As a business, Savic Motorcycles has always been about youthful passion. First there was Dennis, drawing motorbikes incessantly in his living room as a teenager. Then, when he started to build his first bike in 2018, Dennis enlisted another ambitious young engineer who was doing a computer engineering degree at the University of Wollongong.

As a final year project, Kim was offered the task of developing an instrument cluster for the C-Series prototype. As someone who’d recently discovered a love of motorcycles, this was “a seriously enticing offer”. Without hesitation, he accepted.

Kim often spent his weekends riding dirt bikes around the trails behind his house in the rural town of Griffith, which spawned a deep love of motorcycles. This was only enhanced by regular trips to Thailand – his father’s native country – where he enjoys “the organised chaos” of local roads, riding everything from scooters to three-wheeled salengs, to his uncle’s old Suzuki Intruder.

“My grandmother’s house is essentially a junkyard due to my uncle, who’s a mechanic, hoarding vehicles for spare parts,” says Kim. “I’d been wanting a bobber for a long time, and one day I caught a glimpse of this old cruiser and just had to get it restored.”

When he finished his degree, Kim moved to Melbourne where he landed a coveted job as a software tester with a contractor to the Department of Defence, installing and debugging a variety of complex software systems. But his passion for motorcycles kept him involved at Savic – and during the evenings and weekends, he continued to work on the preliminary software systems for the C-Series. It wasn’t long before Dennis offered him a full-time gig at Savic Motorcycles.

Today, Kim leads the ongoing development of our vehicle-side software systems, laying the foundations for the C-Series’ digital instrument cluster, as well as the vehicle control unit, which is essentially the brain of the bike.

“I get a lot of freedom at Savic in terms of what I get to work on and experience,” says Kim. “This, plus the awesome team that Dennis has built and the fact that we’re developing a cutting-edge motorcycle, really makes this a dream job for me.

“The EV market is booming right now, and I love the idea of stuffing as much technology into these vehicles as we can to provide the ultimate riding experience.”