Entrepreneur Puts a Revolutionary Spin on Electric Motorcycles Daniel Kim's startup Lit Motors and its groundbreaking take on the motorcycle has pulled in more than $1 million in angel funding.

Tesla's Elon Musk gets credit for inspiring the character Tony Stark from Iron Man, but some say Daniel Kim of Lit Motors is more deserving. "Unlike Musk, Dan can actually build stuff," says investor Ted Loh. "We'll probably see him flying around in an Iron Man suit one day because he just decided to build one."

Such praise comes thanks to Kim's San Francisco-based startup and its groundbreaking take on the motorcycle, the electric C-1. Lit Motors has pulled in more than $1 million in angel funding from Loh and other engineering-minded investors, attracted by Kim's use of dual stabilizing gyroscopes that keep the bike upright on two wheels, whether it's stopped at a traffic light or broadsided by a pickup truck at 35 miles per hour. "There's nothing new behind the concept," Kim says. "Think of a spinning top and how it stays upright when it's bumped. It's common sense; I just applied it to a motorcycle."

The enclosed motorcycle (Kim refers to it as "driving your helmet") is powered by an 8 KwH lithium battery pack that takes about a dollar's worth of electricity to fully charge, for a range of more than 150 miles. The bike has a top speed of 120 mph and sports-car-like acceleration.