Our Design Approach to MARS™ Products

Hello, my name is DJ, and I’m the lead product design engineer at MARS™. Many of you may already know me, as I also handle a lot of customer support emails. I love speaking with customers directly to understand their feedback and, more importantly, to explain product features from an engineer’s perspective. Before co-founding MARS™, I spent three years at Tesla working as a senior product engineer (2019-2022). The Cybertruck was my last and favorite project at Tesla.

Overlanding is a passion of mine - owning a truck that I helped design and develop was truly a dream come true. I decided to take it a step further by designing a series of overland accessories for the platform to share with fellow enthusiasts.

At Tesla, many engineering decisions were design-driven. Industrial design matters, and we have adopted the same philosophy here at MARS™. Our mission is to combine unique industrial design with functionality, ultimately creating products that not only increase the utility of the vehicle but also complement the original design.

In our design review process, we ask our team the following four questions. Every product needs to earn a solid and confident “yes” before we place an order with our suppliers:

• Does it integrate seamlessly when installed on the truck?
• Is it safe to use? Did we follow Tesla’s user/design guidelines?
• Is it easy to install?
• Does the cost make sense for customers?

Not every product we develop internally passes the design review. There are plenty of instances where we decided to discontinue a product despite significant effort and resources. Building a brand from the ground up is tough, and we do not want to risk our reputation by rushing products to market. At MARS™, we strive to deliver quality products that customers would recommend to other owners.

In future blog posts, I will share more behind-the-scenes insights into our product development process, helping our (potential) customers understand how we engineer MARS™ products.

This is just the beginning. We aim to unlock the full potential of the Tesla Cybertruck, and we invite you to join us on this journey. Join the Mars Community on Discord, where we discuss future product ideas, collect customer feedback, and offer exclusive discounts. We'll see you there!