Is it bold? Yes. “I’m very confident because things are falling into place,” says Goh. “And we have partnerships ready to support us. We’re confident we’re going to make it. How successful we will be, I don’t know, but the bikes will be on the road.”

The factory is in place, the designs have been finalised (almost) and the Scorpio Electric motorbike is a sight to behold. It looks stylishly efficient with not too many frills, but the lines are clean. It’s sleek, will turn heads, and the specs are exceptional.

“To my investors,” says Goh, “I say: ‘Listen, I can’t promise you that this will be 100 per cent successful, but I promise you that I will put 100 per cent effort into making this work.” 

This is the mark of the man, only making the kind of promises he knows he can keep—a rare trait in today’s business world. Goh’s reputation may well be on the line here, but it doesn’t faze him at all. He knows who his friends are, and he knows the people who believe in him and who are prepared to put their money where his mouth is. Business relationships for Goh are never purely functional. They are personal, and his assessment of a person’s character is intriguing. 

“At night before you sleep, raise your pillow, sit up, and scroll through the address book on your phone. Ask yourself and be honest,” says Goh, “if you had a problem, would you call these people? Would he lift a finger to help you? And if he is unable to, would he know someone who could?”  

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This sums him up, as well as his business and personal relationships. He forges them in steel (or lightweight aluminium) by recognising the kind of people with whom he would like to spend time, but never dismissing those with whom “chemistry” is lacking. I ask him if he is a good judge of character, and he seems slightly embarrassed to answer, “I must have been reasonably good. I do have a lot of friends. Some are close, some are not so close, but we all respect each other … I believe in being reasonable.

“If I’m sitting across the room from someone,” he continues, “and about to talk to them, I run through my mind what I am about to say. If it sounds reasonable to me and I can accept it, I think it’s going to sound reasonable to the other person.” 

It sounds simple, but there’s a life lesson here. It’s simply good sense, and only some of it has been taught. While admitting to a short temper on occasions, there’s a humility to the man that makes him very engaging as an individual and, I would imagine, a good person with whom to do business. 

But isn’t he merely clambering onto a bandwagon as far as clean energy and sustainability are concerned? I ask the question and expect a reaction.“Yes, you could say that,” he admits freely. “But the other way to put it is that I saw an opportunity. Fossil fuels are coming to an end, and with them the internal combustion engine.”

So why not electric cars? “It would be a dream come true to make an electric car,” he says. “But that would be a really expensive dream to realise. Billions of dollars in my estimation. But an electric motorcycle? I can do that, and what particularly excites me is the opportunity to build a brand I can truly call my own.”

And this is exactly what Goh is doing with Scorpio Electric. His own brand. Fired by his own imagination and fuelled by his desire to make his mark and put Singapore on the automotive map. 

The idea started five years ago, and the company was formed 18 months later. While the pandemic hasn’t done Goh and Scorpio Electric any favours, it has enabled a consolidation of thought and purpose, and the luxury of time to source suppliers, test scrupulously, and ensure that the operation is fully geared up for entry into a heretofore uncharted market. The bikes will be expensive for the market segment (somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000) but their range—200 km, and top speed of 105 km/h—are well above industry norms, pointing to the fact that the engineers have done their jobs in creating a practical and desirable product. 

Goh insists that there will be appeal, and that creating a little piece of history for Singapore will be part of a USP that is hard to ignore. He could have gone “mass market”, but in light of the marques he has been promoting for the last 23 years, somehow that wouldn’t have been appropriate. Goh’s electric motorcycles are going to be special.   

Goh is supportive of the Singapore government’s initiative to have nothing but electric vehicles on the roads in the next 20 years, and why wouldn’t he be? The Scorpio Electric motorbike is set to be a trailblazer that will put Southeast Asia in the spotlight as far as the industry is concerned—every part of it will be sourced from the region, and it will be assembled right here, for now. The potential is great, and expansion into Europe and beyond is on the cards. 

Most importantly, perhaps, it will be his brand, and his legacy. 

When all is said and done, there is nothing particularly grandiose about Melvin Goh’s ambitions to create history. Scorpio Electric is a brand of his own—he named it after his star sign—that has sustainability and environmental awareness at the core of its being. It also has the attendant business potential that characterises a man who used to be a racer and now recognises the downshifts required on corners that need extra attention, and is also capable of going full throttle on the straights. He is not risk averse, obviously, but he’s certainly risk savvy. That’s not bad for a former used car salesman who knows who his friends are and relishes the important relationships in his life.