About ON

Ben Surain

Automotive designer, tech wizzard. Ben has been creating future-focused mobility designs for over 25 years, helping brands and startups turn sketches into production-ready units.

In his youth, Ben was fascinated by motorbikes and he was lucky enough to be trained by the mechanic who prepared the Fogarty's Ducati Superbike at a motorshop in his village. Ben: "He learned me how bikes work, the geometry of a good frame and I felt in love with motorcycles".

After his studies in 2001 at Saint-Luc design school (Belgium) and some different kind of design jobs in various sectors (he was even a professor design for 3 years and also a designer for Panasonic Europe), Ben discovered the electric mobility industry. Ben: "At that moment, I knew that the technology was ready to develop my dream bikes! I realised it was the beginning of a new era for mobility and I wanted to be a part of it! 

Ben created in 2009 his own brand "Surain electrocycles" and after a period of technical preparation and searching for the appropriate tools, he began to build some of his ideas. Ben: "I designed and built a lot of bikes since ten years, some were great, some were not that good (smile). I burned a ton of batteries, controllers and motors but after every prototype, I learned a lot from my mistakes and wrong decisions. I wanted to improve my crazy ideas and found the best way to make them working."

Ben always start from scratch with some sketching (and not on a computer but with pencils and paper). For him it's the ideal start to create his hand-build electric bikes. Ben: "I started with the Eol project in 2012 and with the Ezekiel project I won awards for the best design, performance and ecology building process at the EVER Monaco Show."

People started to talk about his work and for Ben it was time to create a motorcycle based on vintage Belgian brands. Ben: "I began to work on Renaissance: the bike is inspired by the 1920 'La Mondiale' from the Morel brothers. They were genius and used non classical technology on their bikes (the bikes accepted different brands of motors and the frame was built with pressed steel panels).

The Renaissance frame is a full CNC non-welded frame, with a large opening to accept different kinds of batteries and hub motors. After this period, I developed EXO, a full suspend Fat bike with Tangent drive and Di2 Shimano for transmission (electric shifter and geared hub). The fact is if you want to make a full suspended bike with geared hub, you need to have the swing arm pivot point superposed with the pedals crank axle ... and I resolved it."

"Since the beginning of my career, I always worked alone, on tailor-made production builds on-demand. The bikes I built, were one of a kind. Now, I decided to work differently, I like to use 'old school technology' for the frame mixed with high end tech for the electric parts, to create bikes with the vision 'nothing less, nohting more'."

"And today there is ON #pushthebuttontoday with Guy Salens. He started the information platform 'THE PACK' and he was one of the first to have a website only dedicated to electric motorbikes and mopeds. 

And last but not least, with my electric custom builds, I transform on-demand electric vehicles. There will always be a market for special and unique projects, to express the individuality as we have always seen in the traditional motorcycle world until now."

Guy Salens

Founder of THE PACK 'Electric Motorcycle News', Guy has positioned himself as a key connector in the electric 2-wheeler mobility space, offering deep communication strategy and media expertise.

After having run his own graphic design studio for over 30 years, Guy Salens has expanded his services in the pursuit of his passion for electric mobility. In 2017, Guy Salens launched the informational website THE PACK "Electric Motorcycle News", where he makes his knowledge and experience available to a wide audience.

As an E-consultant, Guy carries out communication assignments for electric motorcycle and moped manufacturers with his THE PACK global information platform. This medium presents various content marketing possibilities on- & offline (with THE PACK Plaza).

Today, with "ON" #pushthebuttontoday and in cooperation with Ben Surain, the team wants to speed up the use for Light Electric Vehicles with its new connector hub.