ON THE ROAD – Hibra Design’s Mike Keane wins EV Pioneer Award

Renowned automotive engineer Mike Keane, founder of Hibra Design (www.hibra.ie), has been awarded EV Pioneer Of the Year at the prestigious Business Post Electric Vehicle Awards 2025. The accolade recognises his outstanding contributions to advancing electric vehicles (EV) technology and shaping the future of sustainable mobility. With over twenty-five years of automotive engineering, Keane has played a leading role in revolutionising vehicle electrification. His career includes senior technical roles on high-profile projects for global, blue-chip companies such as Williams F1, Ford, Land Rover, Jaguar and Nissan. As an example, he was Design Lead on the ground- breaking 2012 Jaguar C-X75 hybrid supercar.

He has worked on a wide variety of vehicles including supercars, passenger cars, heavy and light goods vehicles, industrial and public transport vehicles, motorcycles and competition vehicles. In 2022, he founded Cork-based Hibra Design, an automotive engineering development company. Hibra Design is unique in the Irish market as the company provides its clients with a full spectrum of vehicle engineering services; from full ground-up, bespoke vehicle development, through to the re-engineering of existing vehicles with clean- technology powertrain systems.

In less than three years since its inception, the company has successfully secured programmes for public and private sector clients in Ireland, EU, Middle-East and South Africa; and already has been recognised with multiple industry awards including Enterprise Ireland’s One-To-Watch 2023, and winning the Product and Manufacturing Gold Award at the 2024 National Start-Up Awards. In Hibra Design, Keane has assembled an engineering team with extensive experience in Formula 1, automotive and aerospace industries. Their design office is equipped with state-of-the-art design engineering programmes, complimenting internally-developed software systems; and their dedicated vehicle workshop allows bespoke prototypes to be built to the highest standards. Hibra Design is pleased to announce that it can now offer its clients access to its internally-developed EV analysis software, HDS (Hibra Design System). This allows companies to rapidly determine the cost and technical feasibility of engineering bespoke EV solutions for their fleet. Speaking about his achievement, Keane reaffirmed his commitment to driving Ireland’s transition to electric vehicles through Hibra Design’s bespoke solutions. “Winning the EV Pioneer of the Year award is an incredible honour. My mission has always been to push the boundaries of sustainable vehicle innovation. Having worked all over the world with the biggest companies, I experienced a clear need for bespoke solutions for industrial and commercial vehicles. I set up Hibra Design to service that market demand. I’m passionate to show that Ireland can be a leader in the advancement of sustainable vehicles, not only in data and software, where we clearly excel, but in full vehicle development. At the start of each project, we review vehicle operational data and at the culmination, bespoke vehicles roll out of our workshop. It is very important to our clients that Hibra Design can offer that end-to-end capability. The award is a lovely recognition of that work.”