SOFTCAR - The cleanest and lowest cost car ever!
Overview
Background & policy context:
Despite the fact that electric vehicles (EVs) are being promoted worldwide to decarbonise the transport sector and reduce the pollution in city centres, the EV industry still faces several challenges which hamper its deployment to market:
- Technical: All cars are based on stamped steel-based chassis, making it very difficult to reduce the vehicle weight, which is the main hurdle for EVs.
- Economic: Manufacturing lines are heavily automated, which leads to high capex and little employment.
- Environment: The car manufacturing process has a huge environmental impact at each phase of the lifecycle (production, use, end of life).
Objectives:
SOFTCAR SA is a Swiss start-up, founded by a team of three experts in the field of EVs who are now bringing to the market a high performance, highly competitive 4-seater battery EV, which offers the lowest possible ecological footprint while offering the same safety and performance level as other EVs.
Methodology:
The Softcar paradigm shift in car conception and manufacturing translates into breakthrough economic added value and key product differentiation in three main areas:
- Sustainable materials: The vehicle architecture is based on the major use of bio-plastics and advanced composite materials that reduce the vehicle weight by 2.5 times compared to a classical car.
- Disruptive architecture: Softcar reduces the number of parts from 40,000 in classical EVs to 1,800, lowering the production costs from €15,000 for conventional EVs to €9,000 for Softcar.
- Breakthrough manufacturing: There are only two automated process (Rotomoulding and GMT), implying that a low capex small-size plant can be viable from capacities of 5,000 vehicles per year (about 40 times lower than the classic automotive industry).
The total capex requirement is €17 million, the pilot plant reaches capacity (5000 units/year) five years after the start of production, while the cumulated cash flow breaks even just after two years and reaches €88 million at the fourth year, corresponding to an IRR of 132%.
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