Olympian Motors

If James Bond ever drove an electric vehicle, it might be one created by Olympian Motors.

This company is re-thinking how EVs are built and designed. Unlike EVs made with cheap plastic and an excessive number of dizzying touch screens, Olympian’s vehicles feature a simple, elegant design, and are made with steel and wood. As the company describes, it manufactures EVs with “class and aesthetics.”

Olympian is backed by several notable investors, including Y Combinator, Soma Ventures, Climate Capital, Mobility Vision Fund, and Columbia and Stanford University. And its team features former leaders at Tesla, Ford, Qualcomm, Apple, and Toyota.

The company has received nearly 300 pre-order deposits for its initial vehicle, the Model O1, creating a seventeen-million-dollar revenue pipeline. Test drives of the O1 have already started in Brooklyn, New York, and the company plans for a full commercial launch next quarter.

In addition to a complete re-imagining of the EV, what sets Olympian apart from other automakers is its efficient assembly process. The company has created a modular, “Lego-like” process which results in an eighty-percent reduction in tools and machinery costs, and sixty-percent faster production lead time compared to Tesla, Ford, and Rivian.

Olympian has two models on the way: the Model O1 and Model 84. The O1 is the elegant sedan described above (the “James Bond car”). It offers a range of 250 miles on a single charge and will be priced at $80,000. In an early test, this car achieved longer mileage and better battery efficiency in urban areas than the 2022 Tesla Model 3 and 2022 Rivian R1T.

The Model 84, meanwhile, is a 240-mile range SUV that will be priced at $70,000.

Within five years, Olympian projects revenues to surpass $218 million. This is based on scaling production from 320 vehicles in 2023 to 2,800 in 2024 and 24,000 in 2025.

By 2030, the company aims to capture seven percent of the U.S. passenger-vehicle market. According to Statista, this market is currently valued at around $553 billion, meaning Olympian could one day be valued at thirty-eight billion dollars.

Team Background

Adam Ruddle - Head of Vehicle Engineering

Adam has a wealth of experience in the automotive industry.

Early on, he was an engineering manager with Gibbs Technologies, a company designing an amphibious vehicle capable of traveling on water and land. From there, he became Chief Engineer with Bluebird Automotive, a company developing electric urban-delivery vehicles.

Later on, he became Chief Engineer with The London Taxi Company, a UK-based company creating new vehicles. He then became engineering manager of special projects at Tesla, where he helped develop the Tesla Model S and Tesla submarine vehicle.

More recently, Adam was Head of Vehicle Engineering at Independent Electric Vehicles, an EV-related startup. After that, he was Vice President of Chassis Engineering with Xos Trucks, a similar automotive-focused business.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Salford.

Eren Canarslan - Co-Founder & CEO

Eren is an ex-venture capitalist and electronics engineer turned entrepreneur.

Prior to starting Olympian Motors, he worked at Qualcomm, a semiconductor manufacturer, working in the company’s Snapdragon Automotive division, which focuses on products to help automakers create more “connected” cars. Before that, he was a venture capitalist with Tekfen Ventures, a company investing in early-stage technology and robotics startups.

Earlier in his career, Eren was an investment-banking analyst, and started out as an electronics engineer with Ford Motor Company.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Jasmine Sungu - Co-Founder & Head of Operations and Strategy

Most recently, Jasmine was a senior manager with Cisco, a telecommunications company. Before that, she was a senior-managing consultant with Ernst & Young, a consulting company, where she led a large-scale EV manufacturing/supply chain project. She held a similar role prior to that with IBM.

Jasmine began her career as an analyst with Bank of America. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from NYU.

Co-Investors