Eric Fritz's blog

Well it has been an eventful Summer.  It may not seem like it based on our website activity, but I will get to that a bit later.  We’ll start from where we left off in June.  We kicked off the summer with a trip down to Cali to show Red 5.  We had some great meetings and filmed a couple videos with Translogic and Stana Katic that are now on the front page.

Thank you to the hundreds of folks who attended the unveiling of ‘Red 5’ Arcimoto’s SRK product prototype!  We had a great time, and really appreciate the outpouring of support from our community and early adopters. For those who couldn’t make the event we have transcribed Mark’s remarks and will be putting that up in a blog post later today for your viewing pleasure.

Arcimoto Unveils 'Red 5' Facebook Event

UPDATE: We are excited to present our product prototype this Saturday, April 23. Because the substantial number of RSVPs we have received would put us over capacity at the Pizza Research Institute, we are changing the scene to a more suitable location just a few blocks away.

Here it is March already and we haven't even talked about our January trip yet. After three weeks on the road, to Vegas of all places, you would think there would be stories to tell. Well, suffice it to say we've been quite busy since our return. We’re heavy into the build of prototype 5 and it is looking sweeeet. We’ve given up electric drive and the new model runs solely on tiger blood (winning!). But more on that later. Rewind to January.

Well we just got back from three weeks on the road, and those trip reports will be up soon. However, now seems like a perfect time to take the opportunity to introduce one of our past interns at Arcimoto. Benjamin Narin interned with us last summer and fall as part of his senior project at South Eugene High School. We have several South Eugene grads working at Arcimoto, including Founder Mark Frohnmayer, and when Benjamin contacted us about the possibility of interning with us we were happy to accommodate a fellow Axeman.

One of the things Nathan told us in his initial communique was that he wanted to be driving an Arcimoto to events by the end of the year. We're all about keeping the Captain happy, so we resolved to make our best effort to comply with that request. In typical scientific fashion, we thoroughly examined our development schedule and determined how and when it aligned with a list of potential events down in the LA area. Ha! Right.

So, we had a good solid two weeks of down time following our last California trip leading into the Cleantech Open (CTO) finals in San Jose the week before Thanksgiving.  Mark was out of the office on his trip to Detroit and DC (the Tour for Rational Vanity...

On to the City of Angels! We made it in one go, with a brief stop for irony (gas), bladder relief, and the culinary delights of Taco Bell. We crossed the Grapevine around sundown, and braved the LA highways (and drivers) as we rumbled down to Santa Monica. There we met with Rhett Reese for dinner & a test drive. Rhett is a longtime acquaintance of Mark's, starting out as a fan of Tribes (one of Mark's first commercial games and a cult hit). His most recent Hollywood credit is as writer and producer of Zombieland.

After one luxurious night in our own beds, Mark, Jeremy, and I once again loaded Proto4 into the trailer and climbed into the truck. This time we had a new recruit to team marketimoto; Mechanical Designer Jim Jordan joined us on the trip south, whose MacGyver skills ensured that everything would run smoothly. The four of us set out Wednesday evening and arrived in Redding sometime after midnight.

Mark is off gallivanting on the East Coast on what has been dubbed by guest correspondent Jorah LeFleur as "The Tour for Rational Vanity." It's an apt name and I’ll let her expound further, which she will be doing in a series of guest blogs in the coming days. However, I figured I would take this opportunity to talk about some of the events of the past few weeks that have led up to the Tour.