Dumped Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer has joined an Artificial Intelligence battery development … [+]
Discarded Aston Martin CEO Dr Andy Palmer has bounced back, joining a project to create a world-first artificial intelligence (AI) battery production center in Slovakia.
Palmer, who also drove the development of the Leaf electric car (EV) as Chief Planning Officer at Nissan, has already started as non-Executive Vice-Chairman at InoBat and is pushing to finalize its R&D center by 2022.
With Silicon Valley venture capitalist Faysal Sohail leading its ownership consortium, InoBat is planning to operate a gigafactory by 2024, on the same Slovakian site as its R&D center.
Sohail, the managing partner of Presidio Partners, was also instrumental in developing Actel and Silicon Architects.
InoBat was cofounded by CEO Marian Bocek, who comes from a banking and investment background and also founded the IPM Group and the Tachyum AI chip company. Other investment people on the board include its US management team leader Peter Gajdos, Jozef Urban and Andrew Garman.
Palmer will find other automotive heads at InoBat, which indicates a strong target area, including ex Jaguar Land Rover and McLaren engineer Douglas MacAndrew and former Jaguar Land Rover, McLaren and Mazda engineer Jonathan Carrier.
InoBat publicly announced Palmer was joining its board today, though it already gave the UK’s … [+]
InoBat explained in a statement that its goal is to industrialize AI battery cell innovations up to 10 times faster than today’s developments for all industries, rather than simply focusing on EVs.
Palmer has overseen the construction and development of three EV battery facilities during his time at Nissan.
Palmer grew Aston Martin’s range to a point that included front- and mid-engined sports cars and new factory in Wales to build the DBX SUV, but the timing of the growth and the arrival of Covid-19 wrote the timeline for his demise.
Britain’s Prince Charles has already sampled the DBX, which was fitting given he is the Prince of … [+]
He controversially received $75 million in stock for taking Aston Martin public, on top of his $1.4 million annual salary, $2.9 million bonus and $4.4 million in stock options, in 2018.
Then the share price collapsed, plummeting 26 percent in just one day in July 2019 after Palmer admitted in a Q2 profit warning that the Vantage and DB11 weren’t selling.
Aston Martin shares have fallen more than 89 percent in the last 12 months, but it should not be a surprise, given the 107-year-old company has been bankrupt seven times.
Lawrence Stroll (right), with his Formula One racer son Lance, bailed out Aston Martin early this … [+]
Canadian textile billionaire Lawrence Stroll lead a consortium to save Aston Martin, stumping up US$238 million for 16 percent ownership (now 20 percent) and the Executive Chairman’s seat.
In 2018, Stroll also bought the Racing Point Formula One team his son, Lance, drives for, and plans to rebrand it as the Aston Martin team in the 2021 season, as well as retain its prominent product placement in James Bond movies.
Mercedes-AMG boss Tobias Moers replaced Palmer as Aston Martin CEO in August this year, and also sits on the board of Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings.
Moers, 54, was AMG’s head of engineering when it developed its SLS and SLS Electric models, then oversaw AMG’s double-digit annual growth for six years.
He spent almost his entire career in the Daimler system, taking over as Chairman and CEO of AMG in 2013 (from Ola Källenius, who is battling his own losses as Daimler CEO), doubling its model range and quadrupling its sales.
While Aston Martin had planned to deliver an all-electric Lagonda sub-brand, that has been put on hold until at least 2025. Instead, it will concentrate on its mid-engined Valhalla sports car for 2022 and its front-engined V12 Vanquish GT car for 2023.
