Rivian, once worth exceeding $100 billion, went public. The skateboard chassis moved from the margin to the mainstream.
“Disruptive technologies happen all the time, and they come from the margins. It went through initial innovation, continued improvement, minimal customer satisfaction, and suddenly the market opened up.”
— Kevin Kelly.
From Kodak’s film cameras to Nikon’s digital cameras;
From MOTOROLA and Nokia phones to iPhone;
From Toyota and Ford’s conventional fuel cars to Tesla’s electric vehicles.
Every technological innovation and subversion starts from the margins,
The transformation of traditional chassis to skateboard chassis is also following the rule.
On November 10, American time, Rivian, known as “Tesla killer,” went public on THE NASDAQ stock exchange. On the first day of IPO, Rivian opened up about 37%, higher than the opening price, which was supposed to be at $75, and rose by more than 53% at one time. With the highest price of $119.4 per share, the market value once exceeded $100 billion.
It surpassed the market value of GM ($86 billion), Ford ($77.3 billion), Honda ($49.5 billion), which went through over more than 100 years of history, and some well-known smart electric vehicle automakers such as NIO, XPENG, Li.
Rivian set a record for the largest IPO in the US since 2014.
Before its IPO, Rivian has previously raised nearly $10 billion in only three years from Amazon, Ford Motor, and BlackRock, among others. Investors in the capital market favor Rivian. In addition to external factors such as broad prospects in the PICKUP truck market in the United States and support from Amazon’s investment and orders, Rivian also holds a crucial technology — the Skateboard Chassis platform.
“The skateboard-type chassis platform is the technical core of all Rivian’s electric vehicles.” RJ Scaringe(Founder of Rivian)
The skateboard chassis is an all-in-one chassis architecture designed specifically for electric cars that integrates batteries, electric powertrain, suspension, brakes, and other components into the chassis in advance, allowing Rivian to quickly build different models and open license them to third-party manufacturers.
Rivian hopes to develop its own electric car products and ones for Amazon and Ford on the platform.
Because of the relatively small, high risk, and not by the market, at the same time under the constraints of vested interests and the plight of internal management reform, in the past decade, slide-type machine chassis not been mainstream attention, almost did not become mainstream such as Toyota, gm, Benz forms a choice, but it has become a breakthrough for the development of many new building cars. It gives entrepreneurs with no historical baggage a chance to rise from the margins.
Maverick
Bet on a skateboard chassis
At present, in the global scope, American Rivian, Canoo, REE (Israel), and other new car manufacturers have bet on skateboard chassis platforms in succession.
On the official website, Canoo’s three models and a future fourth sports sedan are all based on the same skateboard platform.
According to reports, the skateboard chassis structure has attracted the interest of Apple. In order to promote the development of pure electric vehicle projects, Apple has the intention to acquire Canoo in 2020.
REE concentrates essential elements of electric vehicle, such as drive, steering, control, shock absorption and battery pack into one module — providing a general electric vehicle chassis and satisfying the needs of different models with the same frame.“Electric shuttle buses and delivery vans should be as simple as this skateboard structure. Private cars, commercial vehicles and minibusses can be built based on existing chassis.” REE co-founder and CEO Daniel Barel said.
Although skateboard chassis has not become mainstream at present, however, with the gradual popularity of automobiles, consumers’ cognition of automobile consumption has grown rapidly, and user needs have become personalized. The traditional OEM product development model has no longer adapted to the new demands.
At the same time, it is getting harder for OEMs to build blockbuster models with annual sales of 100,000–200,000 units. Therefore, in the long run, the “low development cost, short term and high interoperability” skateboard chassis can respond to diversified market demands and will have more competitive advantages in the future market.
“The skateboard chassis is favored by new car makers because it allows companies to significantly reduce the initial development and testing costs, while quickly responding to market demand and realizing mass production of new models, thus accelerating the break-even process.”
Said Angelo, founder and CEO of PIX Moving,
“If a car company needs to sell 200,000 cars to recover costs in the development of a car model in the past, on the basis of skateboard chassis, because multiple models share the chassis, it only needs to sell 50,000 cars to break even”.
PIX skateboard chassis platform
Seven chassis were built according to application scenarios.
Like Rivian, Canoo and REE product architecture, PIX Moving is also based on the development of skateboard chassis. The whole chassis adopts full-wire control technology, making the driving system, steering system, transmission system and braking system highly integrated. The mechanical structure is greatly simplified, which can greatly save interior space. The design of the large passageway with low floor makes it more convenient for passengers to get on and off the bus and improves the vehicle's carrying capacity.
In order to design a more flexible autonomous vehicle, PIX Moving adopts the distributed electric drive technology of four-wheel hub motor, which can realize a variety of complex drive forms including front, rear and four-wheel drive on the basis of stability control.
By developing torque distribution control strategy to achieve the four-wheel control alone, and combining the four-wheel steering technology, makes the skateboard chassis with fast torque response, all-wheel independent precisely controlled manipulation ability, can realize more complex movement, and complete all of the action that you can imagine a box on the plane can achieve.
For example, through the different rotating speeds or even reverse left and right wheels, it can realize tracked vehicle differential steering and reduce vehicle turning radius, under special circumstances it can achieve pivot steering.
PIX Moving distributed driven have another advantage which improves the trajectory tracking precision of the automatic driving system, through the distribution of torque vector control and active four-wheel steering control dual regulating mode, to track the reference centroid transverse side-slip angle and angular rate, even if the automatic driving system planning a complex desired trajectory curve, The trajectory tracking error of the vehicle is very small, and the vehicle has better lateral and longitudinal stability and handling performance.
At the same time, PIX Moving adopts a modular product architecture and develops vehicle cabins and chassis separately, which not only facilitates manufacturing and reduces costs but also makes the hardware system more compatible and expansible. 60–70% of the core components can be reused between chassis models, which speeds up the development cycle and lowers the barriers to building a car, making it as easy as building A Lego.
For example, PIX Robobus, a self-driving minibus, was developed from zero to one based on the PIX Moving skateboard chassis in just six months. Ideally, it will take at least 2–3 years if it follows the traditional car development model.
In addition, in less than one year, PIX Moving built a variety of different types of vehicles for customers according to the needs of different application scenarios based on the skateboard chassis, including special vehicles, commercial vehicles, such as Robobus, security vehicles, logistics vehicles, retail vehicles, etc.
Our products have been successfully exported to nearly 20 countries like Switzerland, France, Britain, Sweden, South Korea, Germany, the United States, Singapore, Czech Republic and Vietnam.
Moving Space
A car is no longer a transportation, but a part of life.
As technology advances, the L5 automatic driving is coming soon. When people no longer need to drive a car, the layout of the car is no longer driving-centered, and the space attribute will become the core. The product positioning of the car will no longer be a “vehicle for people”, nor a “walking computer”, but a real sense of “Moving Space”, is a part of life.
The internal combustion engine of traditional automobiles is large in volume, heavy in weight and irregular in shape. No matter its position in front, middle, or rear, there are many problems, and it has a great influence on the appearance of the whole vehicle.
The slide plate chassis structure is smooth, simple, small constraints, it can smoothly achieve a better space layout. Rivian, Canoo, and PIX Moving all show the point.
Lifestyle on vehicles
01/Rivian’s Camping life
From the official website, it can be clearly seen that Rivian is different from Tesla and other new energy car companies, which emphasize “space gathering” and “lifestyle”.
On the R1T, for example, there are more than 62 cubic feet of storage space between the front trunk, rear compartment, under-seat compartment, center console and aisle. “Tents” and “camp kitchens” have become standard features of the car, allowing you to take a break from the journey and enjoy a moving feast of food.
02/ Canoo’s pavilion on wheels
Canoo goes one step further than Rivian, positioning cars directly as a “lifestyle” rather than a “means of transport”. With skateboard chassis, their vehicle gained more room.
03/ PIX Moving Moving space
Unlike the Rivian and Canoo layouts, PIX Moving eliminates the steering wheel and driver’s position directly through autonomous driving technology, leaving usable space for riders. PIX Moving also has hub motors, which are not embedded in the body, and a sliding plate chassis structure that allows more room in the upper cockpit, giving it greater compatibility.
Therefore, through automatic separation of chassis and cabin, PIX Moving can flexibly realize the application of unmanned minibus, sales car, logistics car, fresh car, fitness car, and other Moving Spaces.
PIX Moving has entered into a strategic partnership with Lendlease in Italy and Wuyue Plaza in China to produce 5–10 moving space scenes landing jointly. With just one button on the phone, users can summon a Moving Space that meets their personalized needs, such as beauty car, food car, tea car, entertainment car and so on.
From Canoo and REE to Rivian to PIX Moving, new carmakers embrace the skateboard chassis, which can be laid out on-demand, emphasizing space and lifestyle, without the constraints of traditional mechanical components. This will open a “low threshold, personalized, more democratic” car-making era, skateboard chassis gradually from the margin to the mainstream.
