Skyships was founded by William Ives in Essex, England in 1996. Michael Perkins joined a few years later.

William and Michael met at school, aged 9, whilst working together on the technical side of theatre productions. Passionate about solving technical challenges, both went on to study engineering.

Skyships started with air transport; designing, building and commissioning airships for weather monitoring, photography and live video transmission. Skyships was responsible for a number of projects including elements of the Millennium dome in London and camera systems at the Asian Games 2006 in Qatar.

Both founders, being keen car enthusiasts, evolved their airship touchscreen controller into a unique audio system for William’s 1999 Lotus Esprit. This led them to provide the solution to other Esprit owners and to approach Lotus Cars in Norfolk. Having found a niche in the market, Skyships partnered with and supplied in-vehicle infotainment systems to several high-performance car companies in the UK, the US and Europe.

Over the years the team has grown to over 40 expert engineers and specialists. Today, Skyships plays an important role in the premium vehicle sector by designing, developing, manufacturing and integrating high-value and high-quality driver information and cockpit systems. Skyships’ software architecture and hardware systems have evolved through seven generations, integrating smart device technology, 3rd party applications and adding connected cloud services.