Today I’m gonna tell about a developing case from my current practice on building a so-called «platform» in electric vehicle manufacturing. The success of many modern businesses, such as Google, iOS, AirB&B, is associated with the creation of "platforms" - technologies that allow a wide range of developers quickly and easily build a final product on it. This is easily done in the IT sector - you create a convenient platform once and then it starts working for itself. For example, Apple does not have to make any extra effort to allow one more programmer to develop another application on the iOS platform. Each next user of the platform is essentially a pure margin for your business. Not surprisingly, many seek to apply the "platform" model to their industry.
Here's the idea - make an electric car "platform" and sell it to anyone who wants to make their own electric car. The platform will consist of a chassis, a battery, and an electric motor. The buyer of the platform invents his own electric car on its basis: individual body design, interior according to his budget, and, «voila!», the new electric car is ready for the end-user!
Today you can order an individual electric car made for you. Its “platform” will most likely be Tesla Model 3 or Model S. However, Tesla itself does not sell «platform», it sells electric cars. Different companies at different times have tried and are trying to create an electric transport platform - Trexa, Nio, Arrival, and even the Russian military manufacturer «Almaz-Antey». But so far no one has succeeded. I recently came across a similar EV platform project and we had a dispute: what should be the business model? Should we make a full line of electric vehicles or should we focus on the platform?
After some debate, it seems that first, you need to answer one most important question - is there anyone who wants to buy a platform, and not a ready-made electric car? A finished electric car may have many buyers, while a platform is likely to have a limited number of buyers. Large automakers have their own developments, and would rather buy not a platform, but its developer, and not for the sake of technology, but to fight off competition. Perhaps the platform would be bought by niche electric vehicle manufacturers, but are there many of them out there? Will they be able to generate enough demand to make the production of the platform pay off? Judging by the fact that no announced platform has yet become commercially successful, there is not enough demand yet.
But perhaps the market has not yet been offered a reliable and inexpensive platform. Creating such a platform for electric vehicles involves designing a completely new way of manufacturing a car, one that does not require large investments in the construction of huge factories and where manufacturing steps are streamlined. The real question is then whether the necessary technologies for the production of electric vehicle components have matured enough. From what we see, such technologies already exist, and it is possible to combine them into a new production chain to create just such a reliable and inexpensive platform.
I spent Wednesday evening at a roundtable in Valencia on European battery sovereignty. The discussion was sharp, honest, and at times uncomfortable. I left with a clearer sense of both the problem and
