b"Engineer Innovation | InterviewInterview From Concept design to production in 8 months Spotlight on ElectraMeccanica: ElectraMeccanicas SOLO has been lauded as one of the coolest cars of 2020 by Forbes Magazine. They use an ever expanding portfolio of tools including NX, Teamcenter and Simcenter Tell us a bit about your company.Henry Reisner: our past CEO, Jerry Kroll and I founded this company. I've known Jerry for over 20 years. Jerry is a very passionate environmentalist and even as far as 15 years ago was interested in electrification of transportation. At the time I wasnt sure that my customer base was moving in that direction. But about five or six years ago he brought the concept of a single passenger urban electric vehicle to me as something that he was interested in exploring. I really thought that this was an extremely exciting and potentially very strong niche that a small company could create. We identified some potential IP to acquireWhat are the challenges facing yourChina. Our biggest challenge is to get but upon visiting the company, weteam? everybody to contribute and have the discovered that there was nothing toHenry Reisner: As a startup, we've hadchannels of communication open so we purchase. It was a disappointing turn ofvery good response from the financialcan all give our best. Henry Reisner: As events but on our flight home Jerry and Imarket through both private andour team of engineers grows and the discussed whether it would be possibleinstitutional investment backing. One ofbreadth of engineering partners grow, to put together a team that couldthe things that we pride ourselves on iswe all need to speak the same language develop the IP and what kind of productnot having a capital intensive approachand share the same data. Thats why we wed like to offer. This company is now atto this project. Therefore, we rely onrely on Siemens Digital Industries the culmination of that journey. partners for both development andSoftware solutions. We are now in an manufacturing. There are alsoexpansion phase; therefore, were What makes your product unique? geopolitical issues that have influencedadding more Siemens products as a part Henry Reisner: Electric vehicles up tothe way things are moving. No matterof our process to grow this company to this point have been a fairly expensivehow good the plan might be, thingsthe next level. As we push on our product. We have a purpose-builtalways come in from the side. Im prouddevelopment, we can do a better job by product that delivers everything that youto say that we are a committed, flexiblehaving access to the same tools across need for personal transportation on aand driven small team that is wellthe supply chain.daily basis. It has a high level ofsupported by our executive team. So functionality that meets the daily needsdespite pandemics and politicalWe have a strong, knowledgeable of more than 70 percent of commuters.situations we will achieve our objective. partner in Maya HTT, an engineering And we can do that at a sub $20,000solution provider and Siemens Smart price point. Bruce Gordon: And thatHow do you achieve those objectives? Certified Partner. Maya HTTs team makes it that much more accessible to aBruce Gordon: We have a design teamunderstands our corporate DNA and our significantly wider population. Nowthat is scattered around the globe specific needs. As a small, nimble team, everybody can have a choice. Detroit, Los Angeles, Vancouver andwe have a very different way of thinking 26"