In November 2021, with the arrival of electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian on the NASDAQ, the skateboard chassis concept was once again a hotly discussed technology.
It is understood that Rivian created an industry record, opening about 37% on the first day of listing, rising more than 53% intraday, and the market value exceeded $100 billion, surpassing traditional car companies such as General Motors, Ford, and Honda. It should be noted that Rivian has previously raised $12 billion, making it one of the largest IPOs in U.S. history. It can be seen from this that Rivian is favored by the capital market. The reason why Rivian can become the "darling" of the capital market is inseparable from its core technology skateboard chassis.
"Big Killer" - Slide the chassis
Perhaps many readers think that this is just a piece of hardware for the body when they first hear about the skateboard chassis, but this is not the case, because in the view of the cylinder brother, the skateboard chassis is likely to become another revolutionary technology after the "platform" and "architecture".
Before introducing the skateboard chassis, brother cylinders should first review the changes brought about by "platform" and "architecture" in the history of the development of the automobile industry.
Before the emergence of the automotive "platform", the development of the automotive industry experienced two eras. The first era was when cars were just born, when cars were mainly hand-built, and it cost 728 man-hours to assemble a car. The extremely slow production speed has led to the scarcity of automotive products on the market, and the annual output of only more than ten cars is difficult to meet the huge demand of the market. Due to the rarity of things, the car became a symbol of the nobility at that time.
After many years, automobile production has ushered in an extremely important reform. When Ford Brothers produced the Model T, they created the assembly line, a production process that influenced the development of the automotive industry. This reform not only drastically reduced the production cycle of automobiles, but also reduced the production cost of automobiles from about $5,000 to $360, which gradually led to the number of cars in thousands of households. Even today, assembly line production is still one of the mainstream ways of automobile production.
Due to the non-satisfaction of the profits brought by the assembly line, coupled with the explosive growth of global car ownership after the third scientific and technological revolution, many car companies began to pursue new research and development and manufacturing models in order to meet the growing demand of the market and reduce costs. At this point, the "platform" began to appear. In fact, regarding the definition of the platform, Brother Cylinder has conducted an in-depth analysis of the "platform" in the previous content. In layman's terms, the "platform" is that the car company sets up the same system, subsystem and system composed of components in the early stage, and then completes the joint research and development and production of multiple products based on these.
Thanks to the "platform" model, car companies can simplify the development and manufacturing process of new products and significantly reduce costs. It should be noted that this solution is very suitable for car companies with annual sales of more than one million. Volkswagen, for example, is a "big fan" of the platform model.
Of course, the "platform" model is not perfect, because platforms exist relatively independently of each other, so the components between them cannot be universal. As a result of this, car companies cannot maximize production efficiency and control costs. In order to break the platform restrictions, some car companies began to propose an architectural model. For the "architecture", we can see it as the platform version 2.0, its compatibility is stronger, the scope is wider, not only in product design, research and development, production has a complete set of optimization system, but also has a new set of car manufacturing concepts, between the models of parts and technology more common rate.
As some media people have said, the architecture is like an arsenal of car companies, where all the weapons needed now and in the future are stockpiled and taken out when needed. Although the architecture will have more advantages than the platform to some extent, solving some of the shortcomings of the platform, it is still unable to fundamentally solve the limitations of the platform on the product. Taking Geely Automobile's CMA architecture as an example, the models built based on this architecture are basically based on cars and compact SUVs, and it is difficult to be compatible with MPVs or medium and large SUVs.
If "platform" and "architecture" still start from the vehicle dimension to make various changes to the product, then the sliding chassis has basically separated from the concept of the whole vehicle and become a separate existence. Because the sliding chassis itself is independent, plus the size will not change much, so the changes in the products developed on the sliding chassis are mainly reflected in the body above the chassis, that is, the cockpit and exterior design. It is worth mentioning that because the concept of the sliding chassis is the development of the upper and lower splits, the upper and lower body are independent, so the research and development costs of car companies can be greatly reduced.
Taking U Power's "UP super chassis" as an example, the product only needs to set the electrical and body interfaces in advance during the development process, and other levels will not have any "rejection" with the sliding chassis. In other words, in the case of a sliding chassis, the body can be designed as much as it wants. Whether it is an SUV product or a sedan product, what changes is only the shape of the upper body, and the chassis does not change.
In layman's terms, this is like the four-wheel drive car we played when we were children, the core components are basically concentrated on the chassis, such as motors, drive shafts, batteries, guide wheels and so on. If we want to do more personalized design, we just need to go to the store and choose a body that we like and have the right interface. Similarly, on the basis of the skateboard chassis, in the process of designing the body, etc., it can be successfully spliced with the chassis. It can be seen that the sliding chassis has significant advantages for car companies, which can not only accelerate product research and development and reduce development cycles and costs, but also enrich the diversification of products.
The "Android" of the automotive industry!
To some extent, the advantages of sliding chassis are extremely obvious. For example, from the perspective of the automotive industry as a whole, after rough estimation, we found that all traditional car companies and new power car companies pay special attention to the car chassis, and even spend a lot of research and development funds on it every year. Unfortunately, in a fragmented state, the car chassis has not undergone a subversive change for a long time in the past.
Taking the mobile phone industry as an example, the emergence of Apple's smart phones may have impacted the hegemony of mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and Motorola. However, this only played a shock role, and failed to successfully pull Nokia and others off the "altar", after all, the price of Apple's mobile phones was still high at that time. With the emergence of the Android system, the mobile phone industry has officially entered a new era, and a large number of smart phone companies based on Android system development have emerged, successfully leading the development of the mobile phone industry.
The reasons for the success behind the Android system are nothing more than two, one is to greatly reduce the threshold and stand-alone cost of developing a smart phone operating system, and the other is to divide some of the benefits through its own system and core software, so that mobile phone manufacturers pay more attention to things other than mobile phone operating systems, such as brands.
In the same way, Brother Cylinder believes that the significance of the sliding chassis in the field of intelligent electric vehicles in the future is exactly equivalent to the Android system, especially in the context of the emergence of new car companies. For example, suppose that non-car companies such as Xiaoma Zhixing and Meituan want to own the automobile business, although they can independently develop the chassis, but at least need a team of more than 1,000 people, more than 3 years of time, billions of capital investment, etc. to complete the research and development work.
In contrast, buying a third-party chassis is really a good choice. In the era of pure electric vehicles, the homogenization of components is becoming more and more serious, and the choice of third-party chassis can almost be regarded as the purchase of a "part", which will not affect its own uniqueness. Taking Xiaoma Zhi as an example, in the case of using a third-party chassis, adding its own leading algorithm in the field of automatic driving and a unique body design, it is possible to create an automotive product with unique attributes. In this regard, the cylinder brother believes that the sliding chassis may one day become the mainstream of the market, and the company behind the sliding chassis may become a Tier 0.5 supplier.
In other words, while launching the sliding chassis, the relevant enterprises indirectly help some car companies that are new car manufacturers to reduce research and development costs, so that car companies have enough energy to focus on other more efficient and useful links in the industrial chain, thereby improving products
Volkswagen, Toyota or suppression!
Although the sliding chassis can promote the development of the automotive market to some extent, the technology is bound to be suppressed by established car companies. Specifically, the sliding chassis has been marked with the "sharing" label to some extent, and the main engine factory does not need to be personal in the future, and can "outsource" the chassis and body, etc., and only need to focus on marketing, channels, services, etc. "Professional people, do professional things", in the context of a clear division of labor, meticulous, professional and so on, car companies can not only reduce production costs, improve the efficiency of vehicle research and development, but also reduce the investment in heavy assets.
Of course, all the above "benefits" may only be provided for the new forces of car manufacturing, because all these changes are undoubtedly impacting the "hegemonic" status of traditional OEMs. As we all know, in the past hundred years, chassis, body, etc. are the core business of traditional OEMs, and have formed an inherent R&D system and organizational structure. Once the "skateboard chassis" is successfully popularized, it is bound to interfere with and impact the existing system. Therefore, this model will not only not be accepted by OEMs, but will even be suppressed.
summary
From the perspective of the industry, the skateboard chassis can be shared with multiple OEMs, which can save industry investment very well, and this model is worthy of attention. In this regard, the cylinder brother believes that with the continuous development of the automobile industry, the homogenization of parts will continue to increase, such as the power exchange mode of unified battery specifications, the size and interface of standardized tire hubs, and so on. In other words, whether it is a traditional main engine factory or a new force car company, at this stage, it needs to re-examine the personalization of its own brand.