128: Willem van den Corput
Listen to full episode:
Joe Krebs speaks with Willem van den Corput, the VP of Engineering at Lightyear, about agile processes to produce innovative products like Solar Electric Vehicles (SEV). We talk about the prototypes that made Lightyear win World Solar Championships, their fail-fast approach to produce the first line of products, and scaling production and staff while keeping an agile culture. Willem connected the vision, challenges and small steps with plenty of experiments to the Agile Kata.
Transcript:
Joe Krebs 0:10
Agile FM radio for the Agile community, www.agile.fm. Welcome to another episode of Agile FM. Today I have Willem van den Corput with me, I hope I pronounced that correctly out of the Netherlands. Willem is the VP of Engineering for a very interesting company I want to talk about today. That is lightyear. And if you're interested in that company, that is, the domain name is Lightyear.one. So that's how you can see the amazing products. Willem's company is producing those I want to touch on but before we get started, welcome to the podcast Willem.
Willem van den Corput 0:54
Thank you, Joe. Were really good. Really nice having pronounced very well. Willem van den Corput. It's really a Dutch name. But yeah,
Joe Krebs 1:03
yeah. Awesome. Yeah, awesome. Great. We want to talk a little bit about electric vehicles today. I'm a big fan of electric vehicles. But the one from lightyear is a very special one, because it is a solar powered is that the right word for that solar powered electric vehicle or of SEV vehicle. So that's a very interesting one on you guys are about to release products into into the market. So there is it's beyond the concept at this point. And that's why I'm so thrilled to talk about the product a little bit. But it was all about agile as you're running your VP. As a VP, you're running your engineering organization. So I'm interested in both
Unknown Speaker 1:47
yes, indeed, it's a solar power electrical vehicles. So we call it SEV. And it is indeed filled with solar panels on the roof and on the tailgate. But solar is not the only only deal of it is the total concept of the solar EV because just putting a solar panel on a regular TV doesn't make it really efficient. So we make it really efficient, aerodynamic solar powered electric vehicle. Yeah, because they'll charge you by by by connecting but if you put it in the sun, you will least gain your daily commute in your battery. So yeah, yeah, that's what lightyear comes from. So as as we talked before, I think we originate from the solar challenges in Australia races, and our founders actually in the Netherlands going from the university in eindhoven. And in 2013, won the world championship first time on the cruiser class. And already show that we can you can bring a lot of people to, to finish in 3000 kilometers.
Joe Krebs 2:48
That is unbelievable. I want to go a little bit deeper on that race, as well with you. But I had a few episodes ago, I had a person you guys also connected with through electric vehicle, agile development practices, Joe justice, he's experimenting a lot with electric vehicles he owns, he owned the company, the wikispeed, all of those things. So just as not to make this only about one particular company, but a very interesting one. But what's interesting is there's so much innovation in that space, right? Where vehicles in general the charging speed, as well. But there is something Joe Justice has always said in that podcast and and user group events is like that experimentation really, you know, gets you like through failing fast in these kinds of approaches while failing possibly often, and getting to your goal faster. And that's why he was also interested in the Agile kata we have talked about that as well. But what I want to talk about is it this was eye opening when I saw your presentation in Agile Amsterdam. And I said, I have to have you on that show. Because it's thinking about, well, you're charging your car on a on a solar powered or solar EV / SEV, as you as you said, that is one aspect of it. The charging times are going lower. So you could say, well, so what's the point? Right, but the interesting point that really was so so my main takeaway was, is that the grid, the electric grid, is getting a break by solar power, right? So if everybody is charging and if the amount of electric vehicles is going up around the globe, how does the grid actually support that? And I think that was like a breakthrough moment for me. Can you tell me a little bit about that? What why that is so important and how you guys incorporated that.
Willem van den Corput 4:46
So the importance of electric vehicles in this transition in in global warming in that sense. It comes to the point that a lot of EVs are being pushed to the market and you already have a waiting list on a charge pole, because there's not enough on our breaking down on either work or anything else, we're looking to our concept, we are efficient. So we can charge one stone faster than usually because we only use half of the energy. So that makes makes a big, big thing out of it. And in that sense in the summertime, and definitely if you would bring our car and that will be a future goal to us out to California, Florida, where the sun shines at during the day, you can, you can just recharge your battery overday, so it's 7080 kilometers in a day's charge 50 miles in a day, if you talk about one, you don't need to go to a charging pole in order to go home. So efficiency is the key of of a product in order to bring it there. And in order to do this, we have to adopt agile and we actually, we are not adapted adopting as you were already agile when he said that. So from the start on what we started with working with creative beers and duct tape, in order to build a car, we use some some stools to have a steering wheel and a hand and making sure that we would would see how it would look like this car. Yeah, how big it was and how many people we could get in there. With a group of when I joined them five years ago into 2018. We were 30 boys or girls, and that sounds in a small room and playing around, making sure that we can make a car in a few years time. Currently, we've grown to the point by by doing doing constantly iterations and constantly testing to make sure that we have an efficient car. And actually we managed it because we think last month so that's in like September 2022, we we launched the most efficient aerodynamic production car in the world. Okay, that is one of the key things. So aero and aerodynamics in a car is is half of your energy consumption. So the faster you drive, the bigger drain you will have on your battery. And as far as only the your ways to trial fast, test fast learn fast. And actually, that's just a mindset on and we didn't use the an agile manifesto in the beginning, we just started on this one from day one.
Joe Krebs 7:28
Just like a typical startup you mentioned those races initially I think they were in Australia right is the big the big long distance race for solar cars is one I think three or four times or something like that. And if I remember correctly, how important whether it was for you guys in the in the production but also in terms of the culture for the for the organization.
Willem van den Corput 7:53
The culture started from that because I was small teams and the team members from the first three races at least and the fourth reason is also when it was actually more or less can canceled due to COVID reasoning in 2021. So they build a camper van. But still all members team members of the students in that time many of them are have joined Lightyear. So many of them have been in the students teams where they have to set up their own business deficit and their own programs work Agile to within two years create a new car according to the specs of the organization, so it's a Bridgestone solar races in in Australia, where they drive from Adelaide to Melbourne from Adelaide to Darwin, that's 3000 kilometers but it's the mindset to test past in order to come to the most efficient car but on the other side is also think things system engineering, meaning that you think the total system and it's also adding in the agile mindset thing from the beginning to the end what what is your what's your goal? Where do you want to go? And that mindset helped us building our culture. Yeah, indeed, from the start on wants to start agile without being it but I think it was first.
Joe Krebs 9:18
But it's also got to be like the celebrations right? It must feed into the culture. You're winning this race. You're like, this must be a great moment for the for the culture. Huge success.
Willem van den Corput 9:30
And we still celebrate small things. From the beginning. Almost every Friday, we added Friday afternoon drinks in order to celebrate a week and we kick off the week with with a Monday morning kickoff. And we still do this. Even now we've grown, not a start-up anymore, we've grown to 600 people. Plus as a big scale up. We still do the Monday morning kickoff with the CEO and all the teams to share at least it's more information sharing but still it's like Stand up meeting but half an hour, just on small updates on culture on sometimes finance or sometimes on the projects in order to keep everybody up to date in in the process.
Joe Krebs 10:12
Yeah. What's What's also interesting about this, this story is right, so you you had these cars on the road, you were winning races, but it's now time to transition into like road ready, cars that are being reduced. I think the first batch I think for the majority of people, I'm sorry to say it's probably financially out of reach. But it's to make a point, right, so you can get these cars on the road for you know, a high price tag, but the car is, I mean, it's obviously a great, great looking car. And I can't wait to see this car in in action, right. But there is a second car coming that is a little bit more mass produced and obviously, more interested for other segments. So how do you guys prepare for such a big transition? Like going from a road race, one single car winning this race? I would, I would assume it was one car and participate in that race and do like a small batch of cars? I don't know. Like, how many how many cars? Are you guys producing in batch one?
Unknown Speaker 11:18
Yeah, so we actually, three years ago 2019, we may one prototype furs, do a year later, we made another one. So the first one was statical. The second one was already a proof of concept. We brought in there, the investors we brought customers and start showing them as well what we made because we share that story constantly also, we celebrated with them last year, so 2021 till till today mid 2022 .We produced around about 10 prototype vehicles, where we also started working on so gradually building the organization by making from one step to another to make it bigger, because the end goal is start production as we have by the end of 2022. That the first customer car will roll off the production line with our partner that we selected, because also we would have we focus on development, first, make sure that we have an efficient car that the product is perfect, and the product really works well for the customer production and producing it ourselves is as far as also the next step. So we outsource that for now. Because now we have people that really can build something really nice as a manufacturing. So we first focused on the product. So it's a statement product. It's indeed not affordable for for all of us. But that's also part of the plan going forward, that we got a mission in that sense as clean mobility everywhere. So that we can gain with a lighter, one can drive and everywhere we go drive to South Africa from the earth. And I've always charged by the sun and wait for a day and you can you can continue. And the next step is Joe claim mobility everywhere is everywhere for everyone. And the second bit of that one that we create a logic too where we're working on it that will be affordable. For for everybody. In order to bring it to the to the world. You're first entered US. And three, four years from now.
Joe Krebs 13:25
So it's very interesting, right? So for somebody who might be listening to this podcast, and I'd say I'm not in the car and automotive industry, right. But the interesting pieces you can filter out from here is why do you guys have a mission, you guys have really big goals for your, for your company, good ones, sustainability things that are needed. But on the other side, you also breaking it down into achievements, where it's like, well, we prototypes that what the company entered the workforce at that time can actually achieve in and the stepping stones, it's very interesting to see and and obviously your mission to take everything to the to the mass market, right and that everybody can enjoy driving a solar, EV, that is from an from an agile perspective, like something you can take away for any kind of product development. It doesn't have to be a car that you will be using. And I hope that people see that link. What we're talking about that is it's not really about the cars and etc. This is just an example. It's like a metaphor for that. Now, you mentioned that you're getting incredible increase in workforce from a small team that work together. Like probably in one room right or in one factory Hall to now 600 people. You guys are in the process of bringing on more people scaling and a culture of scaling, agility within your organization. How do you envision 2023 Or possibly 2024 With that Out of growth. How do you how do you envision keeping that culture? Any any thoughts you just let that organically happen?
Willem van den Corput 15:07
A mix of both I think it organically grows, but you need to maintain the culture and adding a lot of people that didn't start from the beginning that yeah, that they don't know the culture from by heart. But in order to constantly iterate, and so and the agile mindset, maybe one thing that they're taught on Agile Kata, where you where you come from, as well, if you have your mission and your goal in mind, so if that's your your first thing, the second thing that you look at, that's our mission. So our mission will be in 2035, that the world will drive on solar energy a lightyear here in the distance. So a lightyear is 9.46 trillion kilometers. So if that's a mission that we will again, and we iterate towards, in order to bring that team up and running constantly, we introduced the lap, planning incremental. So the PI event we call the lap, and a lap is like a lap on the circuit. So you drive a lap in a formula one, or in a NASCAR, whatever that you that you'd like to look at. And we call it the lightyear and alignment planning event. So every three months, we had had these our company wide. And we ended last week, a company wide event where we where we get all departments, all the different projects together in order to align this this planning. And it comes with a with a cycle and that sense. And you mentioned just earlier about Joe Justice. So last year, October in 2021, we did the first event were supported by a company in the Netherlands. And he invited Joe, to our stage where we were in Utrecht in the Netherlands and Joe came to us and you did a keynote about wiki speed. It was really interesting to see how that would reflect on how he did wiki speed, but also the things that we are doing. So it was really good takeaway. For me, for my my colleagues, for the teams on how what can we learn from this? And how can we go forward? Because we work we are already we're already agile. And now we need to continue that. So that's a difficulty when getting a lot of people in that come from companies that work waterfall, how could we get them in on board constantly? Could we train and get people into the mindset of Lightyear? So to say, and we also have in our...
Joe Krebs 17:39
in a short period of time, right? Because you're right, yeah,
Willem van den Corput 17:42
yeah. Because monthly 30,40 People start freshly, and we kickstart them in the first day, in the last couple of months or last years, we have, we have developed also training programs in order to get people as fast as possible. And that's also constant development and trial and error, what works, what doesn't work, getting people together first and get them started from day one, have the tools ready, that they that they can start and also bring him into as fast as possible up to speed in the way how we work. And that's a, I think that I find it a challenge also, for now and for next year if we if we outgrow ourselves again, get get everybody but the nose in the right direction. If we say that?
Joe Krebs 18:33
Well, you you're the VP of engineering. And the company is growing very fast. How important or how unimportant is hierarchy within your organization? Is this a flat company? Or how do you you know, this is why I'm highlighting your title here right? It's like how to how to envision an org chart at at an idea and what does that mean for innovation ideas and from employees, how does this all work?
Unknown Speaker 19:04
Good one, we try to be as flat as possible. We as Dutch, we are quite direct and then I read quite open as a as communicative even everybody can talk to the CEO in our in our company. So we made the organization as flat as possible we have open door policy. So I'm direct in SVP engineering as part of the technology circle and we are organizing circles like technologies are like marketing and sales circle, people and process and circle and some others are not that the circles are as a different circles around the products. So how we say this is a flat organization. Yes, we are growing you will need some kind of hierarchy key to at least get people rolling but we tried to get to stay to the values and people first is one of the values be transparent, and be bold are someone of the same as every day, in order and also all the people are being promoted in the MBA school, that we will keep them together that we celebrate small successes. And at the also my doors open to anybody that is in the company. I always every month introduce myself to everybody personally, that joins the company in order to, to invite them as well to come to me if there's something that I can help them with or that they don't know. Open doors is one. But also the themes of products are they work together as autonomous teams that they get the boundaries to decide themselves, they get the budget, they have at least their boundaries to work in? And let them trial and fail fast? If a change? If they want to change something in that team? In my opinion, they are allowed to deal with if it's, if it's irreversible, then maybe you should think about it. But as if not. So if you can change back the change that you make fine, go for it. Yeah, it's even worked better. Yeah, it was a big investment needed than that I have a chassis of rebirth budget, and we go for it, as well. No.
Joe Krebs 21:30
But it is important to keep that spirit of of innovation. And I wonder from a scrum from a Scrum or agile perspective, however, you want to see that or Agile Kata perspective, right. One thing that you did say was the term lap, right. And you did bring in your own language into this, which I really like white because it correlates to Formula One, you're doing the laps, right? How important is that for the Agile culture that you guys are tweaking these things over to the lightyear style of working? Maybe? Or was that something that was done in the beginning? Or is it something that was introduced? Do you have more of those examples?
Willem van den Corput 22:13
Yep. So we started actually, just last year with a group at least we've gone come better together had to keep the flat organization so common with your planning incrementals. So at that point, we we hired some need some Agile transformation leads, some experts that would help us further to professionalize our organization, and professionalize the Agile mindset. So our full software team development, are running the show a software, from the from origin, already things definitely of No, not definitely, but works in more agile in that sense. So we're not, we're not trying to split up. We're also bringing this moment in mechanical development where you have in some areas to do with nature and laws of nature to get something done to make something. But still, you can have that mindset there as well, and learn and go faster, do more virtual reality, do more virtual simulation to fail fast as well. In that sense, and make less prototypes, any other thing that we'll be learning for for the future. Other things in that sense is trying to build prototypes, what I just mentioned, to start, just start driving on on a on a lap on a circuit somewhere closed off that without public Of course, in order to see if the car drives, we have made our own in wheel motors. Because efficiency is key, again, where we put the electric motors not inside the car, not on board, but inside the rims. So we made it Ultra efficient. We searched the markets for those kind of components. And we couldn't find them because all cars are made for performance and not for efficiency. So we did that trying ourselves. So after three generations, now, we came to the one that's going into the production that that is bringing the efficiency that we need. And that's also so firstly, we say okay, what can we do ourselves? Or what should we buy? Or buy in or outsource in that sense? But in some areas, it says we thought we would outsource a component. But we managed or we couldn't find actually a component that will work for us that doesn't fit our mission doesn't fit our goal. That's it. So we started ourselves making it everybody said to me, You shouldn't do that. We managed it. So we we nailed it
Joe Krebs 24:48
That is awesome. I mean you may once you have that in your DNA as a cultural you in your company, you you will continue with this for all these other models as well. So this is a this is a wonderful story. I wanted to share with the listeners of Agile FM, because not only about the product, not only because of, you know, the sustainability aspect of it, it is so important or will be even more important in the coming years, you're addressing a very important problem for this planet. But also in the context of Agile FM. This is a great, great agile story here. You guys are growing a company from, you know, a small prototype winning a race to now putting cars on the road, and possibly even more in the near future. So this is this really amazing news. The bad news for everybody in Florida in the Sunshine State is that the courts are not available in the United States yet. That might take a little bit longer. But I think the great part is that if the cars are actually running in the Netherlands, where they're I heard there is the occasional rain and cloud in the Netherlands. If it works there, it will work everywhere. So that is that is the wonderful story here. So thank you for sharing your story with the listeners. And good luck with the launches and everything that's coming up. Thanks.
Willem van den Corput 26:17
Thank you.
Joe Krebs 26:20
Thank you for listening to Agile FM, the radio for the Agile community. I'm your host Joe Krebs. If you're interested in more programming and additional podcasts, please go to www.agile.fm. Talk to you soon.
