e.GO, a good idea and that's all

You certainly have encountered a lot of news from the Geneva Motor Show lately and I did too. One question that sparked in my mind however was why do the cars of the future seem to be built on platforms with no applicability in the real world. Of course, not all of them are like this, Honda's E Prototype I think is one of the best examples of market oriented design, but on the other side, you've got startups like e.GO.

Sadly we started to see this mentality with startup companies as well, this year we saw e.GO present their Shuttle e.GO Lux, which is sort of a futuristic combination between an #autonomous #electric bus and a living room (I know... who needs this?). They also showed it side by side with their previously unveiled Mover, which is supposed to transport up to 15 persons and is about half the size of the Shuttle Lux. I'm perplexed about the fact that the small one is supposed to transport a bunch of persons and the bigger one will house only 5-6? Don't you guys have anything else to spend your resources on than useless concept cars?

One thing that will probably have quite some success is the van version of the e.GO Mover, which the CEO, Prof. Dr. Günther Schuh, hinted at during their #Geneva presentation.

Taking a further look at their specs wouldn't impress you much because they mostly source their power trains from Bosch and ZF, so they don't develop much into what matters most in this moment, respectively the powertrain, they just build cases for technologies built by other companies.

Ok.. so we got this out of the way. Maybe they can build it for cheaper? No.. while we can't compare the price of the buses, we can for their small vehicle, e.GO Life, which compared to the other two is a great idea. A small car, for your daily commute, it seems like it addresses a real market, but it starts at 16.000 € and goes up to 20.000 €. The range of the vehicles should be anywhere from 100 km to 145 km ranges from 100 km, which is less than what their competition offers.

I had the chance to see the e.GO Life #prototype in reality and if you think that Tesla has some quality problems with panel gaps, you should have seen that. The interior is not much better either, I mean Dacia has a better interior than that. I can only hope that they sort everything out until they start delivering because for those prices it makes no sense to get it over a Renault Zoe or the upcoming Honda E and Peugeot e-208, which will offer you good service later in the vehicle ownership in case something goes wrong.

I hope that they succeed in their endeavour as I am a fan of #EVs myself, but at this point it doesn't look pretty good if they don't come up with market oriented developments of their own that can stand up competitively.

As Prof. Schuh said in his Geneva presentation referring to the e.GO Life "it's not just a rational decision, it's an emotional decision to have such a fun car" and sadly that's almost never the good decision.