The era of BEV 2.0 has come

By Jeff Lee / Mike Song 2022-10-03

BEV drivers are minority nowadays. As for the current car parc in Taiwan, it’s less than 0.5%. However, to view from the evolvement of global automotive industry, the BEV technology is gradually moving toward the BEV 2.0 from BEV 1.0 nowadays. Furthermore, in the upcoming approximately 10 years of BEV 2.0, consumers will clearly feel the difference of the application fields of new technologies between BEVs and ICE cars.

After the introduction of Tesla Model S in 2012,  global EV industry had started to emerge; since then, there are some important trends had been established gradually that confirmed the era of BEVs has begun…

  • Tesla motivates the rise of new power of car manufacturing worldwide. Tesla’s innovative product designs (button-less integrated center console design, OTA downloading feature, advanced driver assistance systems), the dealer-less online direct-sales, and the widely deployed supercharger stations, all bring enormous inspiration and confidence to vast startup companies for entering automotive industry in the future.
  • The awakening of traditional carmakers. After the governments of countries enacted the timetable of zero carbon emission successively, and new power of car manufacturing rapidly expand their business with battery companies to realize the commercialization of new technologies, traditional carmakers started to revealed the strategic plannings for the next 5 years, 10 years, 15 years since about 2020 successively. They cooperate, invest, or even M&A with IT companies with their strong financial foundations to shorten the distance between the leading companies. Because all traditional carmakers fully understood that they will be knocked-out unless they begin transformation right away.
  • The market penetration rate of BEVs had increased to more than 20%. The market penetration rate had surpassed 20% in both China and Europe, the two major EV (BEV and PHEV) markets. China market had even surpassed 25% that surprised many experts and research institutions globally, which is at least two years earlier than the prediction. The wave of electrification is not only unstoppable, but also changes the market at the speed way beyond expectation.
  • The design of skateboard chassis make BEVs enjoy the unique product advantage. GM designed a skateboard chassis for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle to honor the 100th anniversary of automotive history 20 years ago and then displayed it in a motor show. However, the real application is perfectly matched in the design of BEVs… The batteries are evenly placed underneath the chassis, the motors are installed in front/rear axles, the complicated chassis structure is replaced by the drive-by-wire technology, which made the center of gravity of the bodywork lower and the degree of flatness of the chassis is higher, so that the downforce generated during driving is higher that help it obtain the dynamic stability that ICE cars are difficult to reach. More importantly, this modular-based concept of design significantly reduced the time and cost of the development of BEVs, which brings a bigger business opportunity for the IT industry and new power of car manufacturing to rapidly cut in the automotive industry.

 We can regard the current evolvement mentioned above as the era of BEV 1.0, because the era of 2.0 has come. The application scenarios of BEVs will be expanded from transportation to daily lives and commerce. By utilizing the skateboard chassis design, the new generation BEVs consist of the smart cockpit on the upper bodywork, and skateboard chassis on the lower bodywork…

  • The smart cockpits include AIoT, multi-screen display panels, intelligent interaction (drivers interact with the self-learning system of car, cars and roadside infrastructures communicate and transmit messages via AIoT), and the space rearrangement inside the cabin (Because the front/rear weight distribution of the chassis is balanced, cars won’t be easy to roll over when accidents occurs, and because the battery packs had become part of the bodywork that it can absorb more energies during side crashes; Consequently, the upper bodywork doesn’t need to be focused on the structural strength design like the unibody, and it has more flexibility of design to take consideration of the exterior styling of the upper bodywork and the space layout in the cabin, or it will become the mobile office).
  • The skateboard chassis can be designed independently from the upper side of the bodywork, so that it can be integrated with the “trio electronics” to be a complete system that evolves generation by generation without the interference in the progress of the technological evolvement of the upper bodywork. Simply speaking, the technology foundation of the BEV 2.0 is based on the skateboard chassis.

Certainly, when the evolvement of BEV 2.0 comes to the highland period in the next decade, and the BEV 3.0 will come after that due to the commercialization of fully-autonomous driving technology. At that moment, cars will become mobility platforms that people will spend more time in their cars, because the cabin of cars can be designed with more ideal layouts for personal recreation or family/friend gathering as steering wheels, dashboards, shift levers are not necessary anymore