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  • Motivo Engineering

Motivo Celebrates Tenth Anniversary

Updated: Jul 23, 2021

Over 400 Projects Completed for Over 100 Clients


November 11, 2020 (GARDENA, Calif) Motivo Engineering celebrated ten years as a company this month, having grown from four people in a small beachside car garage to a cross-functional team of over 60 technical and business professionals. The mission of Motivo has been to “accelerate product development for audacious visionaries”.

The Motivo team took a few minutes to celebrate the 10th anniversary in the socially distant manner that is 2020.

There is no such thing as a typical Motivo project, as clients range from start-up car companies to aerospace giants, to large farms, plus electronics companies across a multitude of industries. The Motivo Approach is most often needed when a project requires complex electro-mechanical expertise and the ability to work on schedules measured in days and weeks, not months and years.

Founder and CEO Praveen Penmetsa noted, “We were told the odds were against us in starting a business in 2010, in the depths of the great recession. On the contrary, we found a niche in helping people and companies solve complex problems in a rapid and cost-effective manner. Now, in a pandemic, we are maintaining that focus - there are always challenges to overcome and problems to solve. Many of our most recent clients have been focused on food insecurity issues. Solving these problems is especially motivating as it can positively impact the greatest number of people. We can’t wait to see what the next decade brings.”

For many clients, Motivo is the secret ingredient, yet their involvement is never mentioned outside of the Motivo walls. Significant projects that can be publicly discussed include:

  • HARVEST & Monarch Tractor – What began as a USAID project in 2013 ultimately led to the spin-off company Monarch Tractor, developing an electric autonomous tractor in conjunction with Motivo. The tractor was a 2020 World Ag Expo Top-10 Product.

  • Airbus Vahana – Motivo worked with Airbus incubator Acubed to fly an autonomous, electric air taxi on an eVTOL platform. Motivo’s four years with the Vahana team culminated with 138 successful flight tests of a full scale vehicle.

  • Black Gold Farms(BGF) Sweet Potato Transplanter – BGF challenged Motivo to solve a transplanting problem 60 years in the making. Together, BGF and Motivo were able to showcase the first prototype at the Forbes AgTech Summit in 2018 and successful field testing in Louisiana in 2020.

  • Divergent 3D Printed Hypercar – Kevin Czinger came to Motivo in 2014 to reimagine automotive Manufacturing. Through tight collaboration, they developed a method to utilize 3D printing to radically reduce tooling requirements in the process.

  • Systems Technology Inc (STI) Simulators – Motivo has been the hardware product development partner and manufacturer of record for STI’s vehicle and parachute simulator product lines since 2013, providing low rate production and contract manufacturing capabilities.

  • Fluidity Technologies Drone Controller – Former NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski enlisted Motivo in the development of his revolutionary drone controller, which won a CES award in 2019.

Motivo Engineering is an innovation engineering firm headquartered in California, USA. Motivo has helped clients develop and globally deploy technologies ranging from driverless cars to automated planting robots. Motivo’s unique innovation framework has reduced the risks in transformative product development for clients ranging from early stage start-ups to global conglomerates in the mobility, ag-tech and aerospace market segments.

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