electric-vehicles
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Lasse-Mathias Nyberg Is Teaching AI to Do the Paperwork of Buying a Car
The Stanford MBA and former BCG consultant is betting that the future of used-car retail will be won in the unglamorous space between a customer’s click and a clean title.
Jason Marks Is Building a Truck for the Space America Forgot
A childhood crash, a pole-vaulting coincidence and one oversized dog led the safety engineer to ask a compact question: how much truck does a city actually need?
The Five-Minute Meeting That Built a Motorcycle Company
Xulei Xu walked into a university meeting as a suspected idea thief and left with his future co-founders. His career since has been an argument for complementary teams, affordable electric mobility, and the occasional strategic U-turn.
Benjamin Tuff Is Teaching the Home to Behave Like a Power Company
After helping turn a three-person travel startup into a business acquired by Airbnb, the Montreal marketer moved from selling escape to explaining energy independence. His latest challenge is making the electric car feel less like transportation and more like part of the house.
Paul Li Wants to Turn the Car Into Two Pieces
After two decades inside the auto industry, the U POWER founder is betting that the next useful car company will help other brands build - and leave the badge to them.
David Hodge Is Teaching Fleets to Speak Software
He started with subway directions that worked underground. Now the Embark founder and former Apple engineering manager is removing the hardware, handoffs, and guesswork from running connected vehicles.
Chuan Yu Is Designing the City From the Chassis Up
The architect behind PIX Moving does not begin with the car. He begins with the street, the neighborhood, and a stubborn question: what if useful spaces could come to us?
Sujeet Kumar
Sujeet Kumar is the co-founder and CEO of Ionblox, a Fremont, California battery company building pre-lithiated silicon-anode lithium-ion cells for electric vehicles and electric aviation. A materials scientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester and more than 60 patents to his name, he previously served as CTO of Envia Systems, where his team developed one of the first 400 Wh/kg lithium-ion cells with a silicon anode. Ionblox, formerly Zenlabs Energy, has raised roughly $32 million in Series B funding from backers including Lilium, Applied Ventures, Temasek and Catalus Capital, and markets cells that promise higher energy density, up to five times more power, and 10-minute fast charging.
Nick Grewal
Nick Grewal is the founder, chairman and CEO of ePropelled, a Laconia, New Hampshire company building smart-propulsion and energy-management systems for drones, marine craft, and light electric vehicles. He founded ePropelled in 2018 after selling his previous startup Nashoba Networks to Cisco Systems for roughly $100 million in 1996 and spending two decades as an angel investor in more than 40 high-tech companies. He was inducted into the 2025 Boston Smart Business Dealmakers Hall of Fame.
Mohamed Badawy
Mohamed Badawy is the founder and CEO of Scalvy, an Austin-based hardware startup building modular 'Power Neuron' electronics that replace centralized inverters, chargers and DC-DC converters in electric vehicles, energy storage and AI data centers. A former tenured associate professor at San Jose State University who founded and directed its Center of Power Electronic Converters, he left academia in 2024 to commercialize the modular architecture he had been researching. In March 2026 Scalvy closed a $13.9M Series A co-led by Silicon Badia with Azolla Ventures, Climate Capital and SkyRiver Ventures.
Andreas Wallendahl
Andreas Wallendahl is a co-founder and COO of Tenet, a New York fintech that makes electric-vehicle ownership cheaper by rewiring how EV loans get made. An MIT-trained engineer and former McKinsey consultant who helped build businesses inside Ethereum studio ConsenSys, he now partners with credit unions, green banks and asset managers to originate lower-cost EV financing, and bundles free smart-charging so customers save while they drive. Tenet has raised roughly $73 million in equity plus more than $100 million in committed loan funding.
Jin Lim
Jin-Myoung Lim is the co-founder, CEO, and CTO of ACT-ion Battery Technologies, a Dallas-based deep-tech startup reinventing how cathode active materials (CAM) are made for lithium-ion batteries. A PhD mechanical engineer from Seoul National University with 2,272+ research citations and an h-index of 27, Lim spun ACT-ion out of Hunt Energy Enterprises in 2019 with a bold thesis: that the biggest bottleneck in the battery supply chain isn't the chemistry - it's the manufacturing process. His Hydro4Crystal platform produces coated single-crystal CAMs continuously, with lower energy, cost, and emissions than any incumbent method, and it works across chemistries from LFP to NMC. In 2024, the technology won an R&D 100 Award. By late 2025, ACT-ion had raised $11.5 million from BASF Venture Capital, LG Technology Ventures, Mirae Asset Capital, and Korean institutional investors, and was breaking ground on a pilot plant in Carrollton, Texas.
Dan Cook
Dan Cook is the CEO, Co-founder, and Investor at Lyten Inc, a San Jose-based deep-tech company pioneering 3D Graphene supermaterial and next-generation lithium-sulfur batteries. With over three decades spanning General Motors, NeXT Computer (under Steve Jobs), Bay Networks/Nortel, and private equity at Cerberus Capital, Cook pivoted to found Lyten in 2015 around a serendipitous discovery: trying to turn methane into clean hydrogen, the team accidentally created a revolutionary 3D graphene material. Under his leadership, Lyten has raised over $1.2 billion, shipped lithium-sulfur A-samples to automotive and military customers, announced the world's first lithium-sulfur gigafactory in Reno, Nevada, and in 2025-2026 acquired significant Northvolt assets across Europe to become one of the largest battery manufacturers on the continent.
David Kim
David Kim is the co-founder and CEO of Monterra, a San Francisco software company that helps EV charging contractors and developers design, quote, and propose charging projects in minutes instead of days. Before Monterra, he spent years working with utilities and energy companies designing EV charging programs, deploying smart grid infrastructure, and planning energy efficiency initiatives, with earlier stops at The Cadmus Group, Boston Consulting Group, and Accenture, plus a graduate degree from MIT Sloan. He co-founded Monterra in 2022 with Kelson Reiss and raised a $2.5M pre-seed led by Base10 Partners in November 2023 to speed the buildout of EV charging infrastructure with software and AI.
Heather Hochrein
Heather Hochrein is the founder and CEO of EVmatch, a peer-to-peer electric vehicle charging network she likens to Airbnb for chargers. What began as a master's thesis project at UC Santa Barbara's Bren School became a venture aimed at the least glamorous corner of the EV revolution: helping renters and apartment dwellers find a place to plug in. A self-described accidental business owner with roots in energy efficiency and workforce development, she has spent over a decade arguing that the clean energy economy only works if it is also a just and equitable one.
Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor is a laser physicist turned manufacturer who founded Laser Wire Solutions, a Pontypridd, Wales company that designs and builds machines using light instead of blades to strip insulation from hair-fine wires. After an Oxford physics PhD spent trapping a single ytterbium atom to build a next-generation atomic clock, he carried that obsession with lasers into industry and, in 2011, started a two-man operation in a Merthyr Tydfil garage. It grew into one of the UK's fastest-growing manufacturers, exporting roughly 99% of its output, supplying mission-critical kit to the medical device, aerospace, data centre and electric-vehicle industries, and winning a Queen's Award for International Trade.
Glen Stancil
Glen Stancil is the founder and CEO of Merge Electric Fleet Solutions, a Houston-based company that helps fleet operators go electric without the headaches. A co-founder of EVgo and founder of eMotive Solutions, he has spent a decade in vehicle electrification, with his teams deploying more than 1,500 charging sites across 40 states and roughly $300 million in EV infrastructure. He pairs an electrical engineering degree from UT Austin with a Stanford MBA, and earlier did stints at McKinsey, NRG Energy and Reliant Energy. Launched in 2021 with backing from Pickering Energy Partners, Merge raised a Series A in December 2021 to make fleet electrification simple, affordable and scalable.
Saurav Kumar
Saurav Kumar is the founder and CEO of Euler Motors, a New Delhi commercial-EV maker building electric three- and four-wheelers for India's last-mile logistics. A computer-vision engineer trained at Delhi College of Engineering and Cornell, he worked on driverless-car research at INRIA in France, co-founded Cube26 (acquired by Paytm), then started Euler in 2018 on a contrarian thesis: beat diesel on performance, not just price. His flagship HiLoad EV is pitched as India's most powerful electric three-wheeler, and the company has raised hundreds of millions across rounds led by investors including Hero MotoCorp and British International Investment.
Tal Sholklapper
Tal Sholklapper is the CEO and co-founder of Voltaiq, the company that coined the term 'battery intelligence' and built the de facto standard software for making sense of battery data. A UC Berkeley-trained materials scientist who once finished an engineering PhD in two and a half years, he started Voltaiq in 2012 after years designing batteries and fuel cells convinced him the hardest part wasn't building cells - it was figuring out, fast, whether they were any good. Today his platform analyzes data from manufacturing and validation labs at Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Meta, and Amazon.
Ezra Goldman
Ezra Goldman is the co-founder and CEO of Upshift, a San Francisco-based company reinventing how city dwellers access cars. Rather than owning or leasing a vehicle full-time, Upshift members subscribe to a car that appears at their door when needed and vanishes when they don't - a fractional model that eliminates insurance headaches, maintenance costs, and the guilt of a depreciating asset sitting idle 95% of the time. Goldman brings 25+ years of shared-transportation obsession to the role, starting with a communist-themed campus bikeshare in 1999, through an MIT master's in urban planning, a PhD stint in Copenhagen studying why Danes ride bikes, and stints at City CarShare and ReachNow before building Upshift into a platform backed by MINI (BMW), Ford, and thousands of crowdfunding investors.
William Fitzhugh
William Fitzhugh is the co-founder and CEO of Adden Energy, a Harvard spin-out scaling a self-healing, solid-state lithium-metal battery that has charged in as little as three minutes and survived more than 10,000 cycles in lab cells. A Harvard PhD in applied physics, he is trying to turn a coin-cell breakthrough into a roll-to-roll pilot line and, eventually, batteries that let an EV recharge in the time it takes to fill a gas tank.
Bill Lin
Bill Lin is the Deputy CEO and Board Member of One Mobility GmbH, the automotive arm of Foxconn Interconnect Technology (FIT), headquartered in Reutlingen, Germany. With a career spanning supply chain management, management consulting, and EV business leadership at Foxconn, Lin bridges Taiwan's electronics manufacturing powerhouse with Germany's century-old automotive precision engineering heritage. He also serves as Chief Integration Officer at FIT, steering the integration of One Mobility's 11,000-person global workforce across 40+ locations in 17 countries following the 2024 acquisition of Auto-Kabel Group.
Derek Maunus
Derek Maunus is the President and CEO of GILLIG LLC, America's oldest surviving bus manufacturer, founded in 1890 and now headquartered in Livermore, California. He joined GILLIG in 2011 and rose through roles in aftermarket parts and manufacturing before being appointed CEO in 2018. Under his leadership, GILLIG has expanded its clean-energy portfolio - including battery electric, hybrid, CNG, and hydrogen fuel cell buses - and executed a complex relocation from Hayward to a new 600,000 sq ft solar-powered facility in Livermore. With roughly 1,100 employees and annual revenue near $325M, GILLIG holds significant market share in North American heavy-duty transit bus manufacturing.
Marc Winterhoff
Marc Winterhoff is the interim Chief Executive Officer of Lucid Motors, the Newark, California luxury EV maker behind the Air sedan and Gravity SUV. A German-trained electrical engineer who spent decades advising automakers at Roland Berger and Arthur D. Little, he joined Lucid as COO in December 2023 and was elevated to interim CEO in February 2025 after founder Peter Rawlinson stepped aside. He has steered the company through a fragile stretch: stretching the cash runway into 2027, deepening the PIF and Uber partnerships, and prepping a robotaxi-ready Midsize platform. In April 2026 Lucid named Schindler veteran Silvio Napoli as permanent CEO; Winterhoff will return to the COO role.
Hamish McKenzie
Hamish McKenzie is the New Zealand-born co-founder and Chief Writing Officer of Substack, the subscription newsletter platform that has fundamentally reshaped how writers monetize their work. A former journalist and Tesla lead writer who wrote a book about Elon Musk's EV revolution, McKenzie pivoted from covering disruption to causing it - co-founding Substack in 2017 with Chris Best and Jairaj Sethi. Today the platform hosts over 50,000 earning creators and has raised $213 million total funding including a $100M Series C. McKenzie hosts The Active Voice podcast, delivered a TED2025 talk on the future of media, and is writing a book called 'How to Save the Media' due in 2026.
Raef Sully
Raef Sully is the CEO of Lilac Solutions, an Oakland-based company pioneering direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology using ceramic ion exchange beads. A structural engineer turned management consultant turned industrial executive, Sully brings 30+ years spanning tall buildings, the Australian Army Reserve, Bain & Company, and a decade running Nutrien's $10 billion nitrogen and phosphate division. He joined Lilac as COO in mid-2023 and ascended to CEO in February 2024 - the same month the company closed a $145 million Series C. Under his leadership, Lilac has achieved 87% lithium recovery at the Great Salt Lake, unveiled Gen 5 technology with 20x higher production rates, and signed a binding 10-year offtake agreement with Traxys North America targeting 50,000 tonnes of lithium product.
Jim Adler
Jim Adler is the Founder and General Partner of Toyota Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Toyota with $800M+ in assets under management and 90+ portfolio companies. A rocket-engineer-turned-serial-entrepreneur, Adler built the fund from a $100M seed in 2017 into a powerhouse backing frontier technologies in AI, autonomy, robotics, climate tech, and mobility. Known for his 'geek, suit, wonk' identity, he bridges deep technical expertise with sharp investment philosophy, insisting financial returns must precede strategic ones.
Matt Logan
Matt Logan is General Partner at Earthshot Ventures, a $60M San Francisco-based climate tech fund he helped build from the ground up. Formerly with Elemental Excelerator and Advanced Microgrid Solutions, Logan brings a rare blend of project finance, corporate partnerships, and data-driven sourcing to early-stage climate investing. He built Earthshot's proprietary outbound sourcing engine and focuses on companies where powerful technology waves - AI, robotics, materials, and energy - intersect with outsized climate benefit.
Raj Singh
Raj Shekhar Singh is the Founder and General Partner of z21 Ventures, a community-first, operator-led early-stage VC firm investing at the pre-seed and seed stages across AI, fintech, enterprise software, and healthcare. An IIT Kharagpur BTech graduate with a PhD from UC Berkeley, Singh built his career from McKinsey to founding executive roles at Innovaccer (now a $3.5B healthtech unicorn) before launching z21 in 2022. The firm's $5M Fund I backed 26 startups and has already achieved two exits; Fund II closed its first $20M tranche with WestBridge Capital as anchor investor and is targeting $40M total.
Andre Haddad
Andre Haddad is the CEO and All Star Host of Turo, the world's largest peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace. A Lebanese-born, HEC Paris-educated entrepreneur who survived Beirut's civil war, co-founded and sold iBazar to eBay for $140 million, and then spent a decade inside eBay before taking the helm of Turo in 2011. Under his leadership, Turo has grown from a niche car-sharing startup into a global platform operating in the US, UK, Canada, France, and Australia, generating nearly $1 billion in annual revenue and empowering hundreds of thousands of hosts worldwide.