Glydways

Many of today’s public transportation systems are expensive, inefficient and unscalable. As a result, urban centers across the world are grappling with the challenges of congestion and access to opportunity – and only a fundamental transformation of urban mobility will fix things.

This is the opinion of the founders of Glydways – a US-based startup that’s redefining public transit with an innovative autonomous transport solution that has already attracted investment from the likes of Suzuki, Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman.

Glydways solution is a high-capacity, Automated Transit Network using autonomous electric vehicles on dedicated guideways. Delivering profitable, scalable systems that are cost-effective to build and quick to deploy, Glydways offers cities and communities a sustainable, financially viable solution to meet modern transportation needs. For riders, Glydways offers a direct, on-demand, personal and affordable transit experience accessible to all, driving greater access to opportunity.

Developing a highly complex system like this requires best-in-class design, effective product lifecycle management (PLM) capabilities and seamless collaboration – all at speed to expedite time-to-market. That’s why Glydways chose Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud. 

To ensure its best chance of success, Glydways built a team comprising some of the brightest minds in automotive engineering. Its remote-first culture removes geographical boundaries, enabling it to bring in talent from North America, Asia, Middle East and Europe with experience at top tech companies from across the globe including Apple, Google and Tesla. It also works with ARKK Engineering, an external company that enables it to quickly scale its product development capabilities as and when required.

However, developing a revolutionary mobility solution – which includes tens of thousands of parts – from scratch with a highly distributed team is a challenging feat. Glydways required a secure, industry-leading platform that could support the design and validation of large and complex assemblies, facilitate global collaboration, and scale fast. 

The startup adopted Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud right from the outset, recognizing it as a best-in-class solution for the transportation industry.

The company uses CATIA for full vehicle development – including mechanical and electrical systems – along with CATIA Magic for model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and ENOVIA to support collaboration and early-stage PLM.

Rather than work in isolation, Glydways’ external contractors at ARKK Engineering are granted access to Glydways’ secure 3DEXPERIENCE environment using their own CATIA V5 licenses connected through Power’By ensuring seamless collaboration without compromising intellectual property (IP). 

Thanks to the capabilities afforded by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, all Glydways employees and contractors now collaborate in real time, across time zones and organizations. Having a single, unified environment for mechanical, electrical and systems design that easily manages large assemblies gives Glydways and its stakeholders oversight of the full product lifecycle, enabling them to easily track issues and manage changes. This avoids both revision control headaches and the need for constant design reviews, supporting faster iteration.

With all development work taking place in the virtual world, there’s a reduced need for physical prototyping, office space and travel. This not only keeps costs to a minimum, but also lowers the company’s environmental footprint while accelerating development.

The scalability of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform also supports Glydways’ growth. Initially taking advantage of the 3DEXPERIENCE for startups offer with just two CATIA users, the company hit key development milestones and secured investor support without overspending on software. Today – just two years later – Glydways has more than 50 users on the platform and this number is only expected to grow.

With its first prototypes complete, and soon to complete its B3 vehicle designs, Glydways has already secured contracts in the Bay Area, Atlanta and Europe, and continues to expand its capabilities, supported by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud. 

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