b'Engineer Innovation | Automotive & TransportationClean MotionThe micro-factory business model that promotes social and economic empowerment Inspiration strikes in the strangest places.roots to the 1948 Piaggio Ape (Ape Ask Gran Folkesson, the chief executivemeans bee in Italian), the Italian answer officer (CEO) of Clean Motion (Lerum,to simple post-war transportation. At the Sweden) and the visionary behind thetime, it was an excellent transportation electric composite pod, known as thesolution. It was sturdy and could carry a Zbee. Years ago he took his kids toload of people or goods. It had a spare sailing lessons and watched them handletire, was cheap to operate and relatively an Optimist dinghy, which resembles aeasy to repair. floating bathtub. Its composite or fiberglass hull weighs only about 35Seventy years later, three-wheelers like kilograms and is easy to operate, whichthe Piaggio Ape are still tooling around is why the Optimist is pretty much themegacities throughout India and standard starter boat for sailors aroundSoutheast Asia.Unfortunately, many still the world. Made of composites,have polluting and noisy two-stroke lightweight and easy-to-operate,engines. Folkesson knew the Optimist provided clues to the mobility issue.Folkesson knew that changing mobility wasnt a one-man task, so he started a When this all started, I had beensmall think tank of like-minded thinking about creating something muchindividuals from the automotive, more energy efficient than a traditionalengineering and product lifecycle car, says Folkesson. Then I took amanagement (PLM) worlds. Drawing couple of trips to Asia and realizedinspiration from the Optimist and tuk-three-wheelers are also an extremelytuk, the founders of Clean Motion important part of solving urban mobilitystarted their digital journey with the requirements.intention of injecting a healthy dose of disruptive innovation. Originally post World-War II technology, the three-wheeler, popularly known as aTo start, the team tackled the obvious: tuk-tuk or auto rickshaw, can trace itshow to make a three-wheeler lighter, 70'