In 2016, Linnea Kornehed was 24 and fresh out of university—hardly the age, or the gender, to command respect in the male-dominated auto industry. At the time, she and her future husband Robert Falck were pitching seed investors their idea for a new business: A company that would create a way for heavy-duty trucks to switch from diesel fuel to electric batteries.
“Honestly, I did not know what I was stepping into,” says Kornehed Falck (as she’s now known), talking with Fortune one recent morning in her office in Stockholm. “The business was very political, with a lot of lobbying.” Trucking industry insiders, she adds, “were making fun of us, saying, ‘This will never work.’”
