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If you are new to Lit Motors, or if you've been a long-time fan but haven't been keeping up, you've likely wondered: "What's taking so long?"
Following Founder & CEO Daniel Kim's motorcycle accident in 2015, it became necessary to scale back communications and operations as he went through a lengthy recovery. From sustaining a head injury, 9 broken bones, 2 joint replacements, 8 corrective surgeries, and spending 2.5 years in a wheelchair, it took over 4.5 years of recovery to be able to take on the reins full-time.
Nevertheless, we pushed on.
We made significant leaps forward during this period including three acquisition attempts and the recruitment of a world-class core engineering team.
Not only are these accomplishments incredible on their own, Daniel's story of recovery and perseverance is also a miracle in itself. We are thankful for the patience of our community—including our longest, most loyal followers—and the opportunity to bring you on this new chapter as we rise again.
Major accomplishments between 2015-2023:
2015-2019: intense recovery period following founder & CEO’s accident
Assembled expert CMG team from Honeywell & Raytheon
Assembled expert automotive team formerly from Audi/VW
Filed 8 new control patents, building an enormous patent moat
David Bailey and Daniel Kim solve integrated control model, significantly reducing technical risk in 2018 (and filed patent based on breakthrough)
Underwent 3 major acquisition attempts
Formed production development partnership with Ideenion, a top tier developer, in Ingolstadt, Germany.
While we're unable to disclose specifics regarding the acquisition attempts, read on to shed more light on our milestones during this time!
Timeline & major wins during hiatus:
2015: Founder & CEO Daniel Kim’s debilitating motorcycle accident. Recovery period begins.
2016: Billionaire startup founder visits our lab in San Francisco, along with a "vegetable company" and another well known car company.
Ankle replacement failure prolongs Daniel’s recovery period.
2017: Mason Peck, CTO of NASA, introduces Daniel to David Bailey (a world class expert in CMG based attitude control trajectories, 36 years of experience at Honeywell, one of five authorities in classical controls. David joins the team.
2018: Daniel and David Bailey solve integrated control model, and file a patent together. This process took 3.5 years, 800 hours, and 1 controls genius to figure out, as we had to create our own non-linear closed loop controls model, 2 different controllers for integrating drive-by-wire and CMG control (which was its own mess) and more. This was an enormous breakthrough that significantly reduced our technical risk.
2019: Daniel recovers and focuses on massive acquisition attempt. Preparing for this new chapter.
2020: Pandemic begins, putting a significant wrench in our timeline.
2021: Major acquisition falls through in 2021 due to the pandemic and state of the economy.
2022: New team members/partners join our team: Gary (formerly Honeywell), Volker and Stefan (formerly Audi), and Mirko (Ideenion) forming an expert automotive team experienced in bringing show cars to life, from concept to production. Bill Webb (Huge Design) also joins, designing the most recent aesthetic direction of the AEV.
2023: Production development partnership with Ideenion established. Behind-the-scenes work in the Portland Vehicle Integration Lab: building up Portland office, preparing and launching equity crowdfunding campaign, and moving forward with prototype development, and more projects in the works we can’t disclose just yet!
The launch of our equity crowdfunding campaign is a pivotal moment, as we now have a dedicated team and the momentum needed to push forward. Our hiatus was a deep process of rebuilding, but more than anything, we are so excited to move forward with our vision for an agile, efficient, and sustainable world.
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