Autonomous vehicles open up a world of possibilities. From supporting more efficient roadways and improving delivery reach to mitigate labor shortages and fostering a cleaner environment, there are many use cases. So where do companies focus their efforts to make an impact? For one company, they decided to tackle one of the most challenging use cases, developing their own hardware and software services to address a global challenge.
In this episode of the Restless Ones, I had the opportunity to sit with Sander Sebastian Agur, CEO of Clevon. Sander’s drill-down approach has his company focused on developing autonomous and teleoperated delivery vehicles for last-mile delivery. And with 5G connectivity as a foundation for innovation, Clevon is able to test, refine, and grow not only their fleet but where they want to operate next.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
As always, my focus is on exploring the intersection of
technology and business by having conversations with the most forward
thinking leaders. Throughout my career, I've covered everything from massive
parallel processing to advanced robotics, but what truly inspires me
(00:24):
are the stories of innovation and transformation. Today I got
to sit down and have a conversation with Cleven CEO
Sander Sebastian A. Gore, and his story went in a
different direction from what I expected. What if you identified
a technological need, not just a business imperative, but a
(00:47):
lofty goal that revolved around achieving significant technological innovation. And
then what if, in pursuit of this, you zeroed in
on a particular business case for the technology to serve
as your company's mission. I think it would be fair
to say that Cleven has followed such a path. But first,
(01:08):
what is Cleven. It's a company that develops autonomous and
teleoperated delivery vehicles intended to bring last mile solutions to customers.
Cleven developed both the hardware and the software needed to
provide this service and works with dozens of other companies
to create vehicles capable of navigating public roads safely and efficiently.
(01:30):
But these vehicles, while unmanned, aren't unsupervised. An operator can
monitor a vehicle or multiple vehicles from a remote center
of operations. To achieve this outcome, a lot of technology
needs to be in place, including a robust communications network
capable of sending information with very low latency. Clearly, Cleven's
(01:51):
methodology is made possible largely thanks to advancements in wireless communications.
I would chat with Sander about this and lots more
in a great conversation, But to get started, I wanted
to ask about Sander's own background, which would involve chatting
a little bit about planes. Sander, I want to welcome
(02:15):
you to our podcast, The Restless Ones. I'm very excited
to have you on the show. I'm curious how you
first got interested in technology in general.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Thank you for having me. It's exciting to be here.
And I guess I started showing interest in technology actually
in the early two thousands when my dad introduced me
to airplanes, and I had the luxury to experience airplanes
and aviation and how they operate. What systems do airplanes
have on board? So I would say aviation showed me
(02:49):
the way what technology is all about and what it
can do. And ever since then, I've been interested not
only in aviation, but different forms of technology where and hardware.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, and I am so tempted to just have a
deep conversation about avionics and transponders. And in a previous
life I used to write documentation for airplane systems and
about the layout of all the cabling and the various
components within your typical aircraft. And I think it's an
amazing education in technology in general, because not only do
(03:24):
you learn about these basic components and how they all
work together, there were so many other technologies that rose
up in order to make it more efficient to create
sophisticated aircraft. For example, augmented reality. Maybe not a lot
of people know this, but augmented reality really got a
big start in learning how to lay out the cabling
systems inside an aircraft chassis so that the people who
(03:47):
were putting the aircraft together could see where they needed
to lay the various components.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
They are related, I mean, redundancy, duplicated safety systems. They
all actually apply on autonomously. Because as well, and we
take great note of aviation actually, and when we come
to tell as supervision and teleoperation, this is also something
that the aviation industry is actually using by having air
traffic controllers who oversee a fleet of airplanes.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Well, that's an excellent point. You studied aviation management, you
earned degrees in that. I'm really curious what your journey
was like from the world of aviation toward solving last
mile challenges in the delivery space.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
First of all, both industries are super difficult. It's extremely
difficult to run a profitable airline. And having come from
the airline industry, I can tell you that a profitable
airline is something that you don't see that often. And
now we are pioneering autonomous vehicle industry and it's as
(04:51):
difficult as airlines. I mean, we are laying the bricks
and we are putting down the foundation on which the
new industry can really exist. Abundance is vast and progress
is gradual. Put them together and it will take you
on a journey. And it's been a gradual journey so far.
Coming from the airlines establishing one of the largest and
(05:12):
first locker networks in Europe and in the US, and
it's been a progress so as new technologies emerge, we
take note and we try to implement them and pivot
and trial, and it's been a long kind of experiment,
but finding profitable business models in the meantime and in between.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
To that end, I would love to get your definition
of the problem that cleven aims to solve.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So clever On is first and foremost a technology company
focusing on autonomous driving systems technology, and the hardware we
manufacture is an extension of the software. So I could
say that we are combining the best hardware and software
for sustainable future really by building physical and digital infrastrucructure
(06:00):
to make autonomous mobility a reality for industries worldwide. But
we have to start from somewhere, and we have chosen
the last mile space to be extremely underserved. It's one
of the biggest cost elements for companies operating in the
logistics space. Up to sixty to eighty percent of the
last mile cost is actually labor related cost. And at
(06:23):
the same time, we have the shortage of drivers ever
increasing volume of packages that need to be delivered. So
we have chosen this space specifically because it's difficult and
risky as well. So we see that if we solve
one of the most difficult pain points in the logistics chain,
then we have a really high likelihood of expanding that
(06:44):
technology to different sectors. So we are keeping our systems
in the inner city areas. The carriers are driving in
a safe manner, in neighborhoods, different communities, serving customers in
a polite, quiet, safe manner, and I think this is
really necessary to really get consumers acquainted with the technology,
(07:06):
get them feel comfortable with new technologies. I think starting
with the toughest task is somewhat risky, but it's also
really rewarding if we do solve it.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
This is fascinating. So I see this as the approach
of defining a specific problem so that you can really
focus your efforts, identify where the challenges are, where the
bottlenecks are, and then engineer a solution to those And
from what it sounds like, it sounds like rather than
the open sandbox where everything is a possibility, it makes
(07:39):
it very difficult to focus on specifics. By identifying a
very particular challenge, this last mile delivery, you have defined
the context of what needs to happen, and from what
you're saying to me, it sounds like it's multifaceted. There's
the technology side of solving that problem, but there's also
the social side, getting the social buy in for autonomous vehicles,
(08:01):
which is its own problem. Then there's also I imagine
the political challenge as well, making sure that you are
able to meet with legislators and to achieve the agreement
from them to allow those vehicles to operate on public roads.
So it's a multi pronged kind of challenge you're tackling.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Absolutely, there's no one who right now knows exactly what's
right and wrong. We have decided that we in addition
to deploying the vehicles, we want to educate. We want
to educate the communities. We want to educate the lawmakers
and tell them what is realistic and what is safe
and what is not. And we've been lucky to be
(08:39):
actually the first company in Europe in twenty twenty that
was allowed on the public roads with completely unmanned vehicles.
And we take the same approach as we take with
our customers when talking with authorities. Let's begin with a
very simple test, very simple demonstration and showcase, and then
gradually add more technology, add more autonomous striving capabilities, and
(09:04):
once everybody is comfortable with that setup, we can go
beyond and we can test more and more and show
what the vehicles are actually capable of when they are
given more permissions.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Basically excellent. So we're talking about a combination of autonomy
and teleoperation. I imagine that connectivity is an absolute foundational
technology for your approach. In order to have this teleoperative control,
you need to have something where you have no latency.
If you are operating a vehicle on a public street
(09:34):
and someone comes to a quick stop in front of you,
the tele operator needs to be able to respond in
kind in order to avoid an accident. So can you
talk a bit about how connectivity plays a part in
the operations of cleven at the stage you're at right.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Now, Connectivity is crucial for our services. We definitely need
a wide network coverage, especially in the US. We've been
really lucky to have a partnership now in place with
T Mobile, and this partnership enables us to expand rapidly
in the States. So the big question always is to
(10:11):
we have the necessary latency to offer our services in
a safe way, and the results so far are great.
Our latency today is around one hundred milliseconds, which is
actually faster than any person who takes decisions in the
real car. So I would say that our solution is
actually as safe or even safer than any normal person
(10:35):
driving on the roads. And by establishing those connectivity partnerships,
we are partnering with the best in class wireless providers
and they are crucial to enable us to scale our
mission to deliver the most reliable, safe, efficient autonomous delivery platform.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Fascinating with this approach to marriage of teleoperation and autonomy,
do you imagine that the future of autonomous vehicles will
be a hybrid where there will be this communication outside
the vehicle itself, or do you think that we are
going to focus more on an autonomous but fully siloed
(11:13):
vehicle that's kind of its own computer.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
The network that you're describing. That requires a lot of
infrastructure investment, and it's not only one company that can
achieve that. In this case, it would have to be
a joint collaboration between connectivity providers, different technology companies that
really make five G and DIOT technologies scalable as well well.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And that kind is a great way to bring us
back to the solving of the last mile because As
you mentioned, the last mile for delivery is the most
difficult problem to solve. Can you talk a bit about
some of the work that Cleven has done with various
partners and how that has informed your approach to business
(11:58):
and how that has evolved since the company was formed.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Sure, so, we actually spent four or five years during
just silent R and D no one knew about us,
and we just popped up at the beginning of last year.
That's when we launched our third generation vehicle, and since
then we've managed to actually sign up large amount of
customers coming from both the logistics sector and retail as well.
(12:23):
Because we keep our manufacturing side of things in house,
we are also capable of designing the exact vehicle that
we want to use. And our vision was to have
a really lightweight vehicle, something that you cannot get from
any automotive OEM, and this has been well received by
the US legislators as well. We fit nicely in a
specific vehicle category and that has gained us access to
(12:47):
actually five states and we are actually making the first
steps to launch commercial services in the US. So we
can already see from multiple use cases that we are
not only matching the speed of the and the volume
of delivery, but we are also making it more affordable
for our customers.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Excellent. Can you maybe go into a little more detail
about those use cases.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Sure. We began testing with for example, DHL Express at
the beginning of last year. We were initially servicing dhl's
own offices in the cities, but pretty quickly realized that
we can actually go beyond and start servicing both P
to B and P two C customers. So today we
are actually driving as we speak on the public roads,
(13:33):
we are delivering packages. We are in fact scaling the
fleets as well. So it all began with just one
simple test, one vehicle, and now we are expanding the
fleets and thinking about expanding the operational domains and regions
as well in Europe, going beyond Estonia, starting operations in France.
In Germany, we just launched a delivery service in Harvest
(13:56):
near Dallas, where we are working with a company called Postnet.
We see great traction from many but now for us
as a company, it's the question of with whom we
work and how much will we scale at this current stage,
as we need to internally scale our company as well.
At the same time, So it's always this balancing act
(14:16):
how much we do and how fast we develop so
that the company can actually keep up with the development.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
When you're looking to scale up and hire more people,
what are these skills that are most important to Cleven
when you're out scouting for talent.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
We are actually a really unique company in a sense
as we have our own in house university or academy,
which we created a couple of years ago. So instead
of going out and trying to find the talent, we
are actually training young people to become megatronics engineers software developers,
and that's all happening in house. So even if we
(15:00):
go out and try to find top talent, they necessarily
don't have that practical experience. As I mentioned, the hardware
is just the extension of the software, so we need
people who can work with both hardware and software and
understand how the hardware operates as well. And inside our
company we have the luxury of putting those two together.
(15:21):
So the students who actually study with us right now,
they have a really high degree of practical experience. And
I would say that my ambition is actually to scale
the university and the education part even more in the
future by establishing perhaps a US academy and bringing the
know how from Europe, from Estonia to the US. So
(15:42):
I think what's lacking in the educational system right now
is really the practical side of things. And I see
that technology companies should be actually open to include students
in their everyday work and life and let them test
and let them engineer on the physical product itself.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
That's amazing. I think that's a really inspiring approach toward
developing talent because, as we know, the skills you learn
in tackling something like this, those are the same skills
that are going to be useful in applications that go
well beyond even autonomous driving.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, I think it's much better to upskill people who
are interested in technology, and that way we get motivated,
eager to learn, people who want to contribute. In reality,
they're not just starter the paychecks. We are giving our
students like a quad pike to begin with, and telling
them that this quad pike needs to be remotely operated
(16:39):
by the end of the course, and together with us,
they are capable of achieving that. Right, So that's how
it goes, step by step.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I love that the vehicles themselves are these lightweight, smaller vehicles.
I was also really interested in the fact that they
are all electric vehicles, and I think that was a
fantastic decision. Was that something that you had made a
conscious decision early on, or was it driven by engineering
needs or was it a combination.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
First of all, electric vehicles are in our case, actually
lighter than any combustion engine vehicles. Secondly, we saw the
emergence of green cities and the zero emission zones, so
we wanted definitely to have an electric vehicle which doesn't
consume a lot of electricity. I can tell you that
we only use forty two what hours per kilometer, which
(17:29):
is actually super low figure. Any normal electric car we'd
use two to three hundred what dours. So the cost
of driving the vehicle should be really low. We can
calculate that it's approximately a few cents per mile, and
actually it has been paying off because we now proved
and showed to the legislators and the government that we
(17:50):
are small, nimble, we drive at really low speeds, we
don't pollute.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
And that kind of leads me to my last big question,
which is do you have any advice for business leaders
who find themselves needing to work with local or even
federal or countrywide legislators. What are the sort of approaches
that you found to be really effective when you are
dealing with people who aren't in the tech space, but
(18:17):
they are in the legislative space, and it's their duty
to protect citizens and landmarks and all of that.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I would say the most important thing is to establish
a communication, a friendly communication line, and show that the
technology is not a threat, it's actually beneficial for the communities.
And that's only possible if you just bring the technology
to them, demonstrate, let them test it themselves, and that
way kind of gain more trust. We show them how
(18:48):
we do it, why we do it, and let them
be like part of the roadmap. Let them be in
charge of deploying the vehicles and giving the permissions. In
some cases we allow the legislators to sit behind the wheel,
take the wheel, try to tell operate the vehicles, test
the latency, test the ADS systems, and once to get
(19:10):
the feel of it, they understand and they allow us
to do more.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Before I could let Sander go, I needed to ask
him one more thing. What's the best advice you have
ever received?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I think it might come from my dad who said
that if you want to do something and you really
believe in it, just do it first and then ask
permissions later. The idea here is that if you start
asking questions from the early on, at the idea stage,
then everybody will tell you that it's not possible. No,
(19:49):
it's not allowed, it's not permitted, technically impossible. But if
you just take the leap of faith and to the MVP,
then you have control and you have something to show.
And if you have something to show, you can communicate
that value to others. So begin with your belief in
what you're doing and just do it as a first step.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Wow, well, Sander, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I
wish I could stretch it out longer, but I respect
your time too much. Thank you so much for being
on the restless ones.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Thank you for having me Charlton.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Thanks again to Sander Sebastian Agure for joining the program today.
I admire the engineering focused approach Cleven takes to business. Clearly,
defining a problem and then formulating a solution gets right
to the very heart of engineering, and Sander's team have
taken this philosophy beyond the technical requirements of creating an
autonomous technology company. They use that same philosophy to identify
(20:52):
pain points in getting social buy in and in convincing
legislators to allow vehicles access to public roads. The solutions
may not always be as straightforward as swapping out one
sensor for another, but defining the problem clearly goes a
long way toward ideating a solution, and with Cleven's approach
to teleoperating, the need for a robust communications infrastructure is obvious.
(21:15):
It's only with access to high throughput, low latency connections
that such operations are even possible. And meanwhile, we inch
ever closer to a future in which autonomous vehicles can
become a reality beyond the test cases. I hope you
enjoyed this episode of The Restless Ones. Be sure to
(21:37):
join us for future episodes as I sit down with
more thought leaders in the tech and business sectors, and
be sure to check out our back catalog of episodes
to learn how Restless leaders aren't satisfied with doing something
just because that's how it's always been done. Until next time,
I'm Jonathan Strickland
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
As always, my focus is on exploring the intersection of
technology and business by having conversations with the most forward
thinking leaders. Throughout my career, I've covered everything from massive
parallel processing to advanced robotics, but what truly inspires me
(00:24):
are the stories of innovation and transformation. Today I got
to sit down and have a conversation with Cleven CEO
Sander Sebastian A. Gore, and his story went in a
different direction from what I expected. What if you identified
a technological need, not just a business imperative, but a
(00:47):
lofty goal that revolved around achieving significant technological innovation. And
then what if, in pursuit of this, you zeroed in
on a particular business case for the technology to serve
as your company's mission. I think it would be fair
to say that Cleven has followed such a path. But first,
(01:08):
what is Cleven. It's a company that develops autonomous and
teleoperated delivery vehicles intended to bring last mile solutions to customers.
Cleven developed both the hardware and the software needed to
provide this service and works with dozens of other companies
to create vehicles capable of navigating public roads safely and efficiently.
(01:30):
But these vehicles, while unmanned, aren't unsupervised. An operator can
monitor a vehicle or multiple vehicles from a remote center
of operations. To achieve this outcome, a lot of technology
needs to be in place, including a robust communications network
capable of sending information with very low latency. Clearly, Cleven's
(01:51):
methodology is made possible largely thanks to advancements in wireless communications.
I would chat with Sander about this and lots more
in a great conversation, But to get started, I wanted
to ask about Sander's own background, which would involve chatting
a little bit about planes. Sander, I want to welcome
(02:15):
you to our podcast, The Restless Ones. I'm very excited
to have you on the show. I'm curious how you
first got interested in technology in general.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Thank you for having me. It's exciting to be here.
And I guess I started showing interest in technology actually
in the early two thousands when my dad introduced me
to airplanes, and I had the luxury to experience airplanes
and aviation and how they operate. What systems do airplanes
have on board? So I would say aviation showed me
(02:49):
the way what technology is all about and what it
can do. And ever since then, I've been interested not
only in aviation, but different forms of technology where and hardware.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, and I am so tempted to just have a
deep conversation about avionics and transponders. And in a previous
life I used to write documentation for airplane systems and
about the layout of all the cabling and the various
components within your typical aircraft. And I think it's an
amazing education in technology in general, because not only do
(03:24):
you learn about these basic components and how they all
work together, there were so many other technologies that rose
up in order to make it more efficient to create
sophisticated aircraft. For example, augmented reality. Maybe not a lot
of people know this, but augmented reality really got a
big start in learning how to lay out the cabling
systems inside an aircraft chassis so that the people who
(03:47):
were putting the aircraft together could see where they needed
to lay the various components.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
They are related, I mean, redundancy, duplicated safety systems. They
all actually apply on autonomously. Because as well, and we
take great note of aviation actually, and when we come
to tell as supervision and teleoperation, this is also something
that the aviation industry is actually using by having air
traffic controllers who oversee a fleet of airplanes.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Well, that's an excellent point. You studied aviation management, you
earned degrees in that. I'm really curious what your journey
was like from the world of aviation toward solving last
mile challenges in the delivery space.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
First of all, both industries are super difficult. It's extremely
difficult to run a profitable airline. And having come from
the airline industry, I can tell you that a profitable
airline is something that you don't see that often. And
now we are pioneering autonomous vehicle industry and it's as
(04:51):
difficult as airlines. I mean, we are laying the bricks
and we are putting down the foundation on which the
new industry can really exist. Abundance is vast and progress
is gradual. Put them together and it will take you
on a journey. And it's been a gradual journey so far.
Coming from the airlines establishing one of the largest and
(05:12):
first locker networks in Europe and in the US, and
it's been a progress so as new technologies emerge, we
take note and we try to implement them and pivot
and trial, and it's been a long kind of experiment,
but finding profitable business models in the meantime and in between.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
To that end, I would love to get your definition
of the problem that cleven aims to solve.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
So clever On is first and foremost a technology company
focusing on autonomous driving systems technology, and the hardware we
manufacture is an extension of the software. So I could
say that we are combining the best hardware and software
for sustainable future really by building physical and digital infrastrucructure
(06:00):
to make autonomous mobility a reality for industries worldwide. But
we have to start from somewhere, and we have chosen
the last mile space to be extremely underserved. It's one
of the biggest cost elements for companies operating in the
logistics space. Up to sixty to eighty percent of the
last mile cost is actually labor related cost. And at
(06:23):
the same time, we have the shortage of drivers ever
increasing volume of packages that need to be delivered. So
we have chosen this space specifically because it's difficult and
risky as well. So we see that if we solve
one of the most difficult pain points in the logistics chain,
then we have a really high likelihood of expanding that
(06:44):
technology to different sectors. So we are keeping our systems
in the inner city areas. The carriers are driving in
a safe manner, in neighborhoods, different communities, serving customers in
a polite, quiet, safe manner, and I think this is
really necessary to really get consumers acquainted with the technology,
(07:06):
get them feel comfortable with new technologies. I think starting
with the toughest task is somewhat risky, but it's also
really rewarding if we do solve it.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
This is fascinating. So I see this as the approach
of defining a specific problem so that you can really
focus your efforts, identify where the challenges are, where the
bottlenecks are, and then engineer a solution to those And
from what it sounds like, it sounds like rather than
the open sandbox where everything is a possibility, it makes
(07:39):
it very difficult to focus on specifics. By identifying a
very particular challenge, this last mile delivery, you have defined
the context of what needs to happen, and from what
you're saying to me, it sounds like it's multifaceted. There's
the technology side of solving that problem, but there's also
the social side, getting the social buy in for autonomous vehicles,
(08:01):
which is its own problem. Then there's also I imagine
the political challenge as well, making sure that you are
able to meet with legislators and to achieve the agreement
from them to allow those vehicles to operate on public roads.
So it's a multi pronged kind of challenge you're tackling.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Absolutely, there's no one who right now knows exactly what's
right and wrong. We have decided that we in addition
to deploying the vehicles, we want to educate. We want
to educate the communities. We want to educate the lawmakers
and tell them what is realistic and what is safe
and what is not. And we've been lucky to be
(08:39):
actually the first company in Europe in twenty twenty that
was allowed on the public roads with completely unmanned vehicles.
And we take the same approach as we take with
our customers when talking with authorities. Let's begin with a
very simple test, very simple demonstration and showcase, and then
gradually add more technology, add more autonomous striving capabilities, and
(09:04):
once everybody is comfortable with that setup, we can go
beyond and we can test more and more and show
what the vehicles are actually capable of when they are
given more permissions.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Basically excellent. So we're talking about a combination of autonomy
and teleoperation. I imagine that connectivity is an absolute foundational
technology for your approach. In order to have this teleoperative control,
you need to have something where you have no latency.
If you are operating a vehicle on a public street
(09:34):
and someone comes to a quick stop in front of you,
the tele operator needs to be able to respond in
kind in order to avoid an accident. So can you
talk a bit about how connectivity plays a part in
the operations of cleven at the stage you're at right.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Now, Connectivity is crucial for our services. We definitely need
a wide network coverage, especially in the US. We've been
really lucky to have a partnership now in place with
T Mobile, and this partnership enables us to expand rapidly
in the States. So the big question always is to
(10:11):
we have the necessary latency to offer our services in
a safe way, and the results so far are great.
Our latency today is around one hundred milliseconds, which is
actually faster than any person who takes decisions in the
real car. So I would say that our solution is
actually as safe or even safer than any normal person
(10:35):
driving on the roads. And by establishing those connectivity partnerships,
we are partnering with the best in class wireless providers
and they are crucial to enable us to scale our
mission to deliver the most reliable, safe, efficient autonomous delivery platform.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Fascinating with this approach to marriage of teleoperation and autonomy,
do you imagine that the future of autonomous vehicles will
be a hybrid where there will be this communication outside
the vehicle itself, or do you think that we are
going to focus more on an autonomous but fully siloed
(11:13):
vehicle that's kind of its own computer.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
The network that you're describing. That requires a lot of
infrastructure investment, and it's not only one company that can
achieve that. In this case, it would have to be
a joint collaboration between connectivity providers, different technology companies that
really make five G and DIOT technologies scalable as well well.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
And that kind is a great way to bring us
back to the solving of the last mile because As
you mentioned, the last mile for delivery is the most
difficult problem to solve. Can you talk a bit about
some of the work that Cleven has done with various
partners and how that has informed your approach to business
(11:58):
and how that has evolved since the company was formed.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
Sure, so, we actually spent four or five years during
just silent R and D no one knew about us,
and we just popped up at the beginning of last year.
That's when we launched our third generation vehicle, and since
then we've managed to actually sign up large amount of
customers coming from both the logistics sector and retail as well.
(12:23):
Because we keep our manufacturing side of things in house,
we are also capable of designing the exact vehicle that
we want to use. And our vision was to have
a really lightweight vehicle, something that you cannot get from
any automotive OEM, and this has been well received by
the US legislators as well. We fit nicely in a
specific vehicle category and that has gained us access to
(12:47):
actually five states and we are actually making the first
steps to launch commercial services in the US. So we
can already see from multiple use cases that we are
not only matching the speed of the and the volume
of delivery, but we are also making it more affordable
for our customers.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Excellent. Can you maybe go into a little more detail
about those use cases.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Sure. We began testing with for example, DHL Express at
the beginning of last year. We were initially servicing dhl's
own offices in the cities, but pretty quickly realized that
we can actually go beyond and start servicing both P
to B and P two C customers. So today we
are actually driving as we speak on the public roads,
(13:33):
we are delivering packages. We are in fact scaling the
fleets as well. So it all began with just one
simple test, one vehicle, and now we are expanding the
fleets and thinking about expanding the operational domains and regions
as well in Europe, going beyond Estonia, starting operations in France.
In Germany, we just launched a delivery service in Harvest
(13:56):
near Dallas, where we are working with a company called Postnet.
We see great traction from many but now for us
as a company, it's the question of with whom we
work and how much will we scale at this current stage,
as we need to internally scale our company as well.
At the same time, So it's always this balancing act
(14:16):
how much we do and how fast we develop so
that the company can actually keep up with the development.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
When you're looking to scale up and hire more people,
what are these skills that are most important to Cleven
when you're out scouting for talent.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
We are actually a really unique company in a sense
as we have our own in house university or academy,
which we created a couple of years ago. So instead
of going out and trying to find the talent, we
are actually training young people to become megatronics engineers software developers,
and that's all happening in house. So even if we
(15:00):
go out and try to find top talent, they necessarily
don't have that practical experience. As I mentioned, the hardware
is just the extension of the software, so we need
people who can work with both hardware and software and
understand how the hardware operates as well. And inside our
company we have the luxury of putting those two together.
(15:21):
So the students who actually study with us right now,
they have a really high degree of practical experience. And
I would say that my ambition is actually to scale
the university and the education part even more in the
future by establishing perhaps a US academy and bringing the
know how from Europe, from Estonia to the US. So
(15:42):
I think what's lacking in the educational system right now
is really the practical side of things. And I see
that technology companies should be actually open to include students
in their everyday work and life and let them test
and let them engineer on the physical product itself.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
That's amazing. I think that's a really inspiring approach toward
developing talent because, as we know, the skills you learn
in tackling something like this, those are the same skills
that are going to be useful in applications that go
well beyond even autonomous driving.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, I think it's much better to upskill people who
are interested in technology, and that way we get motivated,
eager to learn, people who want to contribute. In reality,
they're not just starter the paychecks. We are giving our
students like a quad pike to begin with, and telling
them that this quad pike needs to be remotely operated
(16:39):
by the end of the course, and together with us,
they are capable of achieving that. Right, So that's how
it goes, step by step.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I love that the vehicles themselves are these lightweight, smaller vehicles.
I was also really interested in the fact that they
are all electric vehicles, and I think that was a
fantastic decision. Was that something that you had made a
conscious decision early on, or was it driven by engineering
needs or was it a combination.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
First of all, electric vehicles are in our case, actually
lighter than any combustion engine vehicles. Secondly, we saw the
emergence of green cities and the zero emission zones, so
we wanted definitely to have an electric vehicle which doesn't
consume a lot of electricity. I can tell you that
we only use forty two what hours per kilometer, which
(17:29):
is actually super low figure. Any normal electric car we'd
use two to three hundred what dours. So the cost
of driving the vehicle should be really low. We can
calculate that it's approximately a few cents per mile, and
actually it has been paying off because we now proved
and showed to the legislators and the government that we
(17:50):
are small, nimble, we drive at really low speeds, we
don't pollute.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
And that kind of leads me to my last big question,
which is do you have any advice for business leaders
who find themselves needing to work with local or even
federal or countrywide legislators. What are the sort of approaches
that you found to be really effective when you are
dealing with people who aren't in the tech space, but
(18:17):
they are in the legislative space, and it's their duty
to protect citizens and landmarks and all of that.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
I would say the most important thing is to establish
a communication, a friendly communication line, and show that the
technology is not a threat, it's actually beneficial for the communities.
And that's only possible if you just bring the technology
to them, demonstrate, let them test it themselves, and that
way kind of gain more trust. We show them how
(18:48):
we do it, why we do it, and let them
be like part of the roadmap. Let them be in
charge of deploying the vehicles and giving the permissions. In
some cases we allow the legislators to sit behind the wheel,
take the wheel, try to tell operate the vehicles, test
the latency, test the ADS systems, and once to get
(19:10):
the feel of it, they understand and they allow us
to do more.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Before I could let Sander go, I needed to ask
him one more thing. What's the best advice you have
ever received?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
I think it might come from my dad who said
that if you want to do something and you really
believe in it, just do it first and then ask
permissions later. The idea here is that if you start
asking questions from the early on, at the idea stage,
then everybody will tell you that it's not possible. No,
(19:49):
it's not allowed, it's not permitted, technically impossible. But if
you just take the leap of faith and to the MVP,
then you have control and you have something to show.
And if you have something to show, you can communicate
that value to others. So begin with your belief in
what you're doing and just do it as a first step.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Wow, well, Sander, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I
wish I could stretch it out longer, but I respect
your time too much. Thank you so much for being
on the restless ones.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Thank you for having me Charlton.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Thanks again to Sander Sebastian Agure for joining the program today.
I admire the engineering focused approach Cleven takes to business. Clearly,
defining a problem and then formulating a solution gets right
to the very heart of engineering, and Sander's team have
taken this philosophy beyond the technical requirements of creating an
autonomous technology company. They use that same philosophy to identify
(20:52):
pain points in getting social buy in and in convincing
legislators to allow vehicles access to public roads. The solutions
may not always be as straightforward as swapping out one
sensor for another, but defining the problem clearly goes a
long way toward ideating a solution, and with Cleven's approach
to teleoperating, the need for a robust communications infrastructure is obvious.
(21:15):
It's only with access to high throughput, low latency connections
that such operations are even possible. And meanwhile, we inch
ever closer to a future in which autonomous vehicles can
become a reality beyond the test cases. I hope you
enjoyed this episode of The Restless Ones. Be sure to
(21:37):
join us for future episodes as I sit down with
more thought leaders in the tech and business sectors, and
be sure to check out our back catalog of episodes
to learn how Restless leaders aren't satisfied with doing something
just because that's how it's always been done. Until next time,
I'm Jonathan Strickland
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