A lot can happen in 17 months — especially in the automotive industry. Just ask Ganaio.
In November 2023, the technology development company’s regenerative damper won the Automotive/Transportation category at the Create the Future Design contest. And since then, Ganaio hasn’t looked back.
Following the victory, the company kept on grinding and has now developed a technology up to a Technical Readiness Level (TRL) five, with the group currently working on TRL six. The work has led to dozens of yet-to-be-announced letters of intent with OEMs and Tier One suppliers for when the company reaches TRL seven. In addition, Ganaio is now part of a military-based Accelerator program in Oregon .
“Create the Future 2023 was really our first introduction into the automotive industry,” said Ganaio Co-Founder John Gewarges. “Our technology had not really been publicized until then. So, SAE was really the beginning of all this publicity for us. What that brought was, in 2025, our first real investment; that came through an accelerator program that we were accepted into called gener8tor . That allowed us to work on the company full time.”
Gewarges said that the goal from there was for Ganaio to keep growing, and the team decided to pivot their focus soon thereafter.
“At the end of 2025, we had to change our messaging quite a bit,” he noted. “We were really pushing the idea of regeneration and extending the range of your electric vehicle, but through these OEM and Tier One supplier meetings that we've been having, the shift from regeneration has gone toward ride quality.”
The industry shift did not faze the team one iota. Gewarges and Ganaio Co-Founder Shashank “Shan” Reddy Goli were testing their TRL five design and a lab setup with a shock eye thermometer. They found that they didn't get as much regeneration as they had hoped, but when they were looking at the technical force damper validation points, it was showing that it actually worked really well as a damper itself — even better than your traditional or electromagnetic types, Gewarges said.
“We had a meeting with Volvo the very next day, and we outlined everything to them,” he added. “And what they validated for us was that they didn't care as much about regeneration but more about ride quality. And all the conversations that we had prior up to that point with other OEMs just clicked for us. Because it was kind of like the conversations we've had with them were affirming that, at that point, but we never really saw it during those conversations. So, our messaging has changed a lot since then.”
Perhaps the reason why Ganaio is flourishing is that the two co-founders had formed a bond long before they formed the company. The pair met while working at Tesla and realized they had a lot more in common than simply an employer.
“When we first met, we had both come from working on similar type of regenerative projects in our capstones in school,” Gewarges said. “I came from San Diego State University, and then I first worked with Tesla in sales but then worked my way into getting hired as an engineering intern. That's where we met, as Shan was hired as an engineering intern at the same time.”
“We started sharing some similarities we had in our interest. One of them was that he had also worked on a regenerative project from his capstone from Wright State University in Ohio,” added Gewarges.
From there the two became very close friends. Gewarges ended up going back to San Diego to finish school and took a full-time position with the U.S. Navy as a federal employee for about six years. During that time, Shan continued working for Tesla; Gewarges continued working on the project, eventually bringing it to a level that gave them chutzpa to apply for a patent, which was awarded in 2020. That move, in turn, gave them the confidence to start pursuing investors and OEMs.
The rest, as they say, is history.
This article was written by SAE Media Group’s Digital Content Editor Andrew Corselli. For more information, visit here , and submit your entry for the 2026 Create the Future Design Contest.
Transcript
00:00:00 weather on city streets or on the freeway your car suspension keeps you from feeling the full impact of a bump as you drive over it in fact for every yard driven forward the car suspension deflects up and down by one inch on average the damper is in part responsible for the suspension keeping you comfortable however it is an inefficient system
00:00:24 absorbing energy and wasting it in the form of heat dissipation instead of wasting the absorbed energy ganio has developed a regenerative damper which transfers the energy as electrical power to the battery of an electric car extending its driving range and decreasing range anxiety
