Like the cellphone industry, the automotive one likely won’t go electric like Japan. With Tesla like Apple, bet that all the automobile players will rally around components like this one, a chassis by an Israeli company Ree. Ree’s platform houses all of a car’s major components – brakes, thermal systems, motor and drivetrain – next to the wheels.
Ree Automotive, an electric car chassis platform company from Tel Aviv has been named as one of ten game-changing companies by Bloomberg for its novel EV platform – flat, scalable and modular and offers customers full design freedom to create the broadest range of EV and autonomous vehicles for current and future use. REE’s new platform approach, provides access to hundreds of production lines. Eat your heart out Elon Musk and Tesla!
Michael Wilshire, from the Bloomberg group that awarded Ree the prize, said: “Ree is literally reinventing the wheel with its revolutionary approach, putting intelligence and drive inside [the arch of] each of the four wheels of a chassis to create a new, flexible and modular electric platform, which gives customers complete design freedom to build their vehicles.”
We like seeing the way this startup has taken on the problem that companies like Tel Aviv’s all-electric car company Better Place could never fix: Better Place built the infrastructure and charge stations but they needed to rely on Renault to produce the cars. Boring, average, nothing to write home about in looks: customers weren’t lining up to buy one and the company flopped. On top of that, Better Place started with a vision that you would pay for minutes of use for the battery much like a cell phone plan.
Israel is not known for its successes in automotive: when the entire Middle East embargoed Israel decades ago, and wouldn’t let western or Asian car companies import to here, the Israelis were forced to innovate. And they developed a local car called the Sussita that was made from fibreglass and also tasty to camels.
Many people have tried to innovate for the auto industry from Israel. Waze, and MobileEye, all modern startup draw dropping success stories: but innovating the car itself has been a different challenge, probably because Israelis are about as opposite to the Swiss as you can imagine. Things made in Israel don’t have the same standards of excellence found in Europe.
But Israel likes to be a disruptor and Ree thinks they have done it with its chassis. I used to work at a car plant in Canada, at Chrysler and helped build chassis It’s the structure upon which holds the guts and body and engine of the car. It’s like the car’s spine.
Ree says it’s doing more than a basic build for electric with patented modules that integrate more than just a steel frame, but suspension and steering components into the arch of the wheel – a pioneering by-wire control system that carries a totally flat, autonomous-ready EV platform, designed to fulfil existing and future e-mobility applications. Basically they are putting all the important parts into the chassis, and most of the rest is just the skin of the car. If you are a brand or a car manufacturer, build your own.
With the global EV market projected to reach $803 billion USD in 2027 from $162 billion USD in 2019 (and let’s bypass 2020 please because it’s not a usual year), Ree hopes to lead the transformation of cars at existing and new car plants to make them all electric.
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist and publisher that founded Green Prophet to unite a prosperous Middle East. She shows through her work that positive, inspiring dialogue creates action that impacts people, business and planet. She has published in thought-leading newspapers and magazines globally, owns an IoT tech chip patent, and is part of teams that build world-changing products to make agriculture and our planet more sustainable. Reach out directly to [email protected]
