BCBusiness

September/October - Entrepreneur of the Year

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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a proper fast charger," says Portable Electric founder and CEO Mark Rabin. Although you can replenish the device via an EV charging station or a standard wall outlet, it works with a variety of energy sources, Rabin adds. "We could also charge it from a hydrogen fuel cell or another type of generator, and we can also pair it with a mobile solar array." Bright idea. –N.R. T R I P L E T H R E AT Now, this is a vehicle that will make you do a double take. Solo, by Vancouver-based ElectraMeccanica Vehicles Corp., is a three-wheeled, all-electric single-seater that's much smaller than a typical car. But it holds its own on the road, with a full- charge range of 160 kilometres and a top speed of 130 km/h. Solo is the company's flagship vehicle, designed to revolutionize commuting, delivery and shared mobility while being eco-friendly. ElectricaMeccanica makes the Solo in China, but this spring it announced that Mesa, Arizona, will be its U.S. base of operations, with plans for an engineering technical centre as well as manufacturing facility. The new plant will be able to produce up to 20,000 Solos a year, according to the company. –S.Z. M O B I L E A P P Looking to build your own mobility business? Spare has all the tools you need. The Vancouver company bills itself as a platform where entrepreneurs, private businesses and transit organizations can create mobility apps. Co-founder and COO Josh Andrews says it's "providing an operating system" for such services, with coding-free options that let users simulate operations for planning and test runs, all with real-time analyt- ics. You can set up a new ride-share service in days on Spare, he adds. Operating in three core markets–North America, Japan and Europe–the 50-employee company has seen revenue triple in the past year. "Making sure that we continue to grow our business in a way that we can innovate quickly, that's probably the No. 1 priority for me," Andrews says. –P.R. R A C K ' E M U P Bicycle theft is a major industry in B.C., but Urban Racks has your back. Founded in 2007, the Langley company sells racks, lockers and electric charging stations for e-bikes as well as e-scooters to organizations in Canada and the U.S. "You can use the app to lock and unlock [your bike]," president and CEO Kosta ChatziSpiros says of Urban Racks' accompanying online platform. "You can become a subscriber to a locker and have it ready for you. You can also check with the app to see if parking is available before R O B O D R O P In the crowded electric vehicle market, Vancouver- based GreenPower Motor Co. aims to stand out by focusing on medium- to heavy-duty EVs, including buses, shuttles and cargo vans. The company has also joined the autonomous driving camp with the 2020 launch of its AV Star, a Class 4 EV that charges wirelessly and will also drive itself. "I've now defined a system where there's no humans involved at all," chair and CEO Fraser Atkinson says of the vehicle's role in fully automated delivery. GreenPower has partnered with First Transit, a U.S.-headquartered provider of public transport services. With the first AV Star doing test runs at Florida's Jacksonville Transit, the company plans to build a second unit and do a stateside promotional tour. The transport sector is at the "iPod stage" of innovation, Atkinson says. "There's so much more to come." –P.R. A L L E N C O M P A S S I N G One Compass Card to rule them all–TransLink, Evo Car Share, Mobi by ShawGo and Modo Co-operative. That's what the Shared Mobility Pilot tested for almost a year starting in October 2019. The partnership between TransLink and the three private companies began when they won its first Open Call for Innovation, whose theme was Seamless Mobility. The four transport providers then launched a pilot that saw 160 employees from 12 businesses get a Shared Mobility Compass Card for work-related travel, with employers billed monthly. The result: 60 percent of participants replaced the use of their own car with transit, car share or bike share. "The next pilot is going to be much broader," says Sandra Phillips, founder and CEO of consulting firm Movmi, which helped organize the project. "It's targeted to the everyday consumer." The partners plan to start the next phase this fall, but there are still some kinks to work out. "It will be the first time we have seen anything in this region that is combining so many different modes of transport in this way," says Niklas Kviselius, manager, new mobility, at TransLink. –S.Z. T O P A N D G O Electric cars are brilliant–until you run out of juice on a deserted highway. Portable Electric has a solution to range anxiety. Through an alliance with B.C. mining titan Teck Resources and local nonprofit the Community Energy Association, the Vancouver-based company has developed Canada's biggest clean-energy mobile EV charger. The partners rolled out the first unit this summer in the East Kootenays. Capable of charging two EVs at once, the VOLTstack battery electric unit is mostly for top-ups. "We can add 25 kilometres or 50 kilometres to the car so it can get to 30 BCBUSINESS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 Portable Electric's mobile EV charger A GreenPower Motor shuttle Urban Racks

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