Are Electric Car Manufacturers Auto Companies Or Tech Companies?
Matte Rimac, the founder and designer of the Rimac electric hypercar, said that his company was fundamentally a tech company, not an auto company. This ostensibly came after Richard Hammond crashed their first offering, so he might have been inclined to claim the former.
But he had an interesting point there. We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in terms of what is expected from a ‘car’ manufacturer, and the layers of technology that is going into each vehicle.
The differences between Gas and Electric?
An electric car is based on a simple concept of a battery and a motor. The battery powers the motor, and the motor turns the wheels. There are generally no gears and you have a linear acceleration, which allows for Tesla’s Ludicrous mode. In comparison, gas-powered cars have more points of friction and require various gears to give you the corresponding output. Basically put, there are more moving parts in a gas-powered car than in an electric one.
There is the obvious point of computing power that each requires. Electric cars generally use more lines of code than a gas-powered one does.
So, if we consider an electric car as a battery and a motor powered by computer code, a different set of questions open up when you think about updates. To ‘update’ a gasoline car, you need to haul your car into the workshop and upgrade individual parts of the engine. Sure, this is also required for an electric car, but the differentiator here is that an electric car can be potentially updated over the net.
Living wirelessly
Electric cars generally come with engines that are tuned down, so as to put restrictions on what the vehicle can pull from the battery. This invariably makes it dependant on software to control the levels. With internet connectivity becoming standard on electric cars, Over The Air (OTA) updates could determine how a car chooses to use the battery pack. This has already been implemented by Tesla and certain manufacturers, which could never be possible on a gas-powered car. Only aspect that they can update is the infotainment software and data metrics.
With OTA, an inbuilt chipset can amend protocols wirelessly. Software updates are easier as EV’s are already running on millions of lines of codes. But Firmware updates need a lot more consideration as it requires cybersecurity, high speeds of connectivity, and massive computing power. At the moment OTA is relegated to updating infotainment software, but a few manufacturers have introduced updates that can optimise charging capabilities on your EV.
What makes you a ‘Tech company’?
So, if you can upgrade your product based on software updates, would that make you a tech company? If you’re dealing with batteries and software, does that make you a tech company? Sure, it’s a car that you are building but the skillset that is driving this process is based on technology. The people attracted to working on electric cars aren’t your diesel-head fanatics. It’s the people coming out of MIT. You might be working at Google and decide that you want to work on the Lucid Air software. It’s tough to see the same transition to a General Motors of the 80’s.
This system could also decentralise the manufacturing process. What if an electric car maker outsourced the manufacturing work, and the company focussed only on the tech? What if remote manufacturing was possible for electric cars? What if 3D printing becomes the future of electric cars, supplanting your traditional manufacturing process?
Take AR for example. Augmented reality is the latest in high precision manufacturing. There are certain jobs that robotics can’t handle, and you need human intervention. AR has the capability of overlaying stats, texts, and any relevant info. It can help the worker ensure that there are no potential faults or issues. Thus, your worker learns in real time and reduces wastage. This has already been implemented in the defence and aeronautics industry. AR would increase the dependency on tech, and in a way increase the need for high-skilled labour.
Do you work in a garage or an office?
And herein lies the key characteristic of talent acquisition. With robotics heavily implemented in the manufacturing process, you need technicians to service those robots. You need programmers to program those robots. You need coders to develop your software base. You need chemical engineers with tech backgrounds to understand the future of material development. You need tech engineers to understand drivetrains that work with electric motors. All of these will be found in tech schools, not garages.
Not to take anything away from Mechanical engineers as you’ll still need them, especially Thermal engineers in battery design. But in the new world, they will need tech knowledge as well. The old school mechanical guys who purely focused on the physical work, are long gone.
What does this mean for developing nations?
Countries like China and India will play a vital role in this transition. These two countries possibly have more students in technology and engineering, than any other country in the world. People are realising that you can start an EV firm with just Auto Cad-cam and 3D printers. So the electric car version of Silicon Valley is starting in the ‘garages’ of India and China. Young adults fresh out of college are realising the potential, starting off with concepts, and raising capital to fund their growth. There is an understanding that the world needs more electric vehicles and old school auto companies have been too slow to catch up.
People within these two countries are banding together to develop their own models and beat the traditional market. They could possibly sell their companies and patents to bigger auto manufacturers, but there is a steady growth of new companies coming up with ingenious designs for their electric vehicles.
Does this mean that car companies will remain ‘Car’ companies?
Well, the new General Motors CEO has created an innovation team within the company, to move them ‘beyond trucks and cars’. They want to take a page out of Apple’s book and diversify into auto services focussed on technology. Just as Apple is working on an Electric vehicle, maybe someday GM would enter the tech world. Who would have thought this day would come to pass?
So, the future is a bit unknown. We know that electric vehicles are here to stay. But we don’t know in what form, and who will run the show. Tesla seems to have the brand value to currently rule the market. But as traditional car manufacturers go electric, there will be a turn for tech which will transform the auto industry. All we can do is wait and watch, and hopefully catch that wave.