Make Cars Modular Again

Abstract

In the early 1900s more than 2,000 different companies made and sold at least one car, using easily available mail-order parts like engines and axles (what we would call modules today). A wide variety of cars—steam, electric and gasoline—were made and car technology evolved explosively. Almost all of those companies failed and vanished, but that “creative destruction” spurred innovation. Since then, evolution in the car industry has slowed down to be mostly modest optimization by a relative few carmakers. We want to make cars modular again, and bring back to carmaking the vibrancy and revolutionary change of the early 1900s. As a start, we propose that carmakers use standard interfaces so that computer-driver and electrical-power modules from other companies can be connected to their cars.