Savic Motorcycles Pty Ltd

For more than three decades, Kel has been living and breathing vehicle production across four continents, including setting up factories making hundreds of thousands of vehicles in China, India and Thailand. He’s currently the CEO of Amplify Cell Technologies, a consortium formed by Daimler, Paccar and Accelera, which is developing lithium-iron-phosphate battery cells for Daimler and Isuzu trucks in Mississippi.

Prior to this appointment, Kel oversaw construction of the Tennessee Electric Vehicle Centre – a production hub for all-electric Ford trucks – after running a major JV building Ford and Mazda vehicles for 130 countries in eastern Thailand. Kel originally joined Ford in Broadmeadows, Melbourne, in 1994, and was one of the company’s longest-serving Australian employees.

Kel is also an unabashed motorsports fan, both as a spectator and a regular driver in his Ford Performance Mustang. In 2020, he took out the TAV8 Series Championship in the Thailand Super Series, and he’s currently competing in the inaugural 2024 Mustang Challenge Series across North America.

Nicholas Adamo has looked at Australia’s automotive industry from many sides. As a customer, he’s been involved with track days, amateur racing, Targa tours around Australia, and ice driving in Finland. As a director, he sits on the board of Chrome Temple Investments, Australia’s first VC fund specialising in classic cars. And he’s recently been working with several vehicle manufacturers and dealers, following the acquisition of Australia’s only private racetrack, 70North. ‍ When Nicholas agreed to join Savic Motorcycles in early 2024, it gave us both a boost in our investment credibility, and access to one of the best minds in corporate advisory circles. ‍ Nicholas has helped several tech startups broaden their horizons around strategy, growth, and capital. He made a name building Australia’s first forensic computing and analytics company in the 1990s, then joined Deloitte as a partner to run the APAC Analytics and Forensic Technology team, after selling them his business. In the 2010s, he was a partner at EY, where he led their Advisory Growth and Acquisitions division. ‍ Working at the leading edge of data analytics has given Nicholas a hunger for supporting young businesses – an appetite that’s now led to Dennis Savic’s door. “Dennis has real humility and self-awareness, which makes spending time with him such a pleasure,” says Nicholas. “With Savic Motorcycles, he’s built something amazing. He has a very loyal team and an incredible sense of purpose. He also cares deeply about his staff and customers. I think further success can’t be far away.” ‍ Nicholas divides his time between Sydney and 70North, named for how long it takes him to drive there from his home. Alongside board roles and investments with companies like e-safety pioneer SaferMe and the Unstoppables innovation community, he continues to work with private equity firms, tech companies, and entrepreneurs. There is even talk of being an “ambassador” for a couple of car manufacturers – although his lovely wife thinks this is just a ruse to add to his eclectic car collection.

When it comes to introducing new automotive brands to the Australian market, few people have the credentials or the insights of Justin Hocevar. Over 25 years, this straight-talking Melburnian has notched up a list of accomplishments as varied as the industry itself: from rebuilding Renault as Australia’s favourite French brand, to driving record sales at MINI, to reinventing a very different kind of wheel as Regional Head of INEOS.

Although Justin has ridden the internal-combustion wave, he’s also maintained a tight grip on the shifting landscape of products, preferences, power sources, and distribution models that are continuously reshaping the automotive industry. While INEOS has crashed Australia’s SUV party with a traditional-looking (albeit stunningly modern) off-roader, it’s also investigating an exciting range of emissions-reducing options – including an EV with a small range-extending engine, and a hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle currently in prototype.

For Savic Motorcycles, Justin’s deep expertise will be vital as we roll out our own market-shifting technology, and evolve a distribution model that will also challenge the norm. With a growing number of carmakers facing pushback for their hybrid distribution, Justin’s experience with agency and direct-to-consumer models – and their multiple benefits to consumers – will provide us with the best knowledge in the industry, as we continue to refine our approach.

Justin is also a keen motorcyclist, having worked as a bike courier in London (“the most dangerous job I’ve had!”) and ridden bikes through Europe and Asia – including an epic journey with his wife on a Honda XRV750 from London to Chennai. On his return to Australia in 1998, he joined BMW Group for 12 years, before taking the ailing Renault on its own epic seven-year ride – quadrupling their staff, tripling dealer numbers, and boosting vehicle sales by 600%.

After two years with Jaguar and Land Rover, Justin joined INEOS in 2020, where he’s now Head of APAC, charged with building a new market for the exciting 4X4 play from Fiji to Mongolia. As well as setting up distribution hubs in Australia and Singapore, Justin’s current focus is launching in China – the “new frontier”, he says, for electric and range-extending technologies.

“Having launched a number of EVs since 2011, I think energy and mobility are far from a single solution for everyone,” says Justin. “What we’ll end up with are a variety of ways of combining and augmenting power with electric, hydrogen, fuel cells, and synthetic fuels – as we continue to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.”

Long before electric vehicles were an established part of Australia’s transport landscape, Dennis Savic was building the foundations for the country’s first high-performance electric motorcycle. ‍ In 2014, while completing his engineering degree at UWA, Dennis began designing his first electric motorbike chassis. The hard-wearing aluminium frame, designed to house a giant battery pack and a rear wheel hub motor, quickly grew from a university thesis into a weekend obsession – and then, into the kernel of Australia’s most future-ready two-wheeled vehicle.

‍Three years later, in early 2017, Dennis, now a weight attribute engineer at Ford, linked up with the Perth-based designer, Dave Hendroff, to draw the initial sketches for an electric café racer – a bike that would be robust enough to house a giant lithium-ion battery, while delivering precise handling and over 200Nm of torque. ‍ In November 2018, the first ground-up-designed prototype of the C-Series was unveiled at the Melbourne Moto Expo – propelling the bike straight onto progressive motorcyclists’ watchlists, and confirming Savic Motorcycles as a company to keep up with.

Today, with e-motorbike sales growing at over 100% annually, Dennis’s vision and tenacity have made him a household name in Australia’s EV manufacturing community. Despite the ravages of COVID and ongoing supply chain challenges, Dennis has grown his workforce fivefold, constructed four further generations of prototypes, and completed three capital-raisings – securing several federal and state government grants alongside private, institutional and ethical VC funds. ‍ In 2022, the year the C-Series was officially approved for riding on Australian roads, the production prototype was named as the most innovative new product design in Victoria – securing top prize in the prestigious Victorian Premier’s Design Awards.

With so many accolades to his name, Dennis remains modest about his achievements – instead crediting the technical smarts and hard work of the team he’s assembled in Melbourne. It’s a team that in most cases reached out to him directly – from enthusiastic engineering students, to pioneering software developers, to worldly-wise suppliers – all itching to play a part in Australia’s most talked-about motorbike project. ‍ Although most are still in their 20s and 30s, the team has gone on to develop a variety of celebrated components – from the muscular C-Series powertrain, built around a 16.2 kWh battery, to a custom ABS system developed with Bosch, to on-board software and IoT systems that keep riders in continuous contact with their bikes. These remarkable technologies have attracted an avalanche of interest: from hundreds of pre-order customers, to leading auto conferences and design exhibitions, to an advisory board that includes Formula One engineers, Silicon Valley founders, and motorcycle industry figureheads. ‍ Yet despite all the illustrious company, Dennis is self-effacing about his own achievements. ‍ “We’ve built a pretty impressive vehicle,” he says, “but it’s the amazing team we have working on it together that makes what we’re doing really special. The secret of our business has always been, and will continue to be, our people.”

Like many of the Savic team, Jeremy Worthington experienced several professions before he formally joined the e-moto revolution. After working as a test engineer with Nissan in the UK and developing security systems for Toyota in Japan, he reskilled as a tax specialist in professional services after landing in Melbourne in 2011 – “the worst time in history to be looking for a job in the Australian automotive industry!”

But now, he’s back on the automotive frontline with Savic Motorcycles, which in October 2021 appointed the 49-year-old Englishman as our first CFO.

Jeremy brings a compelling combination of fiscal, engineering and small business expertise to the role, having spent the past decade applying for R&D incentives for clients of KPMG and running the Nifty Grants Small Business Division at PricewaterhouseCoopers. When PwC closed the division in 2019, Jeremy set up his own firm – adding Savic to his client list while we were still a budding three-man band at the FAB9 makerspace.

“Even back then, I knew Dennis was going to make it work,” says Jeremy today. “He has this really measured ambition and knows how to get things done, and put the right people in the right places.”

One of those people was Jeremy himself, who after assisting Dennis to secure a series of start-up grants and tax breaks, accepted an offer to become Savic Motorcycles’ first full-fledged CFO in 2021, with an equity stake in the company.

“I have several other start-up clients who I advise on their financial forecasts and growth strategies, but Savic is the most in-depth relationship and my only CFO role,” says Jeremy. “As an engineer and a rider, it’s also the one I’m most proud to wear the T-shirt for!”

If Dennis Savic is the founding father of Savic Motorcycles, Adrian Vinovrski reckons he deserves a mention as an honourable uncle. “The prototype is definitely Dennis’s baby,” laughs Adrian. “But I’d be very happy to call it my nephew!”

There’s no doubt that the 24-year-old engineering wunderkind is fully invested in the future of Savic Motorcycles. He’s not only one of our first full-time employees, but in effect joined the company while he was still at school – completing the last year of his engineering degree at RMIT. His goal now is not to go anywhere “until we’ve broken into the big time”.

“After our first production run, I want to see us flying at the leading edge of electric motorcycle technology, and becoming a household name for beautiful, high-performance motorbikes,” says Adrian.

Adrian joined Savic at the beginning of 2018, as one of five engineering students who helped Dennis design the mathematical model that was used to test the C-Series prototype’s performance. The model ran repeated simulations to discover how the bike’s weight, shape, power, tyres and other factors would affect its speed and acceleration, in order to ensure the optimal motor specs and gearing ratios for its on-road performance.

After Adrian graduated, he worked briefly as a sales rep for Bosch Rexroth, but he soon realised that his heart wasn’t in it – and he was hankering to get back to the Savic prototype. So when Dennis left his job at Ford and was assembling his core team, there was only one person to fill the engineering spot.

Over the past year, Adrian has been looking after the design and wiring of the prototype’s electrical systems, developing the vehicle control logic, programming the motor controller, modelling parts of the 12V system. “He’s had his hands on almost every part of the bike,” says Dennis. “He’s basically our all-round sorter-outer, and we couldn’t have done any of this without him!”

A self-confessed “electronics fanatic”, Adrian says working at Savic is like being paid to do his favourite hobby – and it’s a job he’s in no danger of giving up any time soon.

“I love working with this team,” says Adrian. “We’ve all become good friends, contributing to a technology that we’re all really passionate about. I believe that Savic Motorcycles are going to shake up this industry – and I want to be here to see us do just that!”