Pre-Switch Announces New VP of Engineering

Pre-Switch, Inc. announced last week that solar entrepreneur Andre Willis is joining the company’s team as the new vice president of engineering. 

Willis has over three decades of experience in engineering and R&D since the mid-1980s after earning a Master of Science degree in physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, according to his LinkedIn page. In 2009, Willis founded SiC inverter startup HiQ Solar, where he served as CTO until October 2019. 

Andrew Willis is the new vice president of engineering at Silicon Valley-based power startup Pre-Switch. (Photo courtesy of Pre-Switch, Inc.) 

Before HiQ Solar, Willis worked engineering and development roles at Silicon Valley-based Synthesys Research and Guzik Technical Enterprises, Germany-based WEE Electrotest Engineering and atg Luther & Maelzer GmbH, and Moscow-based Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Pre-Switch boasts that its soft-switching control for DC/AC and AC/DC power converters reduces transistor switching losses by 70%-95% and increases switching frequencies, thereby boosting EV range between 5% and 12%. Pre-Switch’s CleanWave200 technology runs on an embedded AI system that learns, analyzes and predicts switch behavior. 

Aside from electric vehicles, Pre-Switch’s soft-switching technology can be used with a range of additional in-demand applications, including solar inverters, wind turbines, uninterruptible power supply, storage and motor drives. 

In a press statement, Pre-Switch stated that in his new role, Willis will “provide the expertise necessary to take the company’s EV products through the commercialization phase from prototypes to volume sales.”

The announcement also stated that Pre-Switch is adding to its hardware and software engineering teams. The company’s previous VP of engineering, Derek Kroes, will remain a member of the advisory board.