Business musings

The ‘app’ concept continues to gain ground not just within IT but also in industries such as automotive industry.

LSN Global featured the new Trexa ‘car development platform’ – a fully electric vehicle-development platform that provides designers and manufacturers with the capability to design and develop unique designs without incurring the expense of developing new platforms. The resulting ‘app’ designs dock onto the platform and are fully interchangeable (i.e car to van to flatbed).

Key challenge

Whilst this looks like a great idea, I think that the key challenge with this technology will be pricing. It is likely that vehicle ‘apps’ will be produced in fairly low volumes and as a result it may be difficult to achieve the economies of scale needed to bring the price down. This could well mean that the resulting vehicles on sale are actually quite expensive compared to traditional vehicles from the volume vehicle manufacturers, rendering the ‘app’ proposition uncompetitive.

It has often been the case in the past that for ‘interchangeable’ products the resulting ‘options’ are actually just as expensive as buying another, brand new, fully functional product, thus rendering interchangablity as pointless.

So the key to this product’s success?

For those manufacturers already competing effectively in the niche electric vehicle market, this platform could be very good news indeed, resulting in significant R&D savings, access to the latest upgradable technology and a faster, more flexible, product development cycle.

In terms of the ‘interchangeable’ aspect of the vehicles, the keys to success are likely to be innovative, high-quality products, produced using low volume, low cost manufacturing, thereby ensuring that the designers of vehicle ‘apps’ really do have a significant price advantage against main stream solutions.

Would I buy one?

Well, if I could design my own vehicle online that I could fully specify from modular components and that was delivered direct to my door, that would be very cool indeed. However, for me, an Audi R8 or Tessla might be slightly higher up my wishlist!

Cars and coffee. Both subtle indicators of your brand…

Too flashy a car and clients might feel they are paying you too much. But, if you drive an old banger, you could well be perceived as unsuccessful and therefore hardly a safe bet to work with.

And what about your coffee? In a world where establishments serving real coffee lie on every street corner, might your coffee be undermining your brand? Increasingly, I find that people expect the same quality coffee in business meetings as they can get on the high street.

I’m not saying these criteria are fair judgments but they do seem to happen. Might be something to think about.