In the world of electric motorcycles, the upstart is king. A small company with big ideas can grab an off-the-shelf electric drivetrain, rapidly prototype its concept, and massage it into a working motorcycle. And they can do it quicker than what it takes a major marque to get buy-in from the myriad internal departments that hold the reins.
NUEN Moto only burst onto the scene a couple of years ago, but their first made-to-order electric motorcycle, the NUEN N1-S, is ready. And, like everything else we’ve seen from the dynamic Vietnamese brand, it looks sharp as heck.

NEUN Moto might be based in Vietnam, but frontman Gia Nguyen founded the company while working as a multi-disciplinary designer in Sweden. That accounts for NUEN’s signature aesthetic?a unique neo-futuristic vibe with Scandinavian underpinnings. That thread runs through everything from NUEN’s debut Ducati Scrambler build, to the precursor of the N1-S. Dubbed the NU-E, that bike was designed as a proof of concept. The design was radical, but it was also wildly impractical and far from being street-legal. With the N1-S, Gia’s mission was to use the NU-E’s DNA, but wrap it in a road-ready package with mass appeal.

Even though the two bikes share a design language, the N1-S had to be redeveloped from the ground up. Designed as an urban scrambler, the geometry of its aluminum chassis is more relaxed than that of the focused NU-E. Its upright riding position is geared towards commu...