At the San Francisco headquarters of Onyx Motorbikes, music plays, klaxons blare, and occasional sparks fly from the sander perched next to the open garage door. Banshee and Sailor, the two shop dogs, mosey from one side of the warehouse to another, hoping to tempt someone into a quick tug-of-war with a gutted plushie goat. A handwritten note on the wall says “Don’t forget, you’re a future millionaire!”
After a year of lockdown and physical distancing, sales of bikes of all stripes are on the rise. Onyx is riding that trend, with sales of its $4,100 flagship bike doubling during the pandemic, according to co-owner Ryan Montana. “Riding on two wheels is the most socially distanced-friendly activity there is,” he says.
Onyx manufactures sleek electric mopeds with a retro vibe — not just low-slung handlebars and a minimalist feel that echoes the 1960s Café Racer style, but also wood paneling that harkens back to the 1970s, when international energy crises fed a short-lived boom in national moped sales.
Their bikes feel different as well. Most motorbike engines are in the middle of the body, which results in considerable chain noise, but Onyx has rejiggered the motor location for a quieter ride. “Our bike uses a hub motor, and that means it’s built into the rear wheel,” Montana explains. “It doesn’t make any noise, so it’s kinda like being on a carpet ride.”
Onyx’s lightweight moped (145 pounds with battery) in 20 mph “Eco mode” can brush shoulders with other commuters in the bike lane — and probably turn a few heads among the cargo-bike set. For parks or private roads use, flip the switch to Sport mode to top out at a cool 60 mph. (But behave please; they’re not freeway legal.) It takes six to eight hours to charge a dead battery.
It started with two models at the same price, but customers gravitated to the one with twice the battery power and range — 75 miles at 20 mph.
Tim Seward, the founder of Onyx and a close friend of Montana’s, first came to him with the original prototype in June 2017. Seward hammered down the design and strategized a crowdfunded launch for May 2018. Two months later, they had more than $900,000 from 465 Indiegogo backers. When production started in July, the back order list was nearly 500.
In 2019, Seward got an industrial design job offer he couldn’t refuse and passed the business to Montana and his partner, James Khatiblou. They’ve been running it ever since.
They’re still in a perpetual 60-day backlog. (When asked how many bikes they’ve produced, Montana says “a lot” but declines to get specific.) There are now seven employees in San Francisco, on Irwin Street in the Design district, and 10 more at the sister facility in Thousand Oaks, near Los Angeles, which is run by Khatiblou. “I hold down the fort at the San Francisco shop where all the magic started, and he’s rocking and rolling down there,” Montana adds.
De’Leon Haley, a mechanic who has worked at Onyx for two years, explains why the shop doesn’t use assembly lines. “Everything on the bike is touched by that one builder for the most part,” Haley says. “If five people touch it, we don’t know how the problem occurred and we don’t know how to fix it, versus if one person made 10 bikes and all the bikes have the same problem, we know it was that builder.”
The attention to detail goes beyond the personal assembly. Some of the parts are of Onyx’s own design, like the signature wood housing for the battery. “We had to reach out to different companies to manufacture for us. It wasn’t like ‘Give us the red Legos, the green Legos, and the blue Legos,’” Montana recounts.
The commitment to local production puts an enormous toll on how many bikes they can produce to their exacting standards. “All of our bikes are manufactured in the U.S. here, which is very rare nowadays,” Montana says. Even rarer is light industrial production in the heart of San Francisco, even though the city has tried to preserve and nurture what it calls PDR businesses.
Like many companies, Onyx has had pandemic-induced supply chain problems. At least SF’s notorious red tape for small businesses hasn’t been a hindrance, according to Montana, and Onyx has no plans to leave. Visitors to the city who have heard of the company often drop in to check out the bikes. “It’s a really great place to be for getting the word out and sharing the experience,” he says.
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Although Montana would eventually like a bigger warehouse, he has no immediate plans to expand. “The thought of having a third location is overwhelming. Just running two shops is enough. We had a shipment of 30 bikes leave yesterday, but we’re still packed in here,” Montana says with a laugh. “It’s never-ending work.”
Emily Huston is an investigative writer and photographer, who’s currently shooting a photo story about the life cycle of food waste in San Francisco. Find more of her work at https://emilyhuston.github.io.