HRE Performance Wheels

Atree is located in Vista, California, which is in northern San Diego County. We are a premi We do everything. We start with the design, the engineering, and the CNC manufacturing, as well as the finish. It's all done here. I think when someone buys a new car, one of the first things they want to do is change the wheels. I think the wheels are probably a quarter, if not more, of what the car actually looks You can take a car that's maybe not as pretty as some other cars, and you can put a really nice set of wheels on it, make it the fitment perfect, and automatically that whole car is transformed into something that no one's ever seen before. Even though real-life you've done is change the wheels. A wheel atree starts out, obviously, at the design stage. It's going to start there. We're going to create certain styles in our heads. We're going to do the design. We're going to work with engineering. The engineering is an integral part of that, so we're not going to design something that isn't strong, isn't lightweight. And so the engineering and design sort of goes hand-in-hand together. When we're manufacturing the wheels, what we're going to do is we're going to start with a forged blank. We're going to take that. We're going to put that on a lathe. We're going to clean up the profile. We're going to define the profile, depending on the style. And we're going to take that turned part and we're going to put that in a mill. And at the mill stage, we're going to go in and we're going to actually machine out the different pattern to make the actual style. And at that point too, we're integrating all the vehicle-specific things And so we're not making stuff where you're going to use spacers or adapters or anything It's built specifically for your vehicle. We're going to send it to finish where it's going to get a lot of hand prep work. In some cases, some of our hand finish takes up to three hours per wheel, And after that, it'll go to cleaning. And then from there, it's going to get powder-coated, even if it's a brush finish or something And it's all build order. So we're not making a bunch of wheels for inventory. We're basically creating it four wheels at a time, specifically for each customer's requirements. The lightweight wheels have a couple of different benefits. There's two major aspects. One is the handling. And that's really a function of the unsprung mass. So the lighter the wheel, when you hit b So you want your wheels to be as light as possible so that your car's handling is best possible. The other aspect is rotational inertia. And that's really more of a function of how the mass is distributed around the wheel from the rotational center. And if you minimize rotational inertia, you're going to increase the acceleration and you're going to decrease the stopping distances because you're. . . This basically requires less energy to get the wheel going and less energy to get the wheel stopped. And so for us, making the wheels light and have low rotational inertia is key so that we're not ever upsetting the handling of any of the vehicles we're putting the wheels on. I think our inspiration comes from a lot of places. Alan comes from North of Gr And with that comes a knowledge of and a love of cars, but also how things are supposed to be made. The technical is wonderful, but it's not just the technical. It's the way the technical just gets into your soul and really. . . For me, cars are a way to almost define who I am. I Cars isn't just a means of transportation or something cool to look at or something cool to drive. It's really this deep sort of part of my life. I think together you take a lot of those things and you start inputting them into any product that you make. What I've come to realize about HRE is it's. . . Before it used to be, oh, it's the engineering or oh, it's the manufacturing, right? The quality. It's all of those things and none of those things work if you don't have the right team. So I've come to realize over the years that what really makes this place special is our culture and the people that we have here. And it's funny for me because I'm an engineer, but I've come to realize that's the most important part. Because you can accomplish none of the things that we want. You can't get the quality, you can't get the service, you can't create the type of designs that we want. If you don't have the right people on the team. And so for us protecting that culture and protecting that team is what I think is the most important thing and what sets us apart from the rest.