Micro-machines: one start-up’s plan for scalable EV production

In recent years, a number of would-be automakers have proven that a good idea is rarely enough on its own. Start-up manufacturers in the mobility space may have the edge in terms of innovation, flexibility and speed, but as the likes of Faraday Future, Elio Motors, Byton and Nikola have emphasised, building cars and trucks at scale is incredibly difficult business. It is clear that the incumbent automakers and Tier 1s retain manufacturing expertise and access to economies of scale that new entrants can only dream of, having refined their processes for over a century. Only a handful of these new companies, such as Tesla, can claim to have gotten their own operations off the ground, and as the Fremont EV maker’s spell in production hell proved, the road is littered with obstacles.