# Saietta advances confidently with US & India contracts (LON:SED)

- Link: https://www.directorstalkinterviews.com/saietta-advances-confidently-with-us-india-contracts-lonsed/4121114337
- Published: 2023-04-12T07:24:00+01:00
- Author: Amilia Stone

**Saietta Group plc ([LON:SED](https://www.directorstalkinterviews.com/company/saietta-group/sed.l))**
Executive Chairman Tony Gott** **caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss the e-drive
units order from AYRO, why the deal is so important, why they chose to work with
Saietta, building on the recent supply agreement in India and what investors can
expect over the coming months.

**Q1: ****Tony, 3,000 bespoke e-drive units, you must be delighted that you’ve managed
to secure this order from AYRO. Could you tell us more about it?**

**A1**: We are really delighted on several levels.

To AYRO themselves, we think they’re ahead of the game in providing well thought
out thorough e-mobility solutions and I think those are the sorts of clients now
that are gravitating to our technology. We’ve been working with them for over a 
year now, and we’re truly delighted to receive this production order from them, 
3,000 e-drives.

Importantly, it starts to prove the demand for our technology is truly global. We’ve
reported earlier our major successes in landing contracts  with Indian customers.
We also have contracts in place in Europe and now, in the US so over three continents.
Our technology is beginning to make real inroads into this very very important market
for the future.

So, yes, truly delighted with the order, truly delighted to be working with AYRO
and very delighted to be working with a US company.

**Q2: Why is the AYRO deal important for Saietta?**

**A2**: I think it’s that global demand, really. You’ve got to imagine that over
a few years now, we’ve designed our e-drive systems with a lot of knowledge about
the requirements of the market.

Light duty vehicles in urban communities is a market that has fantastic huge potential,
and what we’re able to offer is a number of aspects which we think are relatively
unique:

 * The core of our motor – we’ve said before but bringing Axial Flux Technology 
   to this sector is a very important step. It brings an efficiency level which 
   is really class leading,
 * Our transmission – there’s modular transmissions so that we can tune the transmission
   ratio to any particular clients’ duty cycles and,
 * Invertor technology and the software that sits within it.

This means we can optimise the whole e-drive system or any particular usage around
the world because we understand how the duty cycle works in the urban environment.

So, for us, this is one example about how our technical group here in Silverstone
has been able to optimise the system for AYRO, in this case, and they’re working
with a whole host of other clients to optimise the solutions for them also.

I think it’s important to remember for these types of companies that own fleets 
of vehicles, what’s important for them is the cost per mile, at the end of the day.
For us to be able to introduce this technology at a relatively low cost for an Axial
Flux motor, the whole system for them, means that they can amortise maybe an increase
in price for the powertrain over millions and millions of miles of duty cycles.

Those companies that really understand the market, both the usage and the commercial
imperatives that sit behind their business, they can see that we truly have an optimised
system for them.

So, I think that’s helping people to understand what we offer; something very different,
market-leading in a market that, as I say, has got this huge potential across the
world.

**Q3: I know you’ve been working with AYRO for a while now, how did the deal come
about and why did they initially decide to work with Saietta?**

**A3**: I think it’s the understanding. These companies that are on the button, 
as it were, they do a good trawl across the world’s technologies and landed upon
us, over a year ago. At the time, obviously pleased to say that they saw something
that could potentially help them to get their competitive advantage.

We’ve been working with them over that time, a whole host of vehicles have been 
on the roads now in the US, with our powertrains in them.

It’s the nature in which we work with OEM customers very very closely. The two engineering
teams act as one, and the team here at Silverstone are very very used to working
at a detailed engineering level with vehicle engineering companies. Most of the 
engineers here, including myself way back, are vehicle engineers so we understand
how the powertrains fit into these vehicles and the requirements for packaging, 
space, optimisation of chassis and so on. So, we understand all of that and can 
help them.

So, they don’t need to go and try and source an electric motor from somewhere, electronics
from somewhere else, transmission from someone else, they come to us and get the
whole package. This is optimised for them both commercially and in the duty cycles
they need, that’s what we’re about.

**Q4: How does this build on your recent electric vehicle supply agreement in India?**

**A4**: Well, it’s a perfect parallel stream of activity. As I say, we’ve got this
tremendous fraction now in India, and the project I can report is working absolutely
to plan, where those products will come into the first phase of production in the
summer. It’ll be hitting full scale production at the end of the year, just as we’ve
announced earlier.

This one as well, it’s another parallel stream. In this case, the motors will be
produced from our plant in Sunderland which is also great, and they’re a fantastic
process and production engineering team up there. The ones from India will come 
out of our joint venture in India so were producing in region, and the ones from
Sunderland will also go to Europe as well.

So, it fits in with our overall business plan of optimising our assets across the
world but really demonstrates that we can supply a number of OEMs now, globally.
It’s the start of something quite remarkable, I think.

Just bear in mind that the scale of the market we’re talking about here. Across 
the world as the urban communities struggle to get environmental solutions for their‘
last mile delivery’ vehicles or waste collection etc, the solutions really is in
lightweight utility vehicles that are electrically powered.

In that case, the battery technology fits the end use, our technology is perfect
for the actual drivetrain and it’s a market that’s exploding in India. We’re right
at the front of that and we expect that to also happen across Europe and the US.

So, we’re at a great place with great products and we’re now physically in the right
places around the world to be recognised and noticed and engaged.

I can say AYRO are only one of a number of US clients that the team here behind 
me in the office is already working within the US, as well as the clients that we
have in Europe and India.

**Q5: Since we last spoke, the share price seems to have moved up nicely, it’s still
got that momentum there. You must be pleased with that?**

**A5**: Yes, we are. However, it’s very different from what it was a year ago so
we fully understand that we are in a process of earning our way up in terms of share
price.

The announcement a couple of weeks ago with a partner in India, AVTEC, that I think
was recognised by the market as a very significant move, certainly is highly significant
for us. This one also means we’re opening up a new very large market in the US, 
we hope that also communicates our confidence moving into the future.

You should expect over the course of the coming months, a whole series of announcements
as to what’s happening both with momentum in the US and other projects etc. It’s
our mission to keep the investor community very very closely involved with the evolution
of this company over the next few months and years.

I think it’s going to be an exciting rise and we’re going to be very proud every
time we come on screen to give people the latest information of the journey. I know
there’s things coming along and hopefully they’ll come to be realised in terms of
contracts, agreements and so on. The moment they do, we’ll be here to tell you all
about it.

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