Berlin, 11.04.2018 – German Autolabs is growing, adding Clive Millington, the former COO of TomTom and a highly experienced expert in the field of B2C mobility hardware. Clive Millington will support German Autolabs’ ambitious goal of bringing Chris - the retrofit digital assistant for drivers - to every car. More info: hellochris.ai.
Clive Millington holds an MBA and has dedicated his career to the consumer electronics and technology sectors, building category leading products, high-performance teams, and scaling up businesses. Having shipped over 100 million Consumer Electronic devices, he has extensive experience in product development, hardware manufacturing, global supply chain management, logistics, distribution and sales management; all of which will be available for the German Autolabs team to draw from.
“I’m really excited to be helping the German Autolabs team in their quest to introduce Chris to the market this year. Chris is an incredibly useful driving assistant being introduced during a period where European law around smartphone usage in the car is getting ever stricter. By using a combination of voice and gesture control, Chris enables drivers to keep their eyes on the road whilst staying connected to their smartphone, and can be using in any car.”
Clive Millington, Advisor German Autolabs
“With our digital co-driver Chris we are building a retrofit device to give every car access to a safe and intuitive voice assistant. Clive Millington is a specialist in the field of consumer electronics for automotive. His knowledge and wealth of experience will be a huge benefit for us - especially now as get close to shipping the product this summer.”
Holger Weiss, CEO of German Autolabs
German Autolabs brings two senior tech managers from Silicon Valley to Berlin. Heiko Panther (former Fitbit and Apple) becomes Head of Device Engineering at German Autolabs. He is responsible for the embedded development of German Autolabs’ technically demanding hardware device, Chris. Heiko Panther worked for many years in Silicon Valley as Director of Firmware Engineering at Fitbit. He also was a member of the iPhone engineering team at Apple.
Furthermore, by adding Martin Kropat, German Autolabs expands its knowledge in the field of contract manufacturing, logistics and sourcing. Martin Kropat also worked for many years in Silicon Valley, for both Navdy and Qualcomm. As the new Head of Operations he will be responsible for the world delivery chain of Chris.
“Heiko’s and Martin’s enormous consumer product experience will no doubt be a huge asset for us in building Chris. In addition to this, I’m very happy to attract such successful experts from Silicon Valley to work with us in Berlin. This is a big step for German Autolabs and a very good sign for Berlin, as the city becomes one of the most important tech hubs in Europe.”
Patrick Weissert, COO and Head of Product of German Autolabs
