The CEO behind the company making Ford's Transit Connect possible
Azure Dynamics, a Michigan-based powertrain manufacturer, made headlines last month when Ford announced the upcoming release of its Transit Connect vehicle. Headed up by CEO Scott Harrison, Azure produced the pure electric technology behind Ford's new vehicle.
The company is behind other eco-friendly innovations that help produce steep declines in greenhouse gas emissions in the urban areas in which they're deployed. "You can have a serious impact on the quality of life of the people who live in those urban areas," Harrison said. We spoke this week.
Talk about how you came to Azure Dynamics.
The technical side is where I spent the majority of my career in the automotive industry. I started with Delco [Chassis Division] right out of college when it was part of General Motors. Most recently I was at Hayes Lemmerz, a couple billion dollar company where I ran a global business.
The more passionate side -- this is an area I've had an interest in for a long time, literally my whole life. I always tell the story: My dad worked night shifts at the General Motors factory in Dayton, Ohio, where I grew up. In the summer, we would go fill up the family car with gas. In 1973, it was the oil embargo and gas was way up to 50 cents a gallon. It made me think that there's a better way to power your vehicle. As I went through all my schooling and all the interests and distractions that you had growing up, I still had a passion for this field. When this opportunity came up, given my background and my passion for wanting to make improvements to the planet and the auto industry, it was a great fit.
What is the mission of Azure Dynamics and who are some of its clients?
Our focus is on commercial vehicles. We're really focused on the powertrain and electrifying the powertrain. We do that both with the hybrid electric system and, of course, with the pure electric system that we're launching with the Transit Connect. We like commercial vehicles. Commercial vehicles drive 12 percent of the miles in our cities, but they're responsible for 25 percent of emissions. With the drive cycles that commercial trucks experience, we can provide an economic payback for our customers. We're about two years into the commercialization of our hybrid electric technology and we focus on delivery vans and shuttle buses. We have the largest fleets in North America with AT&T and FedEx. I'm leaving a number of others out, but definitely a who's who of big operators in North America.
Talk about the Transit Connect vehicle.
Ford makes a base version of this vehicle and it's a small utility van delivery vehicle for commercial fleet customers. It's been in Europe for maybe five or six years. They just brought it to North America last year in the gasoline version and started selling it. We're going to launch a pure electric version of it this year. We unveiled the vehicle in Chicago at the auto show there in February. The responses have been overwhelming. We just announced last week that AT&T will be the first of what we anticipate to be 10 or so lead customers this year. We use a lithium-ion battery in this vehicle.
Who are your competitors?
We're partnered with Ford. Ford has a 50 to 60 percent share of this medium duty truck market, which is our primary market, so we have a pretty strong position. We see competition from Eaton Corporation, a large company that makes transmissions for trucks. But we overlap just a little bit with Eaton. Certainly there are a number of people trying to do ground-up vehicles in the commercial truck space. We like our position. No one else will be on a Ford chassis the way that we are. We have a couple years head start on everybody, as well.
How has the hybrid electric vehicle market evolved?
I've been at the company about three years. When we were launching the hybrid electric system in the commercial truck market, it felt to our customers like an exotic technology. You had customers that wanted to buy maybe one to five vehicles, try it out and then maybe increase to 20, 30 or 40 before they'd get to those 100-vehicle orders. Now because the technology is accepted, people want to place larger orders.
What's next for Azure Dynamics?
Our delivery vans and our shuttle buses are more toward the high end of the medium duty truck market and the Transit Connect will be at the low end. We'd like to fill out our selection of products. We want to offer additional platforms, so that we're offering a complete solution when we go to customers, both in terms of cargo space and drive cycles. We're on a global platform with the Transit Connect and our customers are certainly global, so I think we'll be thinking about geographic expansion, as well.
Photo: Scott Harrison
This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com