WAYNE BURGESS, DESIGN VICE-PRESIDENT, OLA ELECTRIC

Why set up in Coventry?

“Look at the other brands here: there’s Tata, there’s Mahindra. To achieve our goals, we need to leverage all the experience that’s here, and [CEO] Bhavish Aggarwal was very receptive to that.

“If you look at Formula 1 and Formula E teams, almost all of them are within a 50mile radius. It’s good to have a presence.”

What are you designing?

“It’s about first principles. What’s the best way to get out of a vehicle? It isn’t having a B-pillar. We’re forgetting about engineering challenges. What’s the best way for a customer to wipe a windscreen? Do you need to touch anything any more? Does the car need to know it’s you? Those kinds of things will give us a point of difference, and we will commit to solving these problems in our products.”

Why did you join Ola?

“The whole relationship with mobility solutions is changing, and one of the things that attracted me to Ola is that it already has this app-based ecosystem. You can ride-hail, you can order food [in India]. It might sound unusual for a car designer to say, but the actual transport device has moved down the priority scale. Instead, it’s about the way you engage with the ecosystem, the user experience. That’s our competitive advantage, as it’s where we’ve come from.”