The $10,000 electric moped looks like the illegitimate love child of a Cybertruck and a Vespa. In a city filled with weird robot cars, snub-nosed trucks, and hoverboards, it takes a lot for a vehicle to turn heads, but as I drove an Infinite Machine (opens in new tab) P1 on Valencia Street this week, gazes followed me like I was a nudist or a Jenner.
Available for test drives over the next month from New York-based Infinite Machine’s pop-up showroom in the Mission, the P1 is all sharp angles, anodized aluminum, and stainless steel flat planes. It packs a top speed of 65 mph and a 60-mile range, with room under the seat for a spare battery. That’s enough juice to get across the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Marin hills — a rarity among mopeds — though the company cautioned that it’s not designed for highway use. “If you want to go on the Bay Bridge, it’s fine [to] go one exit,” said cofounder and CEO Joseph Cohen.
The P1 can sync with your phone and has integrated Carplay.
Of course, it’s decked out in tech features, including a nine-inch LCD Carplay-enabled screen for navigation and music, front and rear cameras, app-based unlocking, and GPS tracking. Anyone with a drivers license can ride the P1 up to 30 mph. To unlock the top speeds, you need a motorcycle license.
Given our geek bona fides, SF is one of the company’s biggest target markets. “People are really excited about the latest and greatest in a unique way in San Francisco,” Cohen said.
San Franciscans certainly love to ride on two wheels. The city is decked out with 464 miles (opens in new tab) of bike paths, according to Municipal Transportation Agency data from 2021. In September, Bay Wheels reported 458,000 bikeshare rides, the biggest month (opens in new tab)to date, with overall ridership up 70% since ebikes were introduced (opens in new tab) in 2023. Meanwhile, DoorDash (opens in new tab) reported that 76% of SF deliveries are made on two wheels, the highest share of any U.S. city.
Cohen, who has been building excitement on social media for a few months, found an eager audience in SF’s tech scene, with many from the AI side of X tweeting about how much they want the “cyberbike.” The buzz reached a fever pitch last month, when AI startup founder Eugenia Kuyda floated (opens in new tab) the idea of using a free P1 to incentivize an iOS engineer hire.
True to form, the first person to get a P1 in the Bay Area was Amjad Masad, CEO of vibe-coding startup Replit, who got his in September. He gave it positive reviews for safety and speed, but it was the vibes he liked best. “What inspired me is honestly how cool it is,” Masad said. “They’ve done an amazing job building it into a lifestyle brand similar to Apple.”
Infinity Machine’s Olto ebike has a 4.3-inch LCD screen. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard
The P1 has a top speed of 65 mph, but a motorbike license is needed to unlock it. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard
Cohen started Infinite Machine in 2021, after his Vespa was stolen during Covid lockdowns in NYC. He went shopping for an electric replacement but was “totally uninspired” by what was available. At the time, Cohen was running Universe, a no-code website builder, but thought there might be an opportunity in mobility. He turned to his brother Eddie, a meditation accessory founder, and they began working on a prototype; both felt cooped up and needed a distraction. “It was a side project,” he admitted. “Nights and weekends for three years.” It wasn’t until last year that Infinite Machines became a real company. It has raised $9.3 million from investors, including a16z, Correlation Ventures, and Cursor Capital.
The electric scooter category was open for reinvention, said Badrul Farooqi of Cursor (opens in new tab), noting that the moped he rode a decade ago looked basically the same as today’s models. “Most of the energy goes to redesigning cars,” he said. “Rarely do people try to bring that level of ambition to non-cars.” He liked that Infinite Machine is “trying to push the needle in existing categories” with “striking products.” Plus, it’s fun: “The acceleration is great!”
The scooter is a head-turner. It is the first two-wheeler I’ve ridden that made pedestrians stop to ask what the hell I’m riding. That’s due to the Cybertruck vibes. In a city where people have taken to slapping apology bumper stickers on Tesla cars, that can be complicated.
“We were definitely inspired by it,” Cohen said of the Cybertruck. “It was unapologetically future-forward.” But with public sentiment toward Elon Musk eternally seesawing, Cohen is pivoting away from that narrative. “We’re not stoked about the association,” he said, “but political climates rise and fall.”
The company’s second product is a $3,495 Class 2 ebike (opens in new tab) that will ship in January, which has a curvier frame to get away from the Cybertruck association.
Still, Cohen notes, it’s not like the Cybertruck was the first stainless steel vehicle — anyone remember the DeLorean?
Reporter Zara Stone tries out the Olto ebike at Infinite Machine’s Valencia Street pop-up. | Source: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/The Standard