You are warmly invited to join this E-Lab event with Stuart Wood, Shannon Bonke and Malcolm McKenzie on Motorcycle Design through a century - Sustainability, Innovation, and Performance, with a celebration of Phil Vincent (1926) - King’s Engineer and Entrepreneur
WHEN: Friday 16th June
WHERE: King’s College
5PM - Drinks and Exhibition in Chetwynd
5.30PM - 7PM - Talk in Keynes Lecture Theatre
TICKETS: book your free ticket here
Traditional automotive industries need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant for today’s zero-carbon imperative. While long-established, they need to rediscover a start-up mentality to make themselves relevant for today’s customers.
Stuart Wood, Chief Engineer of Triumph Motorcycles, has been the anchor of Triumph engineering since the company was re-created by John Bloor in the 1980s. Having rebuilt its position as a renowned specialist motorcycle business, Triumph is now addressing the sustainability challenge. Stuart will discuss how Triumph are tackling this from both business and engineering perspectives, and will bring along selected exhibits (including a prototype Triumph performance electric motorcycle) to illustrate issues, progress and success.
Alongside Stuart, Shannon Bonke, a postdoctoral research associate in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry and King’s College, Cambridge will discuss the development of green liquid fuels made from CO2, water and renewable electricity. Shannon’s research at Cambridge aims to break the link between modern life and environmental destruction by addressing the core challenge on the road to Net-Zero. This challenge is developing energy storage systems to handle the natural intermittency of solar and wind power. His focus is on making green/alternative fuels from renewable electricity to enable a rapid transition from fossil fuels to cheap, on-demand, renewable power and thereby cut >80% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Shannon received his PhD in chemistry from Monash University in his native Australia where he set the world record efficiency for converting solar energy into green hydrogen, which led to an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship to join the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Germany prior to moving to Cambridge where he develops green liquid fuels made from CO2, water and renewable electricity.
Malcolm McKenzie will also highlight some of the relevant learnings from Phil Vincent (King’s Engineer (1926) and Entrepreneur) who we are celebrating over this weekend. Vincent went on to build a renowned motorcycle company which produced some of the most iconic motorcycles through the 1930s to 1950s. During this period, sustainability was linked to the reliability imperative. Vincent succeeded with machine longevity (~50% of the machines still exist today), whilst also producing some of the most innovative and fastest motorcycles of the period. In fact, he created an icon, lauded in folk music, literature and art exhibitions, as well as in many speed and endurance records.
Malcolm McKenzie bought his first motorbike while an engineering student at King’s some decades ago. Starting his career in engine design he moved into telecoms and, following an MBA, into management and then turnaround consultancy. He has been a partner at EY, founded his own Transformation business, and also been active in business start-ups. Currently he leads Alvarez & Marsal’s European Corporate Practice, working with major and mid-sized businesses on turnaround. He also co-founded the King’s Entrepreneurship Lab. A Vincent owner (along with several other marques), Malcolm is also Chairman of the Vincent Spares Company, which supplies spare parts to keep these iconic bikes on the road.
The talks will be accompanied by a small exhibition of modern Triumph engineering, archives of Phil Vincent and related exhibits.
On the following day, Saturday 17th, in celebration of the 95th anniversary of Phil Vincent being granted his first patent while a King’s second year undergraduate, the Vincent Owners Club will exhibit and ride a procession of some 20 original Vincents from the 1930s-1950s through the College to honour these innovations. A unique moment! 12.00 Midday on the cobbles outside King’s Porters Lodge to experience these unique creations!