Sevcon

Early years

Sevcon Engineering Ltd. was founded in 1961. The company was formed to develop technology originated by Horace William Heyman (13 March 1912 - 4 September 1998), who had been managing director of Smith Electric Vehicles from 1949 until 1964. It was the largest manufacturer of electric vehicles in Europe.

Heyman's technology improved battery life for frequent start-stop runs of electric vehicles at low speeds. There were always large electrical losses on starting an electric vehicle because of electrical resistances heating up. The technology allowed a 20% reduction in battery size for equivalent power, or increased battery length or power for a standard-sized battery.

An electric vehicle would have had resistances to drop the voltage on the motor when starting, but this created heating. His technology employed semiconductor-controlled rectifiers, with a semiconductor oscillator, which provided pulses of electrical power to power the motor.

It opened its first subsidiary in 1968 in Paris. In 1969 it was bought by Tech/Ops of the US.

It won the Queen's Award to Industry in April 1970, and the Queen's Awards for Export in April 1975. A new factory opened in June 1970 at Team Valley, Gateshead.

In 1988 it was listed on the US stock exchange, then joined the NASDAQ Capital Market in 2009.

In 2011 the NASDAQ ticker was changed from TO (Tech/Ops Sevcon, Inc.) to SEV (Sevcon, Inc.).

Later years

In 2014 Sevcon entered into a joint venture Chinese tier-one automotive supplier to form Sevcon New Energy Technology. However, in June 2016 the 50% equity was bought out by Sevcon to become wholly owned by Sevcon, Inc.