoCal mobility start-up success story. ***Transcript*** Recording date – November 19, 2017 Dale Seiden: We call it a light electric vehicle. So it's an LEV. But I have to tell you it really has...it's as if Vespa met Tesla and it became electric. And it's for the bike lane. No license required, no registration, no insurance, and it's really not a bike but it goes wherever bikes go. Tom Smith: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility in the automotive capital of the United States, Southern California. I'm your host, Tom Smith, and today I'm joined by Mr. Dale Seiden, who is a friend, colleague, and also the founder of a new electric, I'm going to call it a scooter, but Dale is going to correct me, perhaps. Electric scooter company called OjO. And OjO is based right here in the southern California area. Dale, thank you so much for joining me. Dale: Tom, it's a pleasure to be here and it's really great to see you. Tom: Good to see you as well. Dale: Shocker. Tom: Dale and I ran into each other at LA CoMotion, an event all about mobility in Southern California, and didn't know that each other were going to be here so there you have it. Now we have a podcast in the works that's coming out of an organic meeting and this podcast is just as organic as that meeting. So... Dale: We love organic. Tom: Right. So let's start from the beginning. How did OjO become? Dale: Well let me just clear one thing up. I am one of the founders. There's actually three of us that co-founded the company. Two friends of mine. We and myself, we were just kind of sitting around. We're electric bike enthusiasts. And this was kind of created out of... it was a labor of love. I mean we love riding bikes and of course we got into electric bikes, and the OjO which is soon to be, and when this comes out it might be, it will be called the Ford OjO electric. Tom: Congratulations on that. Ford F-O-R-D... Dale: F-O-R-D as in Henry. Tom: As in Henry. Dale: And they were very hungry to get into the sustainability, the transportation world and they really went nuts when they saw the OjO. But anyway back to what you had asked. So we were sitting around and we were just saying hey let's come up with something. We truly were retired and just kind of having fun and didn't want to not work, so we said you know let's come up with a scooter something that would be for adults, not kids, because everything's razor like everything's a foldable, it's unstable. So let's come up with something that really would be designed as if Tesla developed it. And so it would be super cool, super high tech, have great torque, have great meaning to the world, the environment. And let's see what we can do. And in the words of most the people that have seen it, we nailed it. It's quite a product and we created a whole new category in transportation. Tom: I look forward to hopping on one shortly after this this talk. Maybe by the time that I do we'll have... be able to post it along with the podcast. Dale: Are you ready for this now, Tom? Tom: So I... Dale: You'd love it. You just want to ride it home I guarantee you. Tom: I'm sure. Maybe you can get me a deal on one. But... Dale: We would do that. Tom: So... Dale: Double, for you, double. Tom: Thank you so much. So you mentioned... so I mean Ford. That is just...
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