Kevin Smith wrote the following article on our recent design competition. The article is appearing today in the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Pasadena Star News, and the Whittier Daily News…
California Scooter Co. to use student design features
Greg Fitch, Joel Walta, and Chasen Wendt...California Scooter Company Design Competition Winners
And that’s exactly what Californa Scooter Co. got when it asked Cal Poly Pomona engineering students to help design a new line of retro-style scooters. The La Verne-based company launched the design competition earlier this year and the winners were annnounced over the weekend.
The first-place award went to the team of Greg Fitch and Kevin Gutierrez, engineering technology majors in Cal Poly’s Engineering Technology Department. Joel Walta, a Cal Poly mechanical engineering student, won the second place award. Chasen Wendt, also a Cal Poly Pomona mechanical engineering student, snagged third place. In addition to gaining valuable design experience, the winners also received significant cash awards from California Scooter.
“We wanted to get someone else’s ideas for targeting the younger crowd,” said Steve Seidner, the company’s president and chief executive officer. “We’re trying to see what they want in a scooter. The students actually came up with some pretty neat things.” No single design submission will be used in total, Seidner said, but ideas from all of the entries will be incorporated into the new product line. “By taking a little bit from each one we’ll be able to see what direction we’re headed in,” he said. “They all had great ideas.”
California Scooter is looking to create environmentally-friendly, inexpensive, and stylish transportation motorcycles that get 98 miles per gallon.
Seidner said the new scooter line will likely not be unveiled until mid-2011. The company’s current motorcycles incorporate styling that harkens back to the Mustang motorcycles that were manufactured in Glendale during the 1940s through the 1960s.
“It was exciting to be involved, but I also think it was a very intelligent move for California Scooter to give engineering students the opportunity to weigh in on it,” said Fitch, 25, of Redlands, a Cal Poly senior. “We submitted a preliminary design with a project proposal that was two or three pages. We also had engineering sketches.” Fitch said he and Gutierrez spent about a month developing their design ideas and compiling their submission. “It was great of Steve and his team to give us the opportunity,” he said. “They are really good people and I think that’s going to be a big company.”
California Scooter Co. is a spin-off of Seidner’s Pro-One Performance Manufacturing Inc., which makes custom motorcycles for hard-core fans. California Scooter operates out of a 20,000-square-foot facility at Brackett Airfield in La Verne.
Professor Joseph Berk, who teaches undergraduate engineering subjects at Cal Poly Pomona, said the contest was “an incredible experience” for the students. “This provides the ideal opportunity for young engineering students to have exposure to a really exciting industry,” he said. “It also creates a relationship between California Scooter and Cal Poly. They have this great supply of emerging engineering talent that’s only about four miles away.” Berk described it as a win-win situation for the school and the company.
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