Saba Motors Build an Electric Car

Tesla Motors took cues from Apple in deceitful the business model for a new kind of electric car maker. Early-stage upstart Saba Motors, a finalist in the $10 million Automotive X Prize antagonism, has a different computer giant in mind, with its agreement manufacturing and modular components: Dell.

Based in San Jose, Calif. and working on a trivial electric sports car, Saba Motors aims to limit costs by assembling its so-called Carbon Zero Roadster from numerous portions designed for relatively simple and inexpensive outsourcing to manufacturers.

What’s really exceptional about our car is we’re changing the way cars are built; founder and CEO Simon Saba told us in an interview on Monday.

For a typical vehicle from one of today’s legacy automakers, Saba explained, much of the manufacturing paraphernalia is modified in some way to build an automaker’s unique motor, driveshaft and styling.

By contrast, Saba said he approaches suppliers and asks, what are your highest-volume products that will effort in these parameters? Rather than tooling up another big factory, Saba said the startup aims to tap existing production lines, hiring suppliers to put up Saba mechanism when they might otherwise sit idle.

Saba compared the custom tooling advance to the way computers were made 30 years ago. But if you look at the guys that won, he said, noting Dell, Sony and HP, they make very little hardware, critical out Saba.

They accumulate and ship computers using chips, motherboards and other parts from exterior suppliers, Saba said. Using Dell as a role model, while developing all of the software and battery controls in-house, he said Saba Motors will be capable to build cars with “a lot less capital than everybody else out there,” and scale up very quickly.