Riding out a new venture

It was a Friday afternoon, and the workers at the T3 Motion factory in Costa Mesa were quietly busy, drilling, fastening and calibrating the latest models of the business’ personal transportation vehicles.

Off to one side, near the factory door, Ki Nam started up the company’s prototype electrical vehicle, about the size of a Smart car.

After the electrical motor hummed to a start, Nam slowly reversed ... right into the frame for one of his T3 vehicles.

“Oops, I didn’t even see that,” Nam said with a chuckle, before driving out the factory doors.

A couple of workers checked out the damage.

Everything was fine, not even a dent.

Nam wasn’t worried. It’s not like he could have gotten in trouble anyway. It’s one of the perks of being the founder and chief executive of your own company.

Nam said T3 Motion is his sixth business, and one he has particular high hopes for.

A South Korean who immigrated to the Unites States as a teenager, he retired in his late 30s.

But, he said, that lasted about three weeks.

“I got so bored. I realized, ‘Gee, I can’t stand still,’” he said.

In just under three years, Nam, 49, has combined his mechanical engineering background and uncanny knack for business into this venture off Airway Avenue that’s spreading across the globe.

“The American Dream is possible,” he said.

For now, the Newport Beach resident’s focus with T3 Motion is producing the vehicles you may have seen on some college campuses like USC or UC Irvine. They have a handle-bar in front and platform to stand on and three wheels.

“I got one up to 36 mph,” Nam said with a grin. Again, a perk of the job.

Models are built to top out about 25 mph, company officials said. Nam said he built the electrical motor inside the T3 in 2000 for the future generation of the Honda Civic. At the time, though, saying something was “green” would have been describing its color, not its environmental soundness.

So, Nam said, the motor never worked out. But in 2006, with gas prices skyrocketing and people looking for simpler, cheaper modes of transportation, he built the T3.

“This is a new adventure for me; it’s not my expertise,” Nam said of marketing the T3. He said he’d consider himself 50% engineer, 50% businessman. Instead of going for the public consumer, Nam targeted the “niche” market, as he called it, turning to security companies.

Three years later, police officers and private security from the East and West coasts, Canada, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are counted among his clients.

“It’s more community police,” he said. The model lets you tower over the public, but you’re accessible to them at the same time, he said.

The genial, restless chief executive is still looking for other ways to use his motor technology and reach consumers. Inside the research and development building of his company, apart from his dozen or so muscle and sports cars, sit prototypes of a vehicle for the public, a post office truck with an electrical motor, and even what looks like a dune buggy.

“I went to school for seven years and had an education at four universities, but didn’t get a degree. Now I can hire PhDs!,” he said, laughing.

T3 Facts

Top Speed: 25 mph

Battery lasts: Three to four hours

Battery charges: In less than two hours

Energy usage: Uses the equivalent of 7 cents a day in electricity, or 500 miles per gallon of gas

Maximum load: 450 pounds