Changes for Motiv

As some of you may already know, exciting things are happening at Ed's company, Motiv Engines. Until now, the engine has been in a lab in California. Ed has been working remotely and traveling out when necessary, and the day-to-day work on it has been carried out by contracted engineers. This kind of set-up leads to slow progress, things weren't exactly moving ahead in leaps and bounds. But the past few years have still been productive ones, and Ed has decided that they were able to learn enough about the first-generation engine that it's time to move things forward a little more aggressively.


The inventor of the engine, John, has come up with second-generation model, and a new team will be working on it here in New York City! This is, needless to say, a very exciting development. After a long search, Ed has hired some full-time engineers and has rented a large office space near Penn Station. New York is, obviously, an expensive place to set up shop. Since neither Ed nor I is quite ready to leave yet, however, we decided that it made sense to be here for another year.  It will take many months to run computer simulations on the second-generation model, which can be done in a relatively small (and therefore more affordable) space. Once enough is known about the new design, however, Ed will likely need more people and more space to move things forward, and it looks like we may relocate (to an as-yet-undetermined location).


At this point, though, the time frame is still in the air. We know that will be in New York for at least another year, but things will depend very much on the engine after that. I'm looking forward to meeting the new engineers and John, about whom I've heard a great deal. I think it will be really nice for Ed, who has been working out of our apartment for several years, to have an actual workplace to go to every day where he can interact with people and not cats.  And his new office is only a few blocks from mine, so perhaps we can even meet for lunch occasionally.

Big changes like this are not risk-free, of course, and naturally all of this is a little bit nerve-racking, but I think we are both really excited to see what this new team can do.