We are Pavlov’s Dog

In the late 1890s, Ivan Pavlov showed how you could get a dog to drool at the sound of a bell by conditioning it with treats at the same time… eventually, the treat was not needed and Ringing the Bell did the trick.

The same thing has happened to us humans in our quest for powerful machines to ride on. For a century, we have been conditioned from our time in the womb to connect the percussive roar of a combustion engine with LOTS OF POWER at our controls. It makes us drool.

The machinations of our condition gave rise to outstanding levels of creativity surrounding that mechanical beast, the piston engine. To visit a custom bike show - especially a chopper event - will rearrange everything you thought was true about motorcycle building.

It’s a scene where anything goes - as long as it makes noise. A well trained mechanic can tell a lot about another builder from the sound of the machine. It’s proof undeniable. No matter what it looks like, if it sounds like crap it probably is… and if it doesn’t even run, well, leave it in the trailer.

The scene is filled with some of the most brilliant people you will ever meet. The ability to take a thought, sketch it out of our mind, and build it with our hands from bare materials is the most human of all activities we undertake. And for it to work in the end? Requires brilliance that few people these days can comprehend.

Where many other electric builders mimic and camouflage to seek acceptance from a biker scene they don’t quite understand, I’ve got a different approach going. The team at Shandoka: Electric Motorcycles is laying out a vision that builds on its own technical strengths first, while carrying forward the creative industrial arts embodied in great metal smithing, brightwork, mechanical creativity, and overall visioning of what must be, in the end, a badass chopper motorcycle.

Because how can you create the best embodiment of a “new thing” like electric drive if you force that idea into a form born of a different technology? How do you give a thing its own image, build a machine with its own integrity, without completely destroying the expectations of the existing Chopper community?

Grab your tools and favorite treats - this is gonna be an awesome ride.