Episode 8: Andy Palmer and the Net Zero Heroes

Ride: The Urban Mobility Podcast

GUEST: Andy Palmer, Switch Mobility

About the show

Having spent 42 years in the business of developing, making, and selling vehicles, Andy Palmer is a titan of the auto industry. During his 42 year career, he rose to almost the very top of the Nissan C-suite, where he introduced a raft of vehicles, including the Nissan Leaf EV and the e-NV200 electric taxi. He subsequently spent six years as the CEO of Aston Martin, where he campaigned for the Rapide E high-performance EV, and is now the CEO of electric bus maker Switch Mobility.

Andy Palmer is a long-standing advocate of clean zero emission mobility. But more than that, he’s a proponent of net carbon zero. And that’s the focus of this episode: it’s not enough to produce zero emission vehicles—to make an impact, he says, you have to be a net zero hero, and that means your vehicles have to be net carbon zero. To achieve what used to be called “well-to-wheel” requires a new way of thinking about everything from design, development, and manufacturing, to marketing, sales, and business model.

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