Episodes
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On this episode, we covered a different kind of autonomous vehicle as I spoke with William Santana Li, Chairman & CEO of Knightscope.
Knightscope makes indoor and outdoor autonomous security robots that have been preventing crimes in the real world for over six years. The company just went public on NASDAQ through a Regulation A listing. Before founding Knighscope, William founded a series of mobility companies raising over $300 million in venture capital. He began his career at Ford, where in a decade, he climbed from an Internship in electronics to becoming a Director on the M&A team.
We spoke about being an unemployable entrepreneur; his thoughts on where we are with autonomy and why baby steps are the way to go; his mission to make the US a safer country; crowdfunding; the future of robotics, and much more...
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On this episode, I had an interview with Asaf Weisbrot, Head of Automotive at Nasdaq-listed Otonomo. Otonomo is a provider of a pioneering vehicle data platform and marketplace, and is positioned at the epicenter of the data revolution in the automotive and mobility space. Otonomo vehicle data is being utilized by businesses, fleets, and smart cities for a wide variety of use cases, including, fleet management, insurance, emergency services, mapping, EV management, parking, and many others.
Prior to joining Otonomo, Asaf built a two decade career in global sales and strategic alliance roles at F5, Ceedo, Flash Networks, and others. We spoke about how data is collected from your car and how it is used by insurance companies and others; the secrets of odometers; micro weather; edge computing versus cloud processing in the near future of autonomous driving; and much more...
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Missing episodes?
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On this episode, I spoke with Dr. Cetin Mericli, co-founder and CEO of Locomation a Pittsburg-based startup building autonomous trucks. Previously, he was Special Faculty and Commercialisation Specialist at the National Robotics Engineering Center, at Carnegie Mellon University, where he led the Machine Learning and Perception group.
In the past, he has been involved with many urban and offroad autonomous and semi-autonomous commercial and defense driving applications and his research has been published in over 40 publications on a range of topics in machine learning, computer vision, and robotics.
We spoke about soccer playing robots; why not all problems are worth solving; we did not talk about secret autonomous military projects, or did we? We did speak about when we might finally have full self-driving vehicles; how autonomous trucks will affect driving jobs; why engineers don’t think about the trolley problem; how to be happy; and much more….
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On this episode, I had a conversation with Mark Frohnmayer, Founder and CEO of Arcimoto makers of (FUVs) Fun Utility Vehicles and fleet solutions for emergency services and last mile delivery. Their company is based in Oregon.
Mark graduated from UC Berkeley in 1996 with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. After 11 years leading advanced technology projects in the game development industry and the sale of his first startup, GarageGames, he turned his energy toward solving the worldwide problem of sustainable transportation. As CEO of Arcimoto, he has led the team from concept and startup in 2007 through Nasdaq-listed Reg A IPO. Mark also founded the Equal Vote Coalition in 2014 and he remains connected to gaming as the Executive Producer of Marble It Up.
We spoke about growing up with legos; what games can teach us about people; why Mark built Arcimoto for himself first; the perils of automotive manufacturing and homologating; their place on autonomy; the Cambrian explosion of mobility, and much more...
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On this episode I spoke with Clare Jones, the Chief Commercial Officer of What3Words - the world’s first addressing system designed for voice that is used in 170 countries and is being adopted by governments all around the world as an official addressing system. Previously, Clare was involved in the development and growth of social enterprises and in impact investment. She was also featured in the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list for technology.
We spoke about her upbringing in a UK village which had no addresses and how it brought her to What3Words; how navigation is becoming much more precise with the help of the service; the lives it has saved in emergency situations; and much more...
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On this episode I had a conversation with Marc Ausman, the co-founder and CEO of Airflow.aero, which is building an aerial logistics network for same-day e-commerce using electric Short Take Off and Landing aircraft.
He was Chief Strategist on the Airbus Vahana eVTOL program an early employee at Eclipse Aviation that brought to market the world’s first very light jet. Marc was also a Board member at the Experimental Aircraft Association and served with the U.S. Navy as a Naval Flight Officer on board the P-3 Orion.
Marc and I spoke about his transition from military aviation to business, the complexities of creating and certifying new aircraft, the eVTOL market, drones, what he is excited about in the near future of aviation, and much more...
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On this special bonus episode I switched chairs with Brandon Bartneck, the host of the podcast that is coincidentally called "Future of Mobility" just like this season of "Accelerated". Brandon has interviewed numerous leaders in mobility on his podcast and we decided to post our conversation on both of our shows. Brandon and I covered a lot of ground on the current state of electric, autonomous, shared, and connected mobility. Usually I do the interviewing, but today you’ll hear some of my views.
Brandon’s mission is to help develop a safer and more sustainable future. He does this through his work at FEV as well as the podcast he hosts. Brandon leads marketing activities in North America and helps drive the push into new application sectors and new technology areas. FEV is a global engineering partner for the development of sustainable mobility and energy solutions, supporting vehicle development from concept through production. This includes intelligent software development, propulsion system development, and full vehicle engineering. Brandon leads marketing activities in North America and helps drive the push into new application sectors and new technology areas.
"The Future of Mobility" podcast is a weekly interview-style series highlighting the people and technology helping to develop and implement safe, sustainable, and equitable mobility solutions. Guests include leaders throughout the mobility sector.
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On this episode I spoke with Robert Falck, the co-founder and CEO of Einride. Based in Sweden, Einride is the first fully electric, totally autonomous transport vehicle to operate on a public road in the world. With remote monitoring and operation capability, operators can oversee and control the Pod on-demand, with no need for a human driver onboard. Their electric trucks already count Oatly, Coca-Cola, Lidl, and Electrolux as customers. In May, the company announced its $110 million Series B as it gets ready to launch in the US. Robert talked about what he learned at the start of his career at Volvo trucks; raising money by drinking a lot of beer in the early days; how Einride became the first heavy truck to race at Goodwood and their record on the infamous Top Gear track; what it’s like to work with your spouse; and much more...
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A very special episode with Mate, the 33 year old Croatian founder and CEO of his namesake, high performance EV company Rimac – maker of the world’s fastest production car. In July, Rimac and Porsche, announced that the 112 year old legendary Bugatti brand will be in a new joint venture with Mate as CEO.
I met Mate in 2012, shortly after he started the company. We worked closely on the company's successful Series B financing in 2017. On this episode, we reconnected for a revealing conversation about the difficult years the young team went through getting the company off the ground, Rimac’s unique spin on autonomy, Mate’s view on SPACs, building 100-year companies, and much more...
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This bonus episode of Accelerated Podcast is a rebroadcast of a live East meets West event I moderated earlier in August. It was put on by DIGITIMES Asia and Anchor Taiwan.
Asia Venturing is a series of monthly roundtables with roadmaps to the future focusing on the hype v.s. the reality of Asia's supply chain-boosted innovation ecosystem, jointly powered by DIGITIMES and Anchor Taiwan. They bring together leading industry luminaries, corporate strategists, experienced investors and entrepreneurs to expand your network and redefine the possibilities of cross-border opportunities.
I interviewed my friend and a friend of the podcast, Monika Mikac, the CBO of QEV Tech and member of the founding team at Rimac Automobili, maker of the now officially quickest production car in the world #Nevera.
The other guest is none other than automotive industry pioneer, Jack Cheng. He spent over 19 years at Ford, where he became Vice President of its China operations, and then served as Chairman and CEO of Magneti Marelli Asia Pacific and Chairman of Fiat and Fiat Finance China. He left to Co-Found NIO and then XPT, the provider of advanced technology components and solutions which are the “brain, heart, and soul” of NIO vehicles. In September of 2018, NIO began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Today, it has a Market Cap of $74B. In January of this year, Foxconn was able to convince Jack to come back to Taiwan to head up its MIH alliance, an open EV ecosystem that promotes collaboration in the mobility industry.
We covered a lot of ground on EV, autonomy, manufacturing supply chains, and much more...
Asia Venturing video replay: https://youtu.be/YZGOqiGwAQ4
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On this episode, I had a conversation with Vlad Voroninski, co-founder and CEO of Helm.ai, the Android of autonomy. Vlad is an applied mathematician, AI researcher, and entrepreneur, with many years of R&D experience in algorithmic development. His PhD thesis in mathematics at UC Berkeley made fundamental contributions to phase retrieval and quantum tomography, for which he was awarded the Bernhard Friedman Memorial Prize in 2013 and the SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize in 2014. Previously he was a Postdoc fellow at MIT, and a PhD and Postdoc at UC Berkeley, Vlad served as Chief Scientist at Sift Security (acquired by Netskope) before co-founding Helm.ai. We got into some really fascinating topics around autonomous vehicles.
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On this episode, I spoke with Gilbert Passin, CEO of Wrightspeed, maker of heavy duty EV platforms for commercial trucks and buses. Gilbert served as VP of manufacturing at Tesla during its most formative years. There he grew the vehicle manufacturing team from scratch and launched the Fremont factory and Model S and several other new Tesla factories and EV products. Before Tesla, he was the GM of US West Coast operations at Toyota, and led Volvo and Mack truck manufacturing.
Gilbert Passin is chief operating officer and chief executive officer at Wrightspeed. Gilbert leads the overall company operations including business planning, supply chain, manufacturing, quality, logistics, IT, and service to satisfy global customers with the world’s best EV powertrain solution for heavy commercial vehicles. Gilbert has more than 30 years of international executive leadership in global automotive OEMs and is an experienced operations leader in the launch of new factories, EV vehicles and components. Prior to Wrightspeed, Gilbert served as officer and VP of manufacturing at Tesla Motors, where he grew the vehicle manufacturing team from scratch and launched the Fremont factory and Model S, as well as several other new Tesla factories and EV products. In his career, Gilbert has held executive positions at several world-renowned auto companies including Toyota TMMC, launching the Lexus RX and Toyota Corolla; Volvo Trucks New River Valley, launching the Mack CH/CX production and the competing Volvo VN/VHD under the same roof; and Mack Trucks Winnsboro, producing the Mack Class 8 highway truck. Gilbert holds an MSc in Engineering from CentraleSupelec, France and a DEng Honoris Causa from Bath University, UK.
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On this episode, I had a conversation with Jay Giraud, Founder and CEO of Damon Motorcycles based in Vancouver. Damon is often compared to Tesla for its innovative reinvention of an entire category. Jay found early success as a professional snowboarder and then set out on a personal mission to rid the world of oil. He first did this at REV Technologies that converted fleet trucks and military vehicles to electric and was a pioneer in vehicle to grid technology. He then founded Mojio, the most successful connected car platform in the world. He started Damon after a trip to Southeast Asia where he got reminded just how important two-wheeled mobility is to a big part of our global population and yet how dangerous it can be.
Jay Giraud is co-founder and chief executive officer of Damon Motorcycles. A serial entrepreneur, Jay has focused his efforts on redefining mobility with Damon, creating a safer, smarter and seamlessly connected motorcycle experience. Jay is the author of multiple patents and has spoken extensively about automotive, mobility and cleantech at conferences globally. In addition to his entrepreneurial efforts, Jay is an extreme sports enthusiast. He traveled the world as British Columbia’s top-ranked professional snowboarder in all four freestyle disciplines in 1998. Jay has been riding motorcycles for over 20 years and has ridden hundreds of different motorcycles on track and the road. He has a passion for sport and supersport bikes, as well as an appreciation for touring bikes. Jay has ensured the experiences of all three are in the Hypersport design.
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On this episode, I spoke speak with Praveen Penmetsa, the CEO of the smart and electric tractor Silicon Valley startup Monarch. Before founding the company, he spent two decades developing core technology and full products across energy, mobility, agricultural tech, and even aviation. Since 2010, his company Motivo Engineering has completed over 540 projects: from drone controls and luxury aircraft seats; to automation in meat processing and broccoli transplant machines; to autonomous delivery vehicles and electric speed boats. We talked about the challenges of electrifying farming, the long road to autonomy, and some of the other cool projects he’s worked on in the past.
Praveen has nearly two decades of hands-on experience in translating creative visions into products for startups to Fortune 50 companies alike. His formative years were spent building race cars and new mobility solutions under highly compressed timelines and in the last 4 years he has focused his efforts in Agtech solutions. He co-currently serves as founder and CEO of Motivo Engineering, a product-engineering firm with clients in the Mobility, Energy, AgTech, and Aerospace sectors and Monarch Tractor. Praveen holds an MSME in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He loves the creative energy that permeates the product engineering lifecycle, especially on seemingly impossible projects.
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On this episode, I had a conversation with Michel Taride, who I’m humbled to call one of my Partners at Drake Star. We discussed his 38 year career at Hertz where he went from a summer job as a young entry level clerk to Group President. We covered some really interesting topics in Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric vehicles, smart cities, subscription models in mobility, how smart corporations avoid getting disrupted, and SPACs.
Michel Taride is the former Group President of Hertz International, the leading global car rental brand, where he was responsible for all of its wholly owned and franchise operations in 150 countries across all continents, outside North America. Most recently, Michel has been championing the « smart mobility » strategies for Hertz, working closely with start-ups and incubators in order to accelerate its transformation. Since he moved on from Hertz in April 2019, Michel is a Strategic Advisor specialised in Travel, Transportation and Mobility, collaborating with Corporations, Start Ups, Investors and Consultants, while leveraging his long standing relationships within the industry. He plays an active role in the transformation of the Travel and Mobility space by supporting key initiatives and leading associations within the public and private sectors.
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On this episode, I spoke with Mark Joseph, the CEO of Mobitas Advisors and Advisor to Drake Star Partners. During Joe Biden’s campaign and transition, he served as the co-chair of the subcommittee on infrastructure and stimulus. Mark has had a fascinating career in transportation that started with him taking over the family taxi business in Baltimore. He grew it 50 fold and sold it to the international energy, water and waste management conglomerate, Veolia. Today he advises a number of companies, funds, and governments on transportation and transportation services.
As the CEO and founder of Mobitas Advisors, Mark Joseph advises, serves as a Board member, and invests in early- and mid-stage mobility, energy, and other companies. Prior to Mobitas, Mark was the Chief Commercial Officer for Transdev, the largest multi-modal private operator of public transportation in the world where oversaw the development activities for 20 counties globally. Prior, Mark was the CEO for Transdev North America, UK/Ireland, and LATAM for 13 years. Through more than 15 years in various leadership roles at Transdev, Mark grew the business from $50 million to $1.5 billion in annual revenue with over 200 contracts with cities, transit authorities, airports, universities, and more. Mark has held positions as the President of the International Trade Association, lecturer at Harvard, Yale, Wharton, and Johns Hopkins University, and the Co-Chair of Biden’s Infrastructure Policy Subcommittee on Stimulus. Currently, he serves on a number of for-profit and non-profit boards as well as being a venture partner in two funds.
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On this episode, I had a conversation with Monika Mikac, the CBO of QEV Technologies and a former member of the founding team at Rimac Automobili - maker of the all electric and fastest production car in the world, the Nevera. There, as the COO, she helped grow the company from 8 crazy kids in a Croatian garage to hundreds of employees and a very respected position in the global automotive industry. We talked about how she accidentally went from dreams of becoming a journalist to building a career in the auto industry, the early trials and tribulations of Rimac as a startup, creative fund raising, electric racing, and why QEV’s mission of electrifying public transport is so important.
Monika Mikac is the CBO of QEV Tech, a company which is leading one of the Formula E teams and offering engineering services to the automotive industry especially focused on the segment of electrification. Her role includes running the fundraising process and setting up the company for future growth. Awarded as one of the European Automotive Rising stars, she started her automotive carrier as COO of Rimac Automobili. She helped the company grow from its first employees to 350 people, being one of the first five employees within the company meant covering different scopes of work from PR and marketing activities to financial and administrative responsibilities. She actively participated in the fundraising process and helped Rimac Automobili close their first round in 2014 with 10 Million euros and second round in 2017 with 30 Million euros. She also raised 10 Million euros for EU funds. Monika has been actively involved in all of the projects the company was working on which gave her a chance to develop the strategic segments of the company's business. She has a degree in Political Science from the University of Zagreb and is also a certified project manager.
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On this episode, I spoke with Andrés de León the CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. He first joined the company as its COO before taking the helm in 2019. Prior to Hyperloop he build an illustrious career leading many initiatives in energy and infrastructure. We talked about how the crazy idea of Hyperloop became a full fledged industry, HyperloopTT’s unique crowd sourcing and business models, key technologies that has to be developed, and most importantly when we can get in a pod and hitch a ride at the speed of sound.
Known globally for his focused management style and creation of growth-oriented businesses within the infrastructure construction and alternative energy sectors, Andrés de León was appointed to the role of Chief Executive Officer in 2019. Previously, he had served as Chief Operations Officer for HyperloopTT for three years. Andrés de León brings 30 years of international experience as a senior executive in manufacturing, finance management, private/public business negotiation, and tax and audit supervision to HyperloopTT. Andrés has initiated and executed corporate affairs in Spain, Belgium, Portugal, France, Italy, Mexico, Chile, and the United States.
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On this first episode of "Accelerated" Season 2, I spoke with Drake Star Senior Advisor, Stefan Krause - Founder of Canoo, CFO of Faraday Future, BMW, and Deutsche Bank. Stefan shared his views on the EV revolution (and the non-obvious challenge for legacy brands in the transition), when we can expect to see autonomy on the road, building brands, making the transition from a corporate career to entrepreneurship, and why SPACs are here to stay.
Stefan Krause is a Senior Advisor to Drake Star Partners and currently the CIO and CFO of Levere Holdings Acquisition Corp. a SPAC focused on Mobility in Europe. Before this he has been a successful entrepreneur in the Electric Car industry. Before founding EVelozcity he was the CFO and COO at Faraday Future in Los Angeles, Co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Canoo, COO and President of Fisker. Stefan has approximately 30 years of experience in the automotive and banking industries. Most notably, Stefan was Global CFO of BMW AG and Global CFO at Deutsche Bank. During Stefan's 20 year long career at BMW he held various positions in Engineering, Sales, Marketing & Financial Services at BMW in Germany and the US. In 2002 he was promoted to the Board of Management of BMW as Global CFO. During his tenure he was also CEO of Rolls Royce and closely involved with the relaunch of the MINI Brand. Stefan has a high passion for automobiles and the future of mobility, with extensive experience in marketing and lifestyle brands. His love for cars coupled with his deep network in automotive, finance and technology has motivated him to pursue his life-long dream of creating an EV brand in an effort to address the rising demand and the future of clean mobility.
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As the pandemic began tightening its grip on the world in March of 2020, those who have been through a few economic cycles said, "here we go again". Borders closed, factories shut down, and everyone held their breath not knowing what’s next. Like many crises before, opened the door to opportunity. When work stopped, old supply chains faded away and opened the door to rebuilding with a vision for the future without the inertia of the past.
On this second season of the podcast we are going to focus on one of the key industries that made a major pivot during the pandemic - the 5 trillion-dollar global transportation sector…. In this series, you will hear from some of the global leaders in everything electric and autonomous moving us quickly into the future.
The importance of government regulations and government stimulus to electrification. The race between China, Europe, and now the US. The real deal on autonomy. Future cars, electric planes, and even hyperloops. Season 2 of "Accelerated" launches in June with new episodes weekly!
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