The Future of Mobility: MOVE America Conference Recap
CTO, Rob Ferber
The Xos team is always looking for opportunities to drive change in the commercial transportation sector. We aspire to be leaders in our industry, but good leaders need to listen as much as they lead. Trade shows, conferences, and events offer a unique environment for EV professionals and other clean energy advocates to showcase their newest technologies, discuss trends, address problems, and share knowledge. It’s a place to speak and showcase, but it’s also an opportunity to listen and learn.
This week Xos attended MOVE America, a conference centered around the future of mobility and transportation in Austin, Texas. MOVE America is one of the largest mobility events in the country. Rob Ferber, our Chief Technology Officer (CTO), attended as a guest speaker on two panels at the event.
First, Rob spoke on the panel, “The latest advances in electric trucking,” where he explained some of the reasons why Xos is different in the world of EVs. Rob also dove into the nature of the commercial vehicle market and why the speed of delivery matters:
“One of the things that’s a challenge and that we’ve squarely focused on initially is that you need to be able to deliver. When someone says, ‘I want 2,000 trucks,’ you can’t say, ‘We’ll give them to you in 2027.’
Forget that. You need to be able to say you can have them delivered in 12 months. And we can. But to do that, we’ve had to innovate how we manufacture. And, as an OEM — we’re not upfitters — we make trucks.
So, we’ve focused on learning to innovate how we do that. As a result, we can match the timeline and decision cycle of our customers. It’s not the easiest. But we’ve done it, and it’s been worthwhile.”
MOVE America panel discussion, “Building a climate-tech workforce for an equitable and resilient future”
Rob also spoke on the panel discussion, “Building a climate-tech workforce for an equitable and resilient future.” On the importance of diversity in the workplace, Rob noted:
"Many times, radical innovation is not a work of genius. It is the result of bringing different perspectives to work on the same old problem."
MOVE America was a huge success where we learned, listened, and shared. As Rob said, “At Xos, we make better trucks; they happen to be electric.”
We look forward to continuing to provide the best practical, sustainable, and reliable electric vehicle technology on the market today.
