8
WEDNESDAY
APRIL 11,2D1S
Elon ’ s new engineering
major complements a
growing industry
'I TOLD YOU SO'
1
hree years later, Shan,
19, is now a freshman
at Elon University and
has successfully de
signed and built two
electric motorcycles —
a passion Shan is planning to nurture
through Elons newly announced en
gineering program.
But Shan’s love for engineering
didn’t start with motorcycles; his in
terests were once much smaller.
As a child, Shan had the hab
it of taking apart all of his toys to
his parents’ annoyance. The first
such victim was a small fiber-optic
flashlight.
“He was about 10 years old, and
every time we would buy him a toy,
he would open it up just to see how
the process worked,” said Laila Roy,
Shan’s mother. “That was when we
saw that he was starting to turn into
something.”
At the time, both Laila and her
husband, Farid, were unsure what
that “something” was going to be.
But they weren’t unsure for long.
Shan’s curiosity led him to an in
terest in boats, computers, cameras,
keyboards and now motorcycles.
Neither parent could have
guessed their simple response of “go
for it would pique their teenage sons
interest in motorcycles, nor did they
know Shan took their refusal to buy
him a dirt bike as a challenge.
“We were sure he wouldn’t be able
to, Laila said. “We didn’t know what
he was capable of’
Despite having no experience
with motorcycles, it wasn’t long un
til Shan’s childhood habit of pulling
things apart turned into a desire to
put them together.
TIMELINE OF SHAN’S INVENTIONS
5 years old: Shan takes apart a
fiber-optic flashlight.
10 years old: Shan builds a plywood
boat.
14 years old: Shan assembles a
computer he stiU uses to design his
motorcycles.
15 years old: Shan builds a
timelapse camera slider.
16 years old: Shan’s first electric
motorcycle fails.
l8 years old: Shan assembles an
electric motorcycle for a class
project.
Present: Version three of Shan’s
motorcycle is being fully assembled.
ii
MOST OF THEM WERE LIKE,
TLrr DO IT; JUST BUY A BIKE,’
BUT IT KIND OF MOTIVATED ME
BECAUSE IEIGUREDI COULD DO IT,
SHAN ROY
FRESHMAN
“I had this crazy idea,” Shan said.
“I had this bicycle, and I was looking
for the biggest motor I could get, a
controller and a battery. ... I made
a really simple bracket to put on the
water bottle holster, and that was my
first electric bike.”
The bracket, now attached on the
bike, where water bottles are typical
ly kept, held the new components of
the electric bike together. But what
was at first a straightforward solution
didn’t go as well as planned.
Using calculations for speed and
acceleration typically meant for gas
motorcycles, Shan determined the
motor simply couldn't provide suffi-
cient power.
His electric motorcycle never
started.
“It was a really long process,”
Shan said. “I don’t even consider
that as my first real build because it
didn’t work out.”
The failure only delayed Shan’s
dream of owning his own motorcycle.
“Ihen I had another crazy idea.
This didn’t work, but I’m going to
try something 20 times harder and
build my own bike from scratch,”
Shan said. “I have no idea what I was
thinking because I failed on an easy
project, but I decided to challenge
myself and do something completely
unnatural to me.”
Shan started visiting every auto
store in his hometown of Moores-
ville. North Carolina, and asking the
owners which materials were best to
build his own motorcycle.
Like his parents, edch store owner
didn’t belieye he could do it.
“Most of them were like, ‘You
cant do it; just buy a bike,’” Shan said.
“But it kind of motivated me because
I figured I could do itf
And he did.
“He took every bike that we had
in the house. He tore them apart and
he used one thing from one bike and
one thing from another bike, and he
built one,” said Farid Roy, Shan’s fa
ther. “We were just amazed.”
From design to ride, Shan’s first
attempt at building his own electric
motorcycle took him a little over a
year to complete. The end product of
his first real build was a success, but
the year it took him to build the mo
torcycle was a difficult one.
“Everything that could have gone
wrong on the electrical side went
wrong,” Shan said. “It sucked. I was
so discouraged because I was always
one step away from finishing before
something would go wrong. It hon
estly felt like I would just never get
the job done.”
After all the mistakes, a year’s
wait, three busted controllers and a
short-circuited battery, Shahs motor
cycle was finally ready to be ridden.
It worked for a day.
"Well, less than. My friend had
ATV down the road, so we were
riding together and the wire of my
bike stripped out,” Shan said. “So, it
broke down and that was the end’of
that.”
But a day was enough.
“Despite it breaking, I was still so
happy because it had been a whole
year in the making and my bike was
finally working,” Shan said. “It was a
great feeling because all the missteps
I had taken along the way were final
ly worth it.”
The failures from this build and
Shan’s first ride experience set the
tone for his next motorcycle project.
Its easy to get discouraged when
ever)dhing is going wrong,” Shan
said. “That’s your first bike build; you
dont know if you can do it.... But I
just kept running through it.”
Shan now takes pleasure in
knowing he can go back to every
auto store in Mooresville and say, “I
told you so.”
“It sounds kind of cocky, but it’s
true,” he said.
Shan Roy explains the design of his suspension to his parents,
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Farid (left) and Laila (right) Roy, March 31
SI-anRayandOiekTin,.o„sexa.i„eana,nn.innn,ehain guard
SITPHANIEHAYSIELONNEWSP-
cut into the center.