Motiv names chief product, engineering officer

Motiv Electric Trucks, a manufacturer of medium-duty electric trucks and buses, has appointed Scott Zion as chief product and engineering officer. He will have overall responsibility for the company’s product roadmap and for ensuring its technologies and finished vehicles are designed, validated and tested to perform to the highest standards while meeting customer specifications.

Scott Zion (Photo: Motiv)

“Scott’s proven expertise in product planning and his experience leading engineering and product teams in the commercial electric trucking space is a perfect fit for where Motiv is today,” said Scott Griffith, CEO of Motiv Electric Trucks. “His background and leadership will be critical as we scale our team to continue to design and produce the most technologically-advanced, reliable, sustainable and cost-competitive electric trucks and buses for the largest fleets in North America.”

Zion has more than 30 years of experience in vehicle engineering and electric vehicle technology. Most recently, he served as chief product officer at Bollinger Motors, where he led product strategy and development for electric commercial vehicles. Prior to that, he worked for Xos Trucks as head of Engineering and as director of Medium Duty Vehicles.

Zion also spent more than six years at Hino Motors Manufacturing USA where he was the general manager and chief engineer of zero emission vehicle (ZEV) programs. He began his career at Ford Motor Co. where he worked on electric vehicles in the early 1990s. While at Ford (and eventually Visteon) he held a variety of engineering roles in transaxle engineering, battery systems, chassis systems and driveline systems.

In his new role, Zion will have overall responsibility to lead across the full product and engineering disciplines and setting direction for design and performance to deliver all commercial medium-duty electric truck products to company quality targets.

“Medium-duty commercial trucks are especially well-suited for electrification given their relatively short-range use cases, predictable duty cycles and depot-based charging which avoids dependency on public charging infrastructure,” said Zion. “Motiv has been able to lead the electric medium duty trucking industry by listening to, and partnering with, its customers and building products and technologies that meet their needs. I am looking forward to joining the talented team and building on their excellent foundation.”

Zion holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering with a focus on aerospace and light weight structures from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree in engineering management from Wayne State University.