CHAIRMAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER & CO-FOUNDER
Marcus Hays is CEO and co-founder of ORBIS. He is a visionary entrepreneur and award-winning industrial designer whose career has centered on paratransit, electric, and autonomous vehicle solutions since his studies at Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, 1991-1993).
Hays collaborated in a start-up incubated at the CalStart Advanced Transportation Center, focused on diesel-electric taxicabs and acquired by Battery Automated Transportation in 1998. A 1998-2000 collaboration with Dr. Paul MacCready, then chairman of AeroVironment, on a series of electric bicycles with novel drivetrain (“mid-drive”) was later adopted by Bosch®. Hays’s multi-year consultation with mentor Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler Chairman, also led to offering the first ever mid-drive lithium-powered mountain ebike at Interbike, Las Vegas, NV, in 1999.
Other collaborations included with Richard Rice at Scaled Robotics, producing man-portable ground robotics platforms equipped with IED sniffers. Deployed in the second Iraq war, these led to multiple discoveries in miniaturized electric propulsion.
Hay’s PiCycle® electric bike brand was distributed at BestBuy® and heralded for its design by the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry, which has a PiCycle in its permanent collection. As CEO, Marcus led lobbying efforts in Washington D.C., and Sacramento with D.O.E., U.S. Department of Commerce and ARB. In a related venture, back-to-back land-speed records were set at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2006 and 2007 aboard pioneering Li-ION-powered electric motorcycles.
Since the 2015 formation of ORBIS, Hays and co-founder Streeter have authored 17 issued patents on Ring-Driven™ technologies. Thirty more are in process that address novel autonomous vehicles and devices including desalination pumps and kinetic energy recovery systems, a type of mechanical energy storage.
