For over a decade I've shipped first-of-their-kind hardware across EVs, stationary storage, motorcycles, aviation, and now drones. I've split my career between big OEMs and early-stage startups, which has taught me which processes actually give a team useful milestones and which are just bureaucracy for its own sake.
I run hardware end-to-end: design, prototyping, field testing, and getting parts out of our contract manufacturers. On the side I'm building the CAD and documentation backbone that lets a small team move fast without breaking too many things, and mentoring junior engineers along the way.
Modules, packs, and enclosures for EVs, motorcycles, aviation, and stationary storage. Owned PEUs, harnesses, and cell-to-pack architectures from concept through CE/UL certification.
Half my career at big OEMs like Ford and Harley-Davidson, half at early-stage startups. I've learned to bring OEM discipline to startup timelines, and startup pragmatism to places that still build things the old way.
Rapid prototyping, design for manufacturing (high and low volume), CM management, and scalable PLM/PDM. I've taken white-space designs from a napkin sketch all the way to hundreds of thousands of units shipped.
At Cuberg (a Northvolt subsidiary), I helped develop lithium-metal pouch cells for the most demanding applications out there: electric aircraft, motorsport, and military programs. The cells push past 400 Wh/kg, nearly double conventional lithium-ion, which is what unlocks electric flight and racing use cases that standard chemistries can't support. I designed modules and battery systems with a 75%+ integration factor to squeeze every last watt-hour out of each cell.
At ONE, I worked on the bleeding edge of cell chemistry, including the 1007 Wh/L anode-free cell that enables the 600-mile Gemini dual-chemistry pack by pairing LFP for daily driving with anode-free for long-range. I developed liquid-polymer electrolyte pouch cells for 90%+ cell-to-pack integration and designed a novel, rapidly deployable photovoltaic storage system that could be dropped in wherever it was needed.
I designed LiveWire's Power Electronics Unit (PEU), the high-voltage brain of the S2 Del Mar urban electric motorcycle. From the first white-space sketch through regulatory certification (UL, IEC, CE), I owned 100+ BOM items and partnered with electrical, software, and validation teams to bring the subsystem to life. I then worked directly with the contract manufacturer to resolve assembly issues and ramp to over a thousand units a year.
At Caban I owned the entire telecom energy storage system end to end: the 18650 cell brick, the injection-molded modules, the aluminum IP68 packs, and the outdoor cabinet that houses it all. I took the product from initial design through pilot builds to field deployment powering telecom towers in extreme environments across Latin America, and stood up Arena PLM from scratch to manage 60+ configurations and 200+ parts along the way.
When I'm not designing hardware, I produce and DJ. It's the same craft, really: layering systems, iterating on a feeling, and shipping something that actually moves people.
Visit zeker.live
Always happy to talk hardware, batteries, drones, or the next weird white-space problem. I respond within a day or so.
Christian@ChristianHandley.com