Maybe Your Next Car Will Be Shipped Flat Pack
One of the biggest costs in manufacturing a new vehicle is getting it from the factory to the consumer. The main problem? The passenger compartment is mostly empty space during shipping. However, Swedish startup Luvly, in partnership with Stellantis, is rethinking this. They’re developing an “Ikea-style” flat-pack quadricycle, potentially revolutionizing vehicle shipping.
Luvly’s proof of concept, the O electric quadricycle, could allow the company to ship 250 flat-packed units in the same amount of space as just twenty fully-assembled models. This offers huge cost savings.
By drastically reducing shipping costs, Luvly aims to pass the savings on to consumers, offering a lower-priced product with fewer shipping emissions. This could completely change the way cars are manufactured and delivered. While the Luvly O is a small two-seat EV with a relatively limited range, its construction method is what matters most.
The Luvly O’s Design
The Luvly O is built around a framework of aluminum extrusions with composite panels forming the body. The company moved away from a monocoque design after finding it was too complex and expensive to produce and ship.
“Doing that means the panels are super-cheap and we can ship them in pieces,” Håkan Lutz, head of Luvly, told Autocar. “It also means we can tailor the panels for different vehicles.” The panels are assembled using fast-setting glues, with the process potentially taking about a minute per vehicle via robotic assembly.
The Future of Flat-Pack Cars
Stellantis already produces successful quadricycles like the Citroën Ami, Fiat Topolino, and Opel Rocks-e. It’s possible that the next generation of these small EVs could adopt Luvly’s modular flat-pack architecture.
Lutz told Zag Daily, “The aim of this partnership is to show that we can deliver on our promises.”
“This is the first major commercial partnership with a player as pivotal as Stellantis,” Lutz added. “If we manage to prove the level of safety and the economics of our platform and Stellantis chooses to adopt it, that is a major thing—not only for us, but for the industry.”
