Like many start-ups, fledgling Swedish brand Uniti aims to disrupt the automotive industry.
Not just with the One, a three-seat electric car engineered and (initially) set to be built in the UK, unitibut further into the future, with a business model aimed at selling the car to companies as a mobility service for its employees rather than to individual customers.
We speak to the firm’s CEO, Australian-born Lewis Horne, to gain an insight into his outfit’s plans and the man himself.
You don’t see yourself as a car enthusiast, but you’re CEO of a car company. How did you end up here?
“I’m not a car guy. I’m a technology generalist. I’m pretty inspired by all of the stuff that is happening and all of the different people working to change the way the world works, which is critical. I’m somebody who doesn’t like cars very much! But I do like really beautiful, clean, simple consumer electronics – like a MacBook. I think: why can’t we have that in a car?”
Describe your operating model and why it’s different from that used by other car companies.
“We have only shown a small portion of our plan – the business to consumer [B2C] component – but there are many more big stories to come. Our model is based on recurring revenue, not traditional sales. We’re like Apple. Apple does not produce anything – they are a software, design and branding company – and that’s the same operational model that we have. There are plenty of people who are great at manufacturing and we won’t try to be best at that.”
But you are building the cars yourself, for now?
“Yes – low-volume production in Norwich for the first couple of hundred units and we use that to parlay into bigger-volume production. It’s baby steps. Is it the best place for high-volume production? I don’t necessarily think making 50,000 cars in the UK is a good idea.”
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The only way this ugly thing
The only way this ugly thing stands a chance is to build it in China.
Building it in the UK is not the way to go for obvious reasons
styling
simple shapes make for simpler, less costly, tooling and easier tooling maintenance, less potential for manufacturing problems. If the outfit really is as short of funding as it appears, these are proper considerations. Styling doesn't really matter a massive amount, once you've seen them for a while you forget everything; those over-styled civics didn't take long to become normal. This does smack of running before they could walk. Would it have been better to get the gmd t25 in to production, and develop the ev from that design?
Dreary looking thing, at
Dreary looking thing, at least in these shots. Maybe some imaginative vehicle graphics would add some zing.
MrJ wrote:
Perhaps their cash issues means they can't afford the pro version of photoshop. Do they have any physical models to show off?