Black and beyond—colour and the mass-produced motor car

Modularised eco-innovation in the auto industry

“…Lovins and Cramer (2004) present a strong case, but implementation of their design strategy requires a complete transformation of the established production system. The huge sunk costs in production equipment for the production of steel based cars fitted with combustion engines (Andrews et al, 2006), makes such a transformation seem less likely to occur. A modular approach to the design and production of environmental technology seems, therefore, to be a more realistic and viable approach.…”

“…However, the mass-production system of the automotive industry also favours the continued production of cars based on existing technology (a steel body and a conventional combustion engine), as large-scale investments in production equipment makes it difficult to integrate new technologies that require changes to the established production processes. Andrews et al (2006) estimate that the price of a modern vehicle assembly plant including a press shop, a welding plant, a painting shop and an assembly shop is somewhere between 390 and 665 million £. The combustion engine is usually manufactured at a separate factory also associated with very high unit numbers in order to reach economic breakeven points.…”

“…The modular design and manufacturing system enables the vehicle manufacturers to increase scale and cut costs, but it also results in huge sunk costs in production equipment at the vehicle assembly plants. These huge production equipment costs eventually create high entry barriers to technologies that are not easily adapted to the mass-production paradigm of the conventional automotive industry (Andrews et al, 2006). The high entry barriers have, for decades, hindered the integration of alternatives to the conventional fossil fuel powered combustion engine (Orsato and Wells, 2007).…”