Venturi (company)

For the team that competed as Venturi in the 2019–20 Formula E season, see Venturi Racing.
Venturi
Company typePrivate
IndustryAutomotive
Founded1984
FounderClaude Poiraud
Gérard Godfroy
Headquarters
Monaco
Key people
Gildo Pallanca Pastor, CEO
OwnerGildo Pallanca Pastor
SubsidiariesVoxan
Websitehttps://www.venturi.com/

Venturi is a Monaco-based automotive manufacturer. Founded in 1984 by French engineers Claude Poiraud and Gérard Godfroy as MVS (Manufacture de Voitures de Sport).[1] Venturi operated for nearly sixteen years, before declaring bankruptcy in 2000. The same year, Monegasque Gildo Pallanca Pastor purchased Venturi, and decided to focus on electric-powered motors.

The first team to commit to the Formula E World Championship, Venturi competes under the name of ROKiT Venturi Racing with its drivers Edoardo Mortara and Lucas di Grassi during its last season, in 2022.

In April 2022, Venturi announced that it would be applying its knowledge to the challenges of space. The brand entered into strategic partnerships with Venturi Lab (Switzerland) and Venturi Astrolab (United States) in order to be a candidate for the development of mobility technologies for the Moon. [2]

On 31 March 2023, the Venturi Group announced that its American strategic partner Venturi Astrolab had signed an agreement with Elon Musk's company SpaceX to send the FLEX rover to the Moon in 2026.

On 19 June 2023, at the Salon international de l'aéronautique et de l'espace de Paris-Le Bourget, Venturi presented the lunar wheel designed by Venturi Lab for the FLEX rover. It is made up of 192 cables and is presented as being hyper-deformable, even at the very low temperatures of the Moon's South Pole.[3]

On 3 April 2024, Venturi Group announces that the American company Venturi Astrolab, Inc. (Astrolab), a strategic partner of Venturi Group, has awarded a NASA contract to support the development of Artemis campaign’s lunar terrain vehicle. Its rover, known as FLEX, is equipped with batteries and wheels developed by Gildo Pastor's teams in Monaco and Switzerland.

  1. ^ Decker, Jean-Paul (July 2014). "Requiem pour un nom" [Requiem for a name]. Rétroviseur (in French) (302). Fontainebleau, France: Éditions LVA: 70. ISSN 0992-5007.
  2. ^ Foust, Jeff (10 March 2022). "Astrolab unveils Artemis lunar rover design". SpaceNews. Retrieved 4 June 2024.
  3. ^ "Venturi Group reinvents the wheel with hyper-deformable solution". The Engineer. 19 June 2023. Retrieved 4 June 2024.