U.S. autonomous shuttle company Local Motors has announced that President and COO, Vikrant Aggarwal, has become the company’s Chief Executive Officer. He replaces John (Jay) B. Rogers, Jr. who will be transitioning into an advisory role as Non-Executive Vice Chairman of the Board.
Local Motors is a developer of purpose-built autonomous shuttles and is best know for Olli, its electric driverless shuttle.
Prior to joining Local Motors, Vikrant spent two decades at Cummins in a variety of engineering and leadership roles, including in Cummins’ power generator and mobility groups.
While leading the Innovation Incubation group at Cummins, Vikrant was responsible for development of technology for powertrains and mobility.
In 2019, Vikrant joined Local Motors as President and Chief Operating Officer. As President, Vikrant scaled the growth of the Olli 2.0 platform both commercially and operationally.
Local Motors has demonstrated market traction with global commercial deployments of Olli, its electric autonomous shuttle.
The company is focused on scaling production to meet demand and delivered the most vehicles in company history in a single month in August 2021.
Vikrant Aggarwal, Local Motors’ CEO, says: “I want to thank Jay for his vision and entrepreneurship. Through Local Motors, he has challenged conventional wisdom of how to design, manufacture, and deploy new mobility solutions. Jay is a pioneer for microfactories and direct digital manufacturing [3D Printing] for the automotive industry. Because of these innovations Local Motors is able to produce purpose-built vehicles”. Our team has built a great foundation, and I look forward to continuing to grow and scale the company as we enter this next phase of growth.”
John (Jay) B. Rogers, Jr. will be transitioning into an advisory role as Non-Executive Vice Chairman of the Board.
Jay Rogers, Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of the Board, adds: “Based on Vikrant’s great leadership as President and COO over the last two years and his track record of leading our business operations, I know that the company will be in very capable hands under his leadership as CEO. It is great to see this transition culminate, and Vikrant is the right leader for this next phase of the company’s journey. I’m excited to help advise the company by working closely with our board of directors and Vikrant.”
Founded in 2007, Local Motors is heavily invested in applying learnings from its deployments to bring safe, accessible, equitable, and sustainable autonomous vehicles to the market. By leveraging direct digital manufacturing (3D Printing) and microfactories, LM can reduce design and manufacturing costs, and introduce new vehicles in months, not years.
