WHEN I MET with Infinite Machine to see its Cybertruck-esque electric scooter in 2023, it was outside a small garage by the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn—the right kind of space for a scrappy, young startup. But on a recent visit, the team got a serious upgrade: a renovated and roomy warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, with high ceilings, a fresh coat of paint, more employees, proper machinery, and a showroom for passersby to ogle the P1 scooter—which the company finally began shipping this month.
The P1 was always going to be a niche product. America doesn't have the scooter culture found in many other countries, and potential riders of the original $10,000 Vespa-inspired vehicle need a motorcycle license. That puts a limit on your growth as a burgeoning company. That's where the Olto comes in. Designed in a little over a year, the Olto is meant to be a mass-market electric bike that doesn't look like any ebike that came before. It can carry two passengers, can reverse, and has a footrest that can transform into pedals—all designed to ride on the bike lane.
Ebikes tend to look a lot like bikes. That also means that, like a normal bike, you'll probably need to haul it indoors somewhere secure for storage, or risk locking it up outside with a bike lock. Infinite Machine decided to come up with a fresh design from the ground up that puts the Olto somewhere between a sit-down scooter and an ebike.
