How did you start Hyliion?
Growing up, I raced cars. I spent a tremendous amount of time at racetracks driving vehicles. Our equipment was shipped in tractor trailers, so I got to know about trucks through that. Then when I was in college, studying mechanical engineering, I had an interest in electric vehicles. Tesla was just starting to become known then, and I thought: Why do we have electric technology in cars and not in trucks yet, since trucks are where you can have the biggest impact? They drive 100,000 miles a year and there’s still a lot of greenhouse gases that come from them. So it was this thinking of, let’s take this mega trend—a shift to electrification—and apply it to this industry.
What keeps you busy outside of work?
I’m a gearhead at heart. I love working on cars, souping them up and putting turbo chargers on them. If I can spend a Saturday working on a vehicle, that’s class. My daily driver is a Tesla, which is very fitting for what we’re doing. I’ve also got an Ariel Atom, a two-seater that’s like a big go-cart.
Where do you want to be in 10 years?
Our goal is you’ll be driving down the highway and the trucks you see will have Hyliion powertrains. There will be other trucks that are electric as well, taking a different approach. We hope all these technologies are successful as ultimately we’re trying to make this shift to electric. The more people are focused on that, the better off we’ll all be.
How are you celebrating the deal?
Normally you’d have hundreds of people come to the stock exchange. It’s obviously a smaller group for us, but we’ll do our best to celebrate. All our team on Monday can livestream the ringing of the bell. We’ll figure out a way to get them some breakfast tacos and give them at least a few hours to sit back and celebrate as this process has been a full company effort.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.