A startup company in Sweden is aiming to bring Ikea-style flatpack construction to the automotive industry, with a new pure-electric city car called the Luvly. Yes, that’s correct: it’s the Luvly (Light Urban Vehicle). Luvly!
It’s not necessarily about the EV technology; in fact, the company plans to use off-the-shelf batteries and motors if the Luvly reaches production.
The innovation comes in how the vehicle is designed, shipped (especially) and assembled. The entire body structure is made from composite panels, including the platform/chassis, held together with aluminium connectors and glue. Foam blocks, acting as energy absorption zones, inserted at various structural points take care of crash safety.
Because it’s all flatpacked, 10 times more cars could be fitted in the same shipping container, drastically reducing transport costs. Different panels could be cut for different versions of the car, but all fitting snugly together for shipping.
Assembly could theoretically take place at dealerships and pop-up factories, with robots able to complete the process in minutes. The glue is fast-acting, so customers could drive away quite quickly after the flatpacked car arrives. More quickly than they could assemble an Ikea bookcase, anyway.
The Luvly is tiny: 2.7m long and weighing just 400kg, although it does have a large 270-litre boot (about the same size as a Suzuki Swift). It’s designed to have swappable batteries, with a range of 100km and top speed of 90km/h.
Luvly is technically a quadricycle, like a Renault Twizy or Citroen Ami, a vehicle type familiar in congested European cities but not actually legal in NZ right now. But if it was… would you the projected price of NZ$17,000?