You need at least 400 Million to enter the car manufacturer market.
The investment does sound absolutely reasonable at this point.
The investment does sound absolutely reasonable at this point.
This happens in literally every other market and industry. hell, just look at PCs and laptops.
Like why can't a Canoo or Rivian license a base EV platform and come up with their own chassis design, infotainment system, and other little things to differentiate themselves?
why does it HAVE to be all or nothing?
The analogy in the PC world would not be "license a design from an ODM like Compal or Quanta", it'd be "license a design from Dell or Lenovo".
That in itself suggests a potential market: perhaps there's room for an ODM in the automotive space?
So why wouldn't Ford or GM be cool with letting a smaller label do this and testing the market?
This has recently happened to a well known EV company relying on just the electrical platform from a well known and highly respected auto maker that they have a good relationship with. It means they’ve had to go looking at other platforms (again, just the electrical platform) and has put the whole company at risk.
Light duty truck and van builders e.g. Ford and GM do the same thing but mostly for companies building RVs rather than commercial equipment.
Tesla's original was a fork of a Lotus. They got the whole chassis/etc from Lotus, dropped in their own drive train and other stuff. Other reply mentioned paccar.
Idk why it doesn't happen more often. I suspect most manufacturers aren't willing to license like that.
When you talk about a base platform I assume you are meaning an entire drive train? Most pieces of a car are going to be produced elsewhere and then assembled. Canoo isn’t making their own batteries or motors. Those come from battery and motor manufacturers. Canoo or a similar company might even buy structural battery pack built to spec by CATL.
There are some examples where car makers (both EV and ICE) will sell components to competitors but in general this is pretty rare. Most companies want to control key aspects of their supply chain.
Rivian did use motors from Bosch but is now in the process of using their own internally designed motors. This allows them to build exactly what they need and avoid relying on Bosch for a key component of their vehicles.
Kind of. Renault's small sized EVs share parts of the platform as some ICE models (e.g. Clio/Renault 5 E-Tech) which allows them to reduce costs of the EV model. Considering their target audience and market segment (small city-focused EV with city-scale range) the tradeoff is perfectly acceptable.
> and there is no EV base platform for sale/license
How do you know this? Renault for instance are in a pretty specific spot, market wise, and they were trying to merge with Fiat-Chrysler before the latter ended up with PSA (Peugeot, Citroen, Opel) in Stellantis. They have some EV tech, especially on the cheap city-focused side (Dacia Spring, Renault Zoe, Renault 5 E-tech), and would probably be open to collaborating / sharing risks. This is purely conjecture of course.
Also, Subaru managed to license Toyota's EV tech.
The ICE car market is a massive market, which taking a part of required massive long term investment, and would result in you being relegated to just some minor side note.
Even Toyota one of the longest biggest players is still seen as kinda "new" compared to BMW and VW, let alone hyundai which is basically a massive state backed effort.
Now consider, all of that 100+ year history becoming completely irrelevant. An opportunity to time travel back 100 years and try to become the BMW of the future. I think this is what is exciting people.
when is the last time an entrenched trillion dollar industry with hardly any shakeups in decades suddenly had the ability for anyone to enter and say their biggest advantage is that they are new?
I am not saying I agree with it, I think knowing how to make a luxury car is a skill... But I don't think the goal of these CEOs and investors is to make a good car. Their goal is to make a 100+ year global legacy like BMW. If they could do that without making the car I am sure they would.
So now the ICEs are scrambling to catch up, and are doing so, but lots of money is flowing around hoping to be the next Tesla.
And their sales were still dwarfed by legacy manufacturers, who then started paying attention and practically all of them have at least one EV model out there, often with new platforms/models being in the works.
Meanwhile the legacy companies will keep moving slowly along and produce vehicles. Some will die, some will merge, some will have wild successes.
But it's much different than Google et al because cars actually cost about as much to make and sell as they do to buy.
EV cars seem to be the go-between for ICE and the real answer for Green.
I imagine anyone willing to license one at the moment only has a crappy one to sell you or it is some Chinese EV, which creates political problems.
That's sort of what Tesla did with the Roadster. It was a Lotus that they put an electric motor into.
Alpine makes forks of BMWs.
Braubas makes forks of Mercedes.
RUF makes forks of Porsche.
The other example is when 2+ large manufacturers work together to cost share a platform.
Examples:
- BMW Z4 / Toyota Supra
- Subaru BRZ / Toyota GT86
- Mitsubishi 3000GT / Dodge Stealth
The NUMMI car factory in Fremont, CA was jointly owned by GM and Toyota before Tesla bought it. For a while, it made the Toyota Voltz / Pontiac Vibe.
I think people get the impression from the wording that the “platform available off the shelf” means the consuming manufacturer can just grab some units and modify them, but in practice, there is a massive contractual negotiation. And since car manufacturers are heavily regulated, it makes sense to cost share both the manufacturing and the standards / crash testing.
You gain margin by controlling the supply line. Otherwise you should just be a subsidiary of one the big ones you mentioned.