Key Individuals

Don Morris, CEO

• As EVP of Engineering and Operations at Electriq Power, Don was responsible for both hardware and software engineering and for worldwide sourcing of all components including batteries, inverters, and contract manufacturing. He was responsible for material purchases, inventory management, assembly, test, and shipment of all products.
• As acting CFO for Electriq Power, Don was responsible for managing the cash needs of the company. He consolidated and presented all expenditures, employee hires, and capital and inventory purchases for approvals and filed the corporation’s taxes. He generated the company financials for investors including the 5-year revenue plan and cash flow projections.
• Don was employee number four at Proterra. As EVP of Engineering and Manufacturing at Proterra, he was responsible for the development of the 72kWh lithium titanate battery system, the battery management system, and the all-electric drive train. He was also responsible for the design, build and installation of the 250kw fast charge system. His responsibilities included all aspects of the composite bus body design and manufacture.
• At Sun Microsystems, Don was responsible for the manufacture of all of the Sun computer products with annual shipments totaling more than $2.3B. He managed an organization of 200 engineers and 400 manufacturing managers and production personnel and an annual budget of over $40M. During Don’s 4-years at Sun, the company’s revenues grew from $180M to $2.3B while maintaining an average growth of 25% per quarter.
• At Wyse Technology, Don gained offshore management experience during a 1-year assignment as Managing Director of the Hsin Chu, Taiwan, computer manufacturing operations. Don managed more than 1,000 people in three separate facilities and was responsible for $175M in worldwide shipments of personal computer and terminal products. He has excellent business and negotiating skills in securing supply sources domestically as well as offshore.
• During his ten years in Hewlett Packard research and development, Don advanced from a member of technical staff to Engineering Section Manager in just seven years. As a Section Manager, he successfully headed the development of the HP75D portable computer. He managed an organization of 35 engineers which included software and CMOS chip design as well as all electrical and mechanical design. After the product release, he managed the manufacturing of this product and spent four weeks in Singapore during the technology transfer and off-shore manufacturing start-up. He is a results-oriented professional with a long history of successes in achieving critical goals.

Education

STANFORD UNIVERSITY, Graduate School of Engineering:
Stanford, CA
Completed two years of graduate level electrical engineering courses in control systems before Hewlett Packard asked Don to move to Corvallis, Oregon to lead the HP75D development.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, BSEE:
Urbana, Illinois
Graduated magna cum laude, Bachelor of Science, Electrical Engineering

BRADLEY UNIVERSITY, BSME:
Peoria, Illinois
Graduated summa cum laude, Bachelor of Science, Mechanical Engineering
Member of Tau Beta Pi and Pi Tau Sigma honor societies
Recipient of Continental Can tuition scholarship
Illinois State Mathematics and Chemistry Scholar

Patents: Don is named as an inventor on 44 issued patents

Tony O’Gorman, CTO

• For the past 11 years Tony has been a consultant in the power electronics industry. He has worked on a variety of areas including EV traction drives, 3 level inverters and controlled rectifiers for high power (2MW), plasma ignition circuit design for passenger cars, auto-coding of EV traction drive algorithm using Simulink, and Li-ion battery management systems.
• As a distinguished member of the technical staff at Motorola Automotive (later Continental Automotive), Tony worked on electric-assist power steering which was implemented in the Chevy Malibu and Pontiac G6, and two European cars. The peak volume was almost 1 million units per year. Also, Tony worked on methods to improve the output of the standard 12V alternator for passenger cars by replacing the diode rectifiers with an FET equivalent. This enabled a 30% increase in alternator power at idle with the additional benefit of reducing the over-voltage event when the 12V battery is disconnected.
• Tony worked with Onan Corp in Minneapolis on a variety of control and power electronics projects including a hybrid electric option for a 40’ bus (0kW to 100kW in < 2 seconds), a 7kW range extender for the GM Impact, an output regulator control to improve the voltage response for a 1MW genset, and engine speed control to reduce light flicker.

Education

BSEE, University College Cork, Ireland

MSEE, PhD, University of Minnesota

Patents: Tony is named as an inventor on 23 issued patents

US 5469820	Auxiliary Power Unit for a Hybrid Electric Vehicle
US 5606946	Auxiliary Power Unit for a Hybrid Electric Vehicle
US 6456946	System and Method for Motor Fault Detection
US 6392854	Method and System for Testing the Continuity of a Motor and Associated Drive Circuitry
US 6952795	Method and Apparatus for Verifying the Integrity of Control Module Operation
US 7005822	Torque Ripple Reduction for a Voltage Mode Controller
US 7075273	Automotive Electrical System Configuration Using a Two Bus Structure
US 7095214	System and Method for Boosting the Output of an Alternator
US 7193395	Systems and Method for Boosting Output of an Alternator
US 7271570	Active Rectification Of Alternator Output Without Using a Position Sensor
US 7388579	Reduced Power Consumption for a Graphics Accelerator and Display
US 7339327	Resonant Circuit for Halogen Lighting
US 7414425	Damping Control in a Three-phase Motor With a Single Current Sensor
US 7443142	Active Rectification Of Alternator Output Without Using a Position Sensor
US 7701079	Automotive Electrical System
US 7847523	System and Method for Optimizing the Operation of a Generator
US 8121811	System and Method for Detecting Angular Position
US 8140286	Position Sensing System and Method
US 8159083	Automotive Electrical System Configuration
US 8569907	Single Transistor Alternator Field Buck/Boost
US 8624570	Digitally Controlling a Power Converter
US 8892395	Detecting Angular Position of a Rotating Device
US 9733288	Apparatus and Method for Determining the Resonant Frequency of an LC Circuit in Situ, by Comparing Voltage and Current Polarity Changes

Publications:
“Sensorless Control of a Permanent Magnet Machine/Gasoline Engine System”, Ph. D. Thesis, 1994.
“Sensorless Control of a Permanent Magnet Machine/Gasoline Engine Using
an Extended Kalman Filter”, IEEE IAS Annual Meeting, 1996.
“The Transition From a Model-Based Controller to a Microcontroller-Based
Controller”, Motorola Symposium on Modeling and Control, 6/97
“Discrete Fourier Transform Harmonic Analysis of Digitally-Generated PWM
Waveforms Which are Distorted by Switch Dead Time”, IEEE IAS Annual
Meeting, 2000.
“A Low Torque Ripple PMSM Drive for EPS Applications”, IEEE APEC, 2004.
“Automotive Alternator Synchronous Rectification Via Self-Sensing Method for
Improved Vehicle Fuel Consumption”, IEEE IAS, 2007
“Automotive Alternator Synchronous Rectification Using a Self-Sensing Position
Estimation Scheme”, IEEE APEC, 2008