REE AUTOMOTIVE European Exclusive - reinventing the wheel for the world's automakers _ FULLY CHARGED
**The Future of Electric Vehicles: A Conversation with Daniel Burrell of Re-Automotive**
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**Introduction**
In another exciting episode of "The Fully Charged Show," host Robert Llewellyn welcomed Daniel Burrell from Re-Automotive, an innovative startup based in Israel. The discussion revolved around the groundbreaking technology Re-Automotive is developing to transform the electric vehicle (EV) industry. Before diving into the technical details, Robert reminded viewers about the opportunities available to those who subscribe to the show, including competitions to win a car for a year and other exciting prizes.
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**The Problem with Legacy Electric Vehicle Designs**
Robert began by discussing his recent experiences reviewing EVs from legacy manufacturers. He noted that these vehicles often face delays and then are built using outdated production methods similar to combustion engines. This approach packs all drive components between the front and rear axles, making it impossible to achieve a flat skateboard chassis design. Even today's so-called skateboard chassis only have a flat middle section, with non-flat front and rear sections due to legacy constraints.
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**Re-Automotive’s Modular Approach**
Daniel explained that Re-Automotive is revolutionizing EV design by moving all drive components into a modular "corner" located between the chassis and wheel hub. This innovation eliminates the "ripple effect" problem, where changing one aspect of a vehicle (like wheelbase) requires redesigning multiple systems. By isolating these components in corners, Re-Automative allows for greater design flexibility without costly retooling. Different families of corners cater to various vehicle requirements, enabling customization.
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**Enabling Innovation Without Competition**
Daniel emphasized that Re-Automotive's platform is designed to empower others, much like how Intel powers multiple brands. By providing a complete drive system, Re-Automative allows companies to focus on their strengths—whether it's body design, commercial use, or passenger vehicles—without needing expertise in drivetrains or stability control.
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**Manufacturing Strategy**
Re-Automative has established a unique network of tier-one partners globally, utilizing their free capacity across 30 countries and over 300 production lines. This approach avoids the need for massive capital investment in new factories. Instead, they use regional integration centers—assembly lines closer to customers where parts are assembled on-site. Each center can produce between 20,000 to 30,000 platforms annually, allowing scalable and efficient manufacturing.
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**Sustainability and Second-Life Applications**
The conversation turned to sustainability. Re-Automative's modular design simplifies maintenance and upgrades, with corners replaceable in under an hour. This reduces downtime and costs. Additionally, batteries can be repurposed for second-life applications, such as powering vehicles with lower performance requirements or even integrating them into energy storage systems.
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**Future Plans and Engineering Excellence**
Daniel revealed plans to establish an engineering center of excellence at MIRA in the UK, leveraging its extensive testing facilities. Re-Automative aims to make their technology accessible globally, potentially leading to soon-to-be-seen vehicles powered by their innovative platform.
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**Closing Remarks**
Robert expressed enthusiasm about Re-Automative's potential and how their approach could bypass traditional challenges faced by EV startups. He concluded with a reminder to subscribe for more episodes and check out the show notes for competition details and other opportunities.
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This article captures the full essence of the conversation, highlighting the transformative potential of Re-Automative's technology in reshaping the EV industry.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello and welcome to another very exciting episode of the fully charged show i do get to talk to some really incredible people uh today's conversation is with daniel burrell from re-automotive an amazing startup from israel what they're doing you can see on the screen behind me is really impressive uh before we do that though i just want to remind viewers of the opportunities available to people who have subscribed to the fully charged show on youtube because you would then be your eligible to enter our competition to win a car an electric car for a year and not just in the british isles all over the world it's an amazing offer please do check it out links about it are beneath this video there's other smaller competitions coming if you go to our webpage at fully charged dot show you will be able to find out all about it it's very exciting but that's enough of that because i really want you to listen to what daniel barrow is talking about because it is amazing technology that could really change the picture of the transportation industry in a very major way so that's enough waffle from me let's get on with the show the thing that i've come to realize recently is particularly i've reviewed a lot of cars in the last six months that have come out you know they've been delayed and delayed they've now come out made by legacy manufacturers big car companies that make petrol and diesel cars and you you understand once you go round their factory why do they put the the battery control system the engine control system the motor the cooling system all in one lump and then then slide up into the car as it goes along the production going oh because that's exactly how they do a combustion engine you know we've been building cars the same way for the past what more than a century yeah because conceptually if you think about it an ev today is basically a petrol car where you've taken the petrol exactly and put an electric motor yeah the rest is more or less the same yeah now being flat it's an advantage but but it's not really flat if you think about it all the today's so-called skateboard chassis are are flat only in the middle yeah the front and the rear are not flat why because for the past century we've been packing in between the front and rear axles all the drive components right everything that makes the car go so it can't be flat yeah only the middle part is flat and if you're honest about it it's has been flat also more or less with yes with petrol there's been a dry shaft there but not nothing else yeah what we're doing is we've taken everything that makes the car go the dr the motor the suspension the drivetrain the steering the braking and the control and placed it in a space between the chassis and the wheel now that specific space in between the chassis and the wheel hub we call the corner right and it's all packed there once you've taken it off the trusty you can change the dimension of the charge as you want without causing the ripple effect right because if you you take a regular chassis any ev today and you change the wheelbase by six seven inches there is a ripple effect you have to redesign the half shaft you really have to redesign center of gravity suspension etc you build a new vehicle that cost about a billion dollars in about eight years right that's basically the most expensive six inches in the world and it's only because there's a ripple effect yeah but when you've taken it off the chassis there is no ripple effect it's agnostic to the chassis you can put on different kind of chassis yeah we've built four different families of corners with different attributing capabilities now we have of course different permutation of each of those families but according to your requirement from the vehicle we choose together with you the right per the right family of corners and then you're sorted out that's all you need it's everything in those corners regardless to the size shape or or use of your vehicle because i think the exciting thing is and correct me if i'm wrong but theoretically if someone was using your system and decided to build a vehicle on top of it they though that a company wouldn't necessarily have to be a car company now or have that sort of long-term legacy of drive trains of stability of traction control all those that's a huge it's a huge topic but they could build really good body work really useful uh carrying capacity in a commercial vehicle or or passenger vehicle or whatever and concentrate and focus their energy on that i mean that this is a leading question but i'm assuming that's the goal in a way that it makes that very exciting for for different people our our all motor is we complete we don't compete yes and this is exactly what we do we're enabling it's it's very similar to um intel powering a dell lenovo uh or an hp whatever brand you want right we do the same thing you can do whatever you want on top we're not competing with you we're not gonna build bodies ourselves yeah we're gonna enable you with a platform with everything you need you don't need to do the uh the build of that the safety of that the kinematics calculate that's all on us the ramp up you know we can make look we've made five and they all work and they're really good uh yeah we want five hundred thousand you know that so that ramp up so where how do you see that happening and where will manufacturing take place do you have you got around to that yet what we've done which is different than anybody else is that we created a very unique and exclusive network of tier one partners right that are working exclusively with us globally in more than 30 countries 300 production lines across the world and we're taking their free capacity from everywhere across the world and then we move that according to what we need to make to the point of sale so let's say if we need to make vehicles in the in the us or in the uk will have what we call an integration center which is essentially an assembly line right no heavy machinery or anything like that just an assembly line at a closer the customer the point of sale and all the parts coming from all around the world to that location where they are assembled right that allows us to build in the next five years about 15 1-5 integration centers right so we are going to be everywhere being able to meet that demand each integration center has a capacity of roughly between 2 000 sorry 20 000 to 30 000 platforms a year right right and we can build as many as we want of those they cost just a few millions of dollars not billions like any other production line and that allows us to look at the whole market and address it at once without the need to invest monstrous amounts of capital into that i mean it is the sort of standard model which we're even seeing you know with people like tesla you know they're going to build a gigafactory in another gigafactory now they're going to move that gigafactory to this even bigger gigafactory it's just all about and those are colossal i mean the cost i can't even imagine and i mean they're a profitable business it's not that they're not gonna it's not gonna work but it is a monstrous investment and what you're doing is fitting in effectively with existing logistics and structure and production facilities so you say you've had your your whatever the vehicle has been running for five years and there's this new battery technology which what you were mentioning earlier has come in and there's now you can buy a a competing vehicle with this amazing new super lightweight high-capacity batteries that are and then you can so you can without taking the vehicle to pieces you can drop out the batteries that it was built with is this the case and and then reformat the new batteries and fit them in i mean is that that's the the idea behind that i mean that's it you don't have to tear the car to bits to do that right it's fully modular it's built in order to apply that yeah exactly but also the corners right in five six years you might want different kind of chords yeah with different capabilities it takes less than an hour to replace a corner how long does it take a vehicle to replace i would say um the driver drive training actually is huge and huge costs yeah you have to take half the car out right take the gearbox out put a new one in re put everything and like my old mechanic when my old car used to do every time i put it into the shop uh there was a little plastic bag with some screws and i used to say what are those i don't know where these go well i've done that every time but yeah i've done that myself replacing a gearbox in an old van i had when i was young man and it was all done it worked i started it moved it's fine and then i looked in a tray there was five big bolts they never went back in and i drove that car for years i had no idea what they were for i never found a home for them yeah for instance say you had a damaged from a hitting a pothole because of that has the corners got things like shock absorbers and the suspension correct it's got to be that's built in so if that was damaged on one corner it's just something i've experienced where i've damaged shock you could effectively replace that corner or even a low-speed accident or something that could be replaced this is its entirety yes so again think about fleet managers think about ups fedex all right let's say you've got a problem in a shock absorber right so you you take it into the shop and a mechanic that is certified on that specific vehicle need to to check it out right and then they say okay you need a new shock absorber but most likely there is none available currently you have to order it takes a couple of days that supply chain and spare inventory management is is really expensive and complicated so we decided to eliminate that there is only one spare part that's all it's called a corner right whatever happened there take one out yeah put one in less than an hour drive up right we'll take care of everything later on so say you've upgraded the batteries and upgrade and replaced a corner what happens to that those items once they've replaced i think this is a really important point in going forward for all of us is what do we do with the bits of stuff yeah the second life yeah mechanical parts are very easy to read yes right so that's a given everybody does it today we'll keep on doing that and probably refurbish and put back to use as as much as possible batteries on the other hand have to be put into second life so let's say you want a lorry going at a certain speed right with a certain requirement of that battery but in a different market in the world they don't need that high capacity they don't need that much power density they don't need that performance because the usage is different yeah so why don't take the batteries that you've been using for the past five years and put them in a different vehicle right that requires lower spec yeah no not because it's a bad vehicle don't get me wrong the requirements right but it could also be cheaper i i'm assuming as well this is where i'm getting to now usually those vehicles are cheaper yeah right because this is the trade-off yeah i think what mahindra now in india are selling an eevee for well four thousand about four thousand dollars yes yeah it's a brilliant car yeah for the indian market but nobody thinks it's comparing to tesla or neo right but this is the whole idea yeah and we believe second life is key for those yeah and this is what we want to allow you to change those while the steve have some still have some juice yeah yeah yeah we've seen others that have looking into putting them into the grid that's batteries and putting them into houses et cetera but it could be done not by us we're not a power company right but but again could be done i think that the the future of second life is still yet to be to be decided it's only just starting isn't it really yeah correct yeah particularly for people in the british isles i think there might be some interest in the fact that you're establishing us an engineering center of excellence at mira so i've actually filmed at mira in the past so i know that is a technology park here myra and and their their testing track i mean it's what more than 800 acres yeah it's a testing trucks it's huge we we can drive it there we can test our vehicles we can do everything we wanted it's perfect yeah this is very uh selfish of me when am i first going to be able to go in a vehicle that is powered by re i mean do you know have you got any idea when the sort of first thing that we can see that is actually a vehicle as opposed to just the skateboard when we might see that when can you travel to israel i knew you'd say i'm hoping soon i have no idea but i see so that it's not impossible we could see something quite soon we would more than welcome you here right and you know show you um and and let you play with the toys that would be great that would be fantastic well daniel i want to thank you because i just think uh what you're doing is really really impressive uh so thank you very much for explaining it to us today and you know we will definitely be seeing more of there's no question now there's every now and then i'll see a new company and i'll go oh like lucid in america i really wanted them to work and they almost did then it disappeared then they always they might do it but you kind of you're not sure whereas when as soon as i saw re as soon as i saw what you were doing thank you these guys are going somewhere this is fantastic thank you robert thank you so much thank you it's always fun talking to you okay thank you well i really hope you enjoyed that we're praying that we can either get to israel to see what they're doing or in fact uh go to uh to the uh their research and development uh area center here in the in the glorious old united kingdom uh really really interesting what we are doing and i'm sure we're gonna see a lot more of them on the fully charged show in the coming years because i think what they're doing is incredible um that's all i don't even want to talk about subscribing or patreon you i could mention patreon uh but the links to that are also in the show notes for this episode but that's all i don't want to make a big fuss of it i mentioned it up at the top please subscribe there we go done it uh that's all as always if you have been thank you for watching youhello and welcome to another very exciting episode of the fully charged show i do get to talk to some really incredible people uh today's conversation is with daniel burrell from re-automotive an amazing startup from israel what they're doing you can see on the screen behind me is really impressive uh before we do that though i just want to remind viewers of the opportunities available to people who have subscribed to the fully charged show on youtube because you would then be your eligible to enter our competition to win a car an electric car for a year and not just in the british isles all over the world it's an amazing offer please do check it out links about it are beneath this video there's other smaller competitions coming if you go to our webpage at fully charged dot show you will be able to find out all about it it's very exciting but that's enough of that because i really want you to listen to what daniel barrow is talking about because it is amazing technology that could really change the picture of the transportation industry in a very major way so that's enough waffle from me let's get on with the show the thing that i've come to realize recently is particularly i've reviewed a lot of cars in the last six months that have come out you know they've been delayed and delayed they've now come out made by legacy manufacturers big car companies that make petrol and diesel cars and you you understand once you go round their factory why do they put the the battery control system the engine control system the motor the cooling system all in one lump and then then slide up into the car as it goes along the production going oh because that's exactly how they do a combustion engine you know we've been building cars the same way for the past what more than a century yeah because conceptually if you think about it an ev today is basically a petrol car where you've taken the petrol exactly and put an electric motor yeah the rest is more or less the same yeah now being flat it's an advantage but but it's not really flat if you think about it all the today's so-called skateboard chassis are are flat only in the middle yeah the front and the rear are not flat why because for the past century we've been packing in between the front and rear axles all the drive components right everything that makes the car go so it can't be flat yeah only the middle part is flat and if you're honest about it it's has been flat also more or less with yes with petrol there's been a dry shaft there but not nothing else yeah what we're doing is we've taken everything that makes the car go the dr the motor the suspension the drivetrain the steering the braking and the control and placed it in a space between the chassis and the wheel now that specific space in between the chassis and the wheel hub we call the corner right and it's all packed there once you've taken it off the trusty you can change the dimension of the charge as you want without causing the ripple effect right because if you you take a regular chassis any ev today and you change the wheelbase by six seven inches there is a ripple effect you have to redesign the half shaft you really have to redesign center of gravity suspension etc you build a new vehicle that cost about a billion dollars in about eight years right that's basically the most expensive six inches in the world and it's only because there's a ripple effect yeah but when you've taken it off the chassis there is no ripple effect it's agnostic to the chassis you can put on different kind of chassis yeah we've built four different families of corners with different attributing capabilities now we have of course different permutation of each of those families but according to your requirement from the vehicle we choose together with you the right per the right family of corners and then you're sorted out that's all you need it's everything in those corners regardless to the size shape or or use of your vehicle because i think the exciting thing is and correct me if i'm wrong but theoretically if someone was using your system and decided to build a vehicle on top of it they though that a company wouldn't necessarily have to be a car company now or have that sort of long-term legacy of drive trains of stability of traction control all those that's a huge it's a huge topic but they could build really good body work really useful uh carrying capacity in a commercial vehicle or or passenger vehicle or whatever and concentrate and focus their energy on that i mean that this is a leading question but i'm assuming that's the goal in a way that it makes that very exciting for for different people our our all motor is we complete we don't compete yes and this is exactly what we do we're enabling it's it's very similar to um intel powering a dell lenovo uh or an hp whatever brand you want right we do the same thing you can do whatever you want on top we're not competing with you we're not gonna build bodies ourselves yeah we're gonna enable you with a platform with everything you need you don't need to do the uh the build of that the safety of that the kinematics calculate that's all on us the ramp up you know we can make look we've made five and they all work and they're really good uh yeah we want five hundred thousand you know that so that ramp up so where how do you see that happening and where will manufacturing take place do you have you got around to that yet what we've done which is different than anybody else is that we created a very unique and exclusive network of tier one partners right that are working exclusively with us globally in more than 30 countries 300 production lines across the world and we're taking their free capacity from everywhere across the world and then we move that according to what we need to make to the point of sale so let's say if we need to make vehicles in the in the us or in the uk will have what we call an integration center which is essentially an assembly line right no heavy machinery or anything like that just an assembly line at a closer the customer the point of sale and all the parts coming from all around the world to that location where they are assembled right that allows us to build in the next five years about 15 1-5 integration centers right so we are going to be everywhere being able to meet that demand each integration center has a capacity of roughly between 2 000 sorry 20 000 to 30 000 platforms a year right right and we can build as many as we want of those they cost just a few millions of dollars not billions like any other production line and that allows us to look at the whole market and address it at once without the need to invest monstrous amounts of capital into that i mean it is the sort of standard model which we're even seeing you know with people like tesla you know they're going to build a gigafactory in another gigafactory now they're going to move that gigafactory to this even bigger gigafactory it's just all about and those are colossal i mean the cost i can't even imagine and i mean they're a profitable business it's not that they're not gonna it's not gonna work but it is a monstrous investment and what you're doing is fitting in effectively with existing logistics and structure and production facilities so you say you've had your your whatever the vehicle has been running for five years and there's this new battery technology which what you were mentioning earlier has come in and there's now you can buy a a competing vehicle with this amazing new super lightweight high-capacity batteries that are and then you can so you can without taking the vehicle to pieces you can drop out the batteries that it was built with is this the case and and then reformat the new batteries and fit them in i mean is that that's the the idea behind that i mean that's it you don't have to tear the car to bits to do that right it's fully modular it's built in order to apply that yeah exactly but also the corners right in five six years you might want different kind of chords yeah with different capabilities it takes less than an hour to replace a corner how long does it take a vehicle to replace i would say um the driver drive training actually is huge and huge costs yeah you have to take half the car out right take the gearbox out put a new one in re put everything and like my old mechanic when my old car used to do every time i put it into the shop uh there was a little plastic bag with some screws and i used to say what are those i don't know where these go well i've done that every time but yeah i've done that myself replacing a gearbox in an old van i had when i was young man and it was all done it worked i started it moved it's fine and then i looked in a tray there was five big bolts they never went back in and i drove that car for years i had no idea what they were for i never found a home for them yeah for instance say you had a damaged from a hitting a pothole because of that has the corners got things like shock absorbers and the suspension correct it's got to be that's built in so if that was damaged on one corner it's just something i've experienced where i've damaged shock you could effectively replace that corner or even a low-speed accident or something that could be replaced this is its entirety yes so again think about fleet managers think about ups fedex all right let's say you've got a problem in a shock absorber right so you you take it into the shop and a mechanic that is certified on that specific vehicle need to to check it out right and then they say okay you need a new shock absorber but most likely there is none available currently you have to order it takes a couple of days that supply chain and spare inventory management is is really expensive and complicated so we decided to eliminate that there is only one spare part that's all it's called a corner right whatever happened there take one out yeah put one in less than an hour drive up right we'll take care of everything later on so say you've upgraded the batteries and upgrade and replaced a corner what happens to that those items once they've replaced i think this is a really important point in going forward for all of us is what do we do with the bits of stuff yeah the second life yeah mechanical parts are very easy to read yes right so that's a given everybody does it today we'll keep on doing that and probably refurbish and put back to use as as much as possible batteries on the other hand have to be put into second life so let's say you want a lorry going at a certain speed right with a certain requirement of that battery but in a different market in the world they don't need that high capacity they don't need that much power density they don't need that performance because the usage is different yeah so why don't take the batteries that you've been using for the past five years and put them in a different vehicle right that requires lower spec yeah no not because it's a bad vehicle don't get me wrong the requirements right but it could also be cheaper i i'm assuming as well this is where i'm getting to now usually those vehicles are cheaper yeah right because this is the trade-off yeah i think what mahindra now in india are selling an eevee for well four thousand about four thousand dollars yes yeah it's a brilliant car yeah for the indian market but nobody thinks it's comparing to tesla or neo right but this is the whole idea yeah and we believe second life is key for those yeah and this is what we want to allow you to change those while the steve have some still have some juice yeah yeah yeah we've seen others that have looking into putting them into the grid that's batteries and putting them into houses et cetera but it could be done not by us we're not a power company right but but again could be done i think that the the future of second life is still yet to be to be decided it's only just starting isn't it really yeah correct yeah particularly for people in the british isles i think there might be some interest in the fact that you're establishing us an engineering center of excellence at mira so i've actually filmed at mira in the past so i know that is a technology park here myra and and their their testing track i mean it's what more than 800 acres yeah it's a testing trucks it's huge we we can drive it there we can test our vehicles we can do everything we wanted it's perfect yeah this is very uh selfish of me when am i first going to be able to go in a vehicle that is powered by re i mean do you know have you got any idea when the sort of first thing that we can see that is actually a vehicle as opposed to just the skateboard when we might see that when can you travel to israel i knew you'd say i'm hoping soon i have no idea but i see so that it's not impossible we could see something quite soon we would more than welcome you here right and you know show you um and and let you play with the toys that would be great that would be fantastic well daniel i want to thank you because i just think uh what you're doing is really really impressive uh so thank you very much for explaining it to us today and you know we will definitely be seeing more of there's no question now there's every now and then i'll see a new company and i'll go oh like lucid in america i really wanted them to work and they almost did then it disappeared then they always they might do it but you kind of you're not sure whereas when as soon as i saw re as soon as i saw what you were doing thank you these guys are going somewhere this is fantastic thank you robert thank you so much thank you it's always fun talking to you okay thank you well i really hope you enjoyed that we're praying that we can either get to israel to see what they're doing or in fact uh go to uh to the uh their research and development uh area center here in the in the glorious old united kingdom uh really really interesting what we are doing and i'm sure we're gonna see a lot more of them on the fully charged show in the coming years because i think what they're doing is incredible um that's all i don't even want to talk about subscribing or patreon you i could mention patreon uh but the links to that are also in the show notes for this episode but that's all i don't want to make a big fuss of it i mentioned it up at the top please subscribe there we go done it uh that's all as always if you have been thank you for watching you\n"