Have you ever seen the following car, it can turn 360 degrees in place.
The last time I saw a "motor vehicle" that could turn in place like this, it looked like this.
In fact, the first picture of the car is from the R1T produced by Rivian, an electric vehicle manufacturing company in the United States, and the reason why it can do so is because they use an innovative skateboard chassis design.
By stuffing four wheel-edge motors into the skateboard chassis, that is, one motor at each wheel, the wheels can be steered freely, even single-wheel drive.
In the imagination of these car companies, it can even let you spend a Wuling Hongguang money to buy a sports car, SUV or even a tractor driving experience.
But this skateboard chassis, which looks very bullish X, is actually not as complicated as imagined.
In the final analysis, it is to replace a series of mechanical transmission components such as suspension, brakes, throttle and steering of traditional vehicles with wire control, that is, power signal control.
For example, if it is a traditional car, we drive to turn, we have to turn the steering wheel, the steering wheel and then through the steering lever, steering power, steering knuckles and a series of mechanical structures, so that the car to achieve turning.
The in-line steering of the skateboard chassis is like replacing the steering wheel with the keyboard 'W A S D', and all you output is a keyboard electrical signal, like driving in a game.
This means that it can completely separate the chassis and body of the car.
Once this thing is developed, maybe you can arrange several kinds of car shells on a chassis, drive a car today, and change pickup trucks tomorrow.
And this modular design can also greatly reduce the development cost of the car, which means that the car we buy will be cheaper than it is now.
The most critical ah! This thing is not just bragging.
At the 2021 China Electric Vehicle 100 People's Conference, Academician Ouyang Minggao put forward two focuses on future vehicle technology. One is a 1,000-kilometer endurance, and the other is a skateboard chassis.
Therefore, there is no doubt that the skateboard chassis is a new outlet, and there are many car companies that have made some famous names.
For example, the oil pipeline network red car Rivian burned 1 billion US dollars in half a year, but it became the fourth largest car company in the world in three days of listing.
Of course, it has now gone from its highest point of $172 per share,
Fell to $60.95 ▼
They have two cars, the pickup R1T and the SUV R1S, both of which are based on the same skateboard chassis, the chassis is equipped with a pocket is the pickup truck R1T, the pocket is the R1S, and the two cars have 91% shared components.
Because of the design of the skateboard chassis, all future R1 series models will share their basic electrical, network architecture, battery pack and even ECUs, which will reduce the development and manufacturing costs of the vehicle by 60%.
Of course, some people sell cars, and some people just want to sell the manufacturing technology of skateboard chassis.
For example, Canoo, an American electric vehicle manufacturing company, does not build or sell cars, but only sells skateboard chassis or vehicle manufacturing technology.
Even in the first half of 2020, he was almost looked at by Cook, buying Apple and adding bricks and tiles to Apple's car.
It didn't sell a car, but it had a market value of $1.3 billion, and it showed its muscles on the tubing every three to five minutes, and the hearts of people who really watched it were itching.
Of course, there are also people who want to take apart the skateboard chassis and cabin, and sell the two separately.
Domestic Yo-Yo Technology released its own skateboard chassis and cabin in January this year.
Even the skateboard chassis and body cockpit I have done for you, car companies want to buy individually or package can buy.
The three cars shown at the press conference were spelled out on a super chassis, and one chassis spelled out a variety of models of cars, MPVs, SUVs, pickups and vans.
This kind of car can shorten the development cycle by 6-12 months compared with the traditional vehicle expansion model on the same platform.
For example, in the past, the development of a car company may have to sell 200,000 vehicles to recover costs, replaced by a multi-model universal skateboard chassis, and a single model can sell 50,000 vehicles to achieve breakeven.
Selling electric vehicles this year can not lose money, it is not easy.
And if they did it, we would spend a lot less money to buy a car.
Presumably, after reading the above several companies, you can also feel that the impact of the skateboard chassis on the entire automotive industry is not generally large, once it comes out, the threshold for making cars is "poof".
Will not build a complex chassis, suspension, development can not come to automatic driving? It's okay, just buy ready-made ones.
For example, Sodafa, who recently wanted to build a car.
If you think about it, it can completely take its own audio-visual entertainment and industrial design to the extreme, and put all its energy into what it is good at, and make a smart cockpit and a fashionable exterior design.
Chassis, you can directly buy a ready-made.
And our dream of changing models at any time may also be realized. As long as someone makes the body into a "lease model", and the Weilai replacement power station is the same as a "change cabin station", we drive the car in, you can change the car with one key.
If you want to go out on an outing and run at high speed, you change to a sports car shape with low wind resistance, and when you need to cross-country, you can change to a pickup truck body with a pocket.
But let's get back to reality.
The skateboard chassis does allow the car to "change shape", but at present it is still just starting out, and it is still far from our ideal travel.
Let's talk about the most critical standard issue.
The core of the skateboard chassis: in-line control, that is, the keyboard "WASD" to control the turn, our standard specification in this piece is still blank.
On December 7, 2021, the China Automobile Research Institute announced that it would jointly develop wire steering related standards for Jidu, Weilai, Geely and other car companies, and before the standard was introduced, all skateboard chassis research and development was still on paper.
Secondly, the threshold of the skateboard chassis is not low, you have to provide other car manufacturers with a chassis that can be used at hand, that battery research and development, wire control technology and intelligent driving support must be done well.
And even if you buy it home, the crash test, the manipulation stability and the compliance test and so on have to be adjusted by yourself, which is a troublesome thing and requires a lot of investment.
And this up-and-down split design and our traditional car, it will be more difficult to ensure the safety of the whole vehicle.
For example, traditional car companies such as Volkswagen and Hyundai also began to develop related technologies for sliding chassis as early as 2017, and have not yet come up with a skateboard chassis.
Tesla has also worked on a number of skateboard chassis before, and finally gave up because of cost and safety issues.
So the skateboard chassis is really not something that can be made casually.
In the end, the concept of skateboard chassis is still relatively vague, and at this stage, it seems that it is a word that the new forces have saved up by themselves. After all, "make a car first, create a good word for financing" This thing, we have seen a lot in the new energy market.
But we don't need to deny it completely, it still flashes the light of future technology, depending on how the car companies have played, after all, there is still a much-anticipated Apple Car that has not appeared.
Author: YX Editor: Noodle Beauty Editor: Huan Yan
bibliography:
Canoo official website
Rivian official website
wikiped—Skateboard (automotive platform)
2021 Electric Vehicle 100 People Conference
Tiger sniffing – not building a car, you can take money
21st Century Economic News - Li Peng, former head of the high-end project of Great Wall Motors, "re-started a business": skateboard chassis station on the wind outlet