Tom is President of Horse Powertrain USA, the company formed by Renault, Geely, and Aramco with 19,000 people and 18 plants across 4 continents. OEMs bet big on battery-electric vehicles and pulled investment away from combustion and hybrid systems, but now consumer demand isn't matching the plan. Many of the hybrids sold in the U.S. today still run on engines developed at the start of the millennium. Horse's answer is fully assembled engines and transmissions from an unbiased partner some call a tier 0.5, so OEMs don't have to pour capital into technology they can't justify building alone.
The business model breaks one rule. Tom's leadership breaks a few more. A purchasing leader once told him he had no chance at an inverter program and to come back next time. Tom asked what the current suppliers weren't solving, pulled together a skunkworks team, found a way to meet the power requirement with a single power module, and slid a quote across the desk without ever receiving an RFQ. His company won the business. Then there's the inflation negotiation, where everyone in the room was hunting for ways to pressure the customer, and Tom stopped the discussion to ask what a positive lever might look like.
Jan and Tom also get into what it takes to blend French, Spanish, Swedish, and Chinese teams into one culture, why a vision has to be built by the team in the room and never pulled from an AI tool, and what Tom's leaving behind as he builds Horse's U.S. organization as employee number one.
This one's for every leader who's been told to wait for the RFQ, follow the process, and stay in their lane.
Episode Highlights:
00:30 The rule nobody breaks: outsourcing the engine
02:12 Following the consumer, not the BEV bet
04:29 Why OEM-to-OEM collaboration stalls, and the case for a tier 0.5
06:28 Old engines, new demand: half of vehicles still ICE in 2040
11:07 French, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese: four cultures, one company
16:43 Who is Tom Lewis as a leader? A catalyst
20:23 Build the vision in the room, not with an AI tool
23:06 No RFQ, no invitation, and they still won the business
29:25 What Tom leans into and what he leaves behind
31:23 The positive lever in an inflation negotiation
#AutomotiveLeadership #HybridPowertrain #HorsePowertrain
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The Automotive Leaders Podcast is hosted by Jan Griffiths, the champion for culture change in the automotive industry. From a farm in Wales to the C-suite of a $3 billion Tier-1 supplier, Jan built her career inside this industry. Now she's out to transform it.
Her argument is blunt. The pressure on this industry isn't letting up. The survivors will be the ones who reinvent how they work. Speed wins. Everyone else gets left behind.
Every episode, Jan sits down with the leaders driving that change. Real conversations about tariffs, supply chain shocks, EV uncertainty, AI, and the shift from command-and-control to authentic, human-centered leadership.
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