/ 2 min read
The most valuable thing I built was never the hardware
An electric car at COP15, electric propulsion at sea years later - and the realisation of what actually carried over.
In 2009, I built an electric car.
Later that year, it was showcased at COP15 in Copenhagen and took part in the international CO2 Green Drive project, where alternative-fuel vehicles used GPS to “paint” giant CO2 symbols across cities.
Battery technology was nowhere near where it is today. Our range was so limited that drawing the CO2 symbol on the map was about all the battery could manage.
More than a decade later, much of the same thinking found its way into electric propulsion for sailing yachts. In many ways, it was just a one-wheeled electric car - with a propeller instead of a wheel.
I assumed most of it would transfer directly.
It didn’t.
The automotive world is demanding when it comes to IP ratings. Salt water is another league entirely. Everything that was “good enough” on the road had to be rethought at sea.
Without reliable hardware, none of it would have worked.
But what stayed with me wasn’t that an electric motor could spin a wheel - or a propeller. It was everything software made possible: intelligent energy management, diagnostics, remote updates, and continuous improvement.
Hardware made the product possible. Software decided what it could become.
Looking back over the past seventeen years, I realised I wasn’t really building cars and boats. I was building physical products as they became software platforms.
