FROM TECHNOLOGY COMPETITION TO REINVENTING INDIVIDUAL MOBILITY FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE: CHALLENGES FOR NEW DESIGN STRATEGIES FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLE

Overview & Synopsis

Emissions reduction constraints as well as petrol costs create new opportunities for radical innovations in powertrain solutions for automobiles. In this paper, we focus on the on-going revival of full battery electric vehicles (EV). Our analysis is drawn in two axes. First, we analyse of the on-going context for such EV. As electricity is surely not a new option for automobile industry, we study the past attempts that failed, and show that it is possible to highlight some conditions for a future success and to see why there is nowadays a new window of opportunity for a large scale roll-out of EV. Our reasoning is based both on market evolution as well as technological evolutions. The recent developments around EV suggest that many of the conditions for a successful tidal wave are about to be combined. Second, we characterize the innovation & design strategy that an OEM needs to implement in order to turn this opportunity into a profitable competitive advantage: -Innovation strategy has to expand the scope of design dimensions from electrification of Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles to the complete redefinition of a specific electric product solution. Beyond the product scope, we will see that electric mobility services can provide an efficient enabler to overcome the operational and maintenance pitfalls of electric solutions. -Marketing strategy also needs to dramatically revise the classical auto marketing approach, as electric mobility will require new behaviours from end users as well as favourable regulations and infrastructures from local authorities. -Development processes cannot rely only on the traditional automotive ecosystem, because many competencies required for EV have to be created during the development process. On going EV projects will need a deep rethinking of design system to acquire the new competencies In this paper, we will discuss first outputs from a long term (4 years) action-research launched at the end of 2007. This research is done at an OEM committed to launch a full range of EV, and which, as a consequence, already faces all the challenges related to such a radical innovation.