MakoLab at the International Automotive Business Meeting IZERA Edition

The IAMB is said to be an innovative automotive industry event like no other. Every year, experts in the field, professionals from Central and Eastern Europe and an international selection of guests meet up in Poland to share best practices, promote and compare innovative ideas and solutions and do some networking in order to build long-term relationships across the sector.
This year, as the name suggests, it was focused on Polish electric vehicles brand Izera. MakoLab’s team of representatives went to some interesting meetings, talked about production plans and the construction of a factory in Jaworzno, listened to some inspiring conversations during panel discussions and established a number of new business contacts.
To delve into the details, Insights talked to one of the team, business developer Łukasz Puzder, who shared his impressions of the event with us.

Our main aim was to meet up with ElectroMobility Poland, the Polish business that’s building and developing Izera, a new electric vehicles brand. We also planned to meet the representatives of the most important fields from our point of view. And that’s what we did!
ElectroMobility Poland is giving clear signals that it’s counting on fruitful collaboration with companies that have Polish capital and Polish roots, a description that fits MakoLab to a T. So we’re all the happier that our talks went very positively and that we’re obviously looking in the same direction. We’ll certainly be building up our relationship and holding more meetings.
In addition to that, we established a number of interesting contacts. One example would be some companies from Italy. We’ll be continuing our relationships by seeking out digital needs that we can fulfill.

The underlying concept was connected with plans for building the first Polish electric vehicle, the Izera, and a factory in Jaworzno. That was what brought in a great many suppliers from Poland and Italy who could provide components for the vehicle production lines.
The presence of the companies from Italy sprang from the fact that the event was organised by the Italian Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with leading Polish economic and business organisations. Poland, particularly the Silesian region, is at the forefront of the sector in terms of being a Tier 1 supplier for vehicle manufacturers. All the attendees were hoping to pick up a slice of the pie for themselves!

As far as the talks and panels we went to, there were a couple that we particularly enjoyed. The first was Panel 1, Polish Electromobility Valley: Perspectives for cooperation and competence building. It was a worthwhile discussion that included a presentation of the progress made on the Izera project and plans for the future. A lot of attention was paid to the role of digital solutions in state-of-the-art vehicles and as a potential source of income, as well. The other was Panel 3, Autonomous vehicles: A ‘vision’ for the future, which also provided some interesting information, albeit nothing revolutionary.
The discussions on the future of autonomous vehicles were vague and suggested that, despite the potential, the road to their widespread use is still a long way off and most probably limited to some degree.

I was pleased that ElectroMobility Poland has the whole project under control. The plan is highly ambitious, with the first mass-produced model projected for the end of 2025, but it’s possible and doable. The company has a realistic, thought-through approach to the entire undertaking. The people there realise that succeeding won’t be easy. After all, there are plenty of brands around the world that had an appetite for this kind of thing, but the majority of them failed and had to kiss the idea goodbye. ElectroMobility Poland certainly isn’t lacking in ambition and the awareness that they’re taking part in a project that’s pioneering on a national level simply adds to their drive.

Taking our experience into consideration, the organisation was excellent and everything went smoothly. There event itself was meaningful and the attendees added to that. The most important thing to us was that all the meetings we’d planned went ahead and we received plenty of answers to the questions we’d posed for ourselves.
To sum up, this year’s IAB, was a worthwhile event that came up to our expectations and confirmed that MakoLab was rightfully a presence there!

Translated from the Polish by Caryl Swift.