2026-04-13 / 05월호 지면기사
/ 한상민 기자_han@autoelectronics.co.kr
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INTERVIEW
Andrius Liskus
CEO of LABA7
This interview, centered on suspension testing systems, goes beyond a simple introduction of a company’s products. It offers a lens into how the automotive development environment is evolving -through the limitations of legacy test systems, the potential of EMA-based architectures, and the reconnection of data, control, and validation.
LABA7’s story is particularly telling. It illustrates how, outside the established order of major incumbents, a combination of motorsport sensibility and engineering persistence can evolve into a new testing philosophy. As simulation continues to accelerate, the role of physical testing becomes not less, but more clearly defined. At the same time, as the era of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV) deepens, testing equipment can no longer remain as standalone hardware - it must evolve into platforms capable of handling data and responsiveness in an integrated manner.
In this context, the interview is not merely about the challenge of a smaller company. Rather, it serves as a signal of where testing technologies are heading - within an industry facing shorter development cycles and increasingly complex validation requirements.
Written by Sang Min Han _ han@autoelectronics.co.kr
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Complete Shock Absorber Test System Package
Rooted in motorsport
LABA7’s core team is known to have a strong motorsport engineering background. How did your hands-on experience in dismantling and tuning dampers at the track help address the “unmet needs” that large traditional testing equipment companies may have overlooked?
Liskus Since my early teens I rode motorcycles and later I raced cars. As I was growing up in a small village, to keep my bike running
I had to dismantle, repair, tune, and upgrade it myself.
In fact, all of the people who joined the company at the beginning - the engineers and the R&D team - are all connected to the automotive world. Whether it's cars, motorcycles, bicycles, or anything else with or without an engine. That’s what formed our core team.
In the beginning this helped us tremendously. We understood the pain points and problems of our customers very clearly because at some point we experienced them as well. The collective experience allowed us to develop solutions fundamentally different and better. We were not making forced solutions but rather enabling our customers to identify and solve problems through testing.
Engineering and software capabilities from Northern and Baltic Europe have recently gained global attention. To what extent has the industrial ecosystem of Vilnius, Lithuania contributed to LABA7’s unique precision control capabilities? Where does your technological confidence and identity originate from?
Liskus The conditions to live in Lithuania are very good. Actually, the whole Eastern/Northern Europe region in general is full of very hardworking people who are highly goal- and product-oriented. I think the base for that is that young people return after finishing their studies or living abroad for a few years. They bring back the knowledge and good practices.
We have a unique mentality here. For example, in our culture, slacking off is simply not acceptable, which is an issue you sometimes see growing further West.
Because of these reasons and the fact that we have a strong metalworking and plastics manufacturing industry, we were able to manufacture our first parts and prototypes very quickly. As for my own technological confidence and identity, a lot of it comes from my time studying in Denmark. I studied technical engineering with a strong focus on design, and the knowledge I gained there was excellent and very up-to-date. But beyond formal education, it really just comes down to personal drive. I’ve always had the mindset that nothing is impossible - you just have to roll up your sleeves and get it done.
What was the decisive trigger for entering a market long dominated by global players such as MTS and Instron? Were the frustrations you experienced as engineers using existing systems the starting point of LABA7?
Liskus To be honest, when I started LABA7, I probably hadn't even heard of MTS. The thought of ever competing with such massive global players didn't even cross my mind.
At the time, I was working as a freelance engineer, designing all sorts of things - everything from medical devices to chocolate factory equipment. And one day a friend asked me to build a shock dyno for him. And I did.
Things just grew naturally from there. After developing the first shock dyno, I started building a team, and then focused on expanding our product portfolio. Over time, we organically grew into developing highly advanced, world-class products that are now directly competing with those massive manufacturers.
As we grew, the frustration with those legacy systems definitely became a major catalyst. We realized that these older companies are slow, resistant to change, and incredibly expensive. That’s where we saw our opportunity. We realized we could bring a better product to the market, build it faster, make it more advanced, and actually solve the fundamental problems that they did not address for twenty years.
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Fully In-House: Control, Data Logging, and Power Systems
From Test Equipment to a Platform
LABA7 began with mechanical (Scotch-Yoke) dynos and has rapidly expanded into EMA (electromagnetic actuator) systems. Do you see this as more than just a product line expansion - as a fundamental shift in how suspension testing is performed?
Liskus At first, we really just looked at the EMA as a new product to add to our lineup. But as we developed it, we ended up creating so much more than just a machine. We built an entire system from the ground up - the controller, the data logger, the control unit, the power delivery, all of it.Now, we don't see it as just a product anymore; we see it as a foundational platform. It allows LABA7 to expand horizontally, meaning we can take this core technology and build completely new devices for all sorts of different testing applications.
Compared to traditional hydraulic systems, what is the most fundamental change brought by EMA? In particular, how do precision, system complexity, and infrastructure efficiency (such as eliminating external hydraulic units) differ?
Liskus LABA7: Comparing it to hydraulics is very simple. First of all, there's maintenance - it requires practically zero maintenance. Next, running costs: you don't need constantly running pumps. It only consumes as much energy as it uses for the test. Beyond that, it's about the quietness, speed, and precision of the testing, which essentially elevates the entire testing process to another level.
Compared to earlier EMA systems on the market, we also solved several key complexity issues. A major problem is that manufacturers typically rely on third-party components, controllers, drivers, and amplifiers. We built our own. This means we have the ability to make them more powerful, customize them, and eliminate the limitations of off-the-shelf parts.
LABA7’s vertical integration - developing not only actuators but also controllers in-house - is particularly notable. How does this approach translate into improvements in real-road load reproduction accuracy and control responsiveness?
Liskus As we see it, big manufacturers relying on third-party components - off-the-shelf controllers, drivers, and other - is a big problem for themselves and the customers. Because at the end of the day, they end up having little control over how components work.
Because we design and build everything in-house, we can make our systems far more powerful, easily customize them for our clients, and completely eliminate the bottlenecks that come with relying on someone else's parts. This translates directly into better control responsiveness and ultimate precision.
The use of supercapacitors in high-power testing systems is quite unique. What advantages does this architecture bring in terms of energy recuperation, peak power handling, and system stability under demanding test conditions?
Liskus The main, fundamental advantage is that when using EMA you no longer need a high-power grid connection. EMA operates off a single-phase 220V or a three-phase 400V supply, and that is entirely enough to keep the capacitors fully charged. Even during intensive, high-power tests continuous average power isn't that important. Peak power is important and it’s generated from the supercapacitors.
Another big advantage is that EMA draws power from the capacitors, not the grid. The key benefit is that it does not strain the grid, it does not send interference back into it. This opens up the possibility of having an EMA in smaller workshops, in places without high-capacity power lines, or at remote testing locations.
Some EMAs are even configured to run without power for a while - if the power goes out, EMA can continue and finish the test.
Electromagnetic (EMA) Shock Dyno
Beyond Control Performance, Toward Data Resolution
We understand that LABA7 provides high-quality data that can be used without heavy filtering, even under high sampling rates. How does this level of data fidelity impact damper development, NVH refinement, and fine ride quality tuning?
Liskus Right from the very beginning, we made it a priority to ensure our data was highly accurate, clean, and minimally filtered.
When you're developing a shock absorber or an entire suspension setup, noise (or NVH) is a massive factor. This is especially true right now with the rise of EVs. Ultimately, noise is just a type of vibration, and with our equipment, that vibration actually shows up clearly in the graphs as tiny fluctuations in force.
But here’s the problem: if you heavily filter the force data you're receiving, you're going to smooth out and erase those tiny fluctuations entirely. You just won't spot those changes anymore. Over-filtered, simplified data basically just sweeps the real problems under the rug. You either don't realize the issues are there, or you can't solve them because your data doesn't show you exactly where or how they are happening.
Traditional testing systems have often been limited by complex software and steep learning curves. LABA7 appears to emphasize modern UI/UX. What is your philosophy in designing software that allows engineers to focus purely on data analysis?
Liskus We started our business right in the middle of COVID. Traveling to a client's facility to install a system just wasn't an option. Because of that, we had no choice but to design our equipment to be incredibly easy to install and support remotely. We basically built everything to be plug-and-play from day one.
That same philosophy carried right over to the software. We’ve actually redesigned the interface multiple times, constantly adapting it based on real user feedback and their daily experience. Honestly, in a way the software wasn't really designed by us, but by our customers.
And if you think about it, people who know exactly how testing software should look and feel are the ones sitting in front of it every single day. Because we let them guide the design, we constantly get clients praising the software. They love how easy it is to just jump in, view the data, and manage everything without having to fight a complicated system.
EMA Power Supply (Supercapacitor-Based)
Shorter Cycles, Stronger Need for Physical Testing
Global OEMs are now reducing vehicle development cycles to as short as 18 - 24 months. Is this shift in speed creating new requirements for testing equipment? How is LABA7 responding to these changes?
Liskus First off, our equipment has a very short lead time. That means we can deliver standard or custom equipment much, much faster than any of the traditional competitors out there. But beyond that, we are seeing a huge influx of requests from OEMs right now. They need custom solutions, specific hardware features, or rapid software modifications, and we can turn those around exceptionally fast.
At our core, we are a highly agile company. We don't have layers of bureaucracy to fight through. We implement changes quickly, and that directly helps OEMs shave time off their vehicle development cycles.
As digital twins and simulation-based development expand, some argue that physical testing becomes even more important as a “ground truth” for validation. How do you define the relationship between simulation and physical testing?
Liskus I believe simulation is one of the greatest tools of our time. It’s incredible for speeding up and shortening the early development phases. However, you just can't completely detach the simulation from the physical world. At the end of the day, you still have to take a real shock absorber, bolt it into a real car, and it has to perform exactly the way you modeled it on the screen. To achieve that, it always takes more than one physical iteration of the part to get it to behave like the simulation.
Plus, the real world always has all sorts of secondary variables: vibrations, corner cases, and other, that a computer model might miss. So physical testing isn’t going anywhere - it remains inseparable from the process. Simulation just helps you get to that final result much faster, or at the very least, it tells you exactly what result you should be looking for on the test rig.
In the era of Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV), suspension systems are increasingly influenced by data-driven control and OTA updates. Does LABA7 plan to evolve beyond a hardware supplier into a platform that manages physical system data?
Liskus The truth is, we are already doing it. Our controller and data logger can actively communicate with other external controllers and components.
For example, when we're testing semi-active dampers or doing hardware-in-the-loop testing, we can actually send signals to the damper in near real-time. We can watch how the parameters change on the fly and verify if it matches the simulation model. Because we’ve built the entire architecture in-house, we have the flexibility and customizability to easily offer these kinds of advanced, data-driven solutions. We really aren't just a hardware supplier anymore.
Korea is a highly dynamic and demanding market with leading OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers. What are your expectations for partnerships and collaboration with Korean engineers and companies?
Liskus When I traveled to Korea recently, a few things really stood out to me. The engineers there are incredibly demanding, but at the same time, they are highly focused on futuristic development, and they actually back that up by allocating serious funding to R&D.
I think our approach fits perfectly there because LABA7 can offer non-standard, custom solutions, deliver them quickly, and maintain top-tier quality. The need is clearly there, and we can offer the kind of flexibility and speed that the old market players simply cannot. Now, will it be easy to win over the Korean market? No. We have to earn their trust from scratch. But I’m confident that over time, we will definitely succeed in doing that.
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Seeing LABA7 in Practice
The Perspective of Jun Myung Lee, CEO of neoTECH
The strengths of LABA7 are revealed more clearly in testing than in specifications. How quickly the system responds, how accurately it follows input waveforms, and how consistently it delivers data across repeated tests - these are the criteria by which Jun Myung Lee, CEO of neoTECH, evaluates LABA7.
neoTECH is not only LABA7’s partner in Korea but also an active user of its systems. The company currently operates a 60kW-class EMA system and a Scotch-Yoke type shock dyno, and its evaluation is grounded not in product descriptions but in hands-on testing experience.
What Lee focuses on is not an image of high performance, but actual usability in the testing environment. Responsiveness, waveform tracking, repeatability, data reliability, and software operability - these are the elements that matter. Rather than whether a system looks good on paper, the question is whether it can be effectively used in development and validation.
This perspective reflects the market neoTECH has been working in. Starting from motorsport, the company has expanded its scope to include passenger vehicles and structurally modified cars. As an engineering-driven company that designs and manufactures chassis hardware, neoTECH frequently deals with vehicles where load conditions and body configurations differ significantly. In such cases, suspension and braking systems often need to be redesigned, making accuracy and repeatability in testing essential.
A key area of focus for neoTECH is EMA technology. LABA7’s EMA system enables precise control under high-speed and high-acceleration conditions, while maintaining strong performance in repeatability and waveform tracking. Its architecture reduces reliance on external hydraulic infrastructure, and the supercapacitor-based power system adds practical value in real-world operation by enabling stable high-output testing without heavy power requirements.
Lee also emphasizes data quality. Data acquired without excessive filtering carries greater value in areas where small differences matter - such as NVH, micro-vibration analysis, ride comfort tuning, and damping force evaluation. A test system, in his view, is not simply a machine that produces numbers, but a tool for accurately reading real physical behavior.
neoTECH’s perspective on LABA7 goes beyond that of a distribution partner. For Lee, LABA7 is not just another overseas brand, but an approach to testing that aligns with shorter development cycles and increasingly demanding validation requirements. neoTECH’s role in the Korean market is to bring that approach into real testing and development contexts, connecting technology with application.
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As LABA7’s Korean partner and an active system user, neoTECH bridges LABA7’s technology into the local testing environment, drawing on its expertise in chassis hardware engineering and manufacturing.AEM(오토모티브일렉트로닉스매거진)
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