When the use of a vehicle is changing, we can expect the needs to change as well. In the present scenario, we are looking at a niche market. The Elevate sales are expected to be ten times lower than vehicles from a conventional car manufacturer.   

This drastic drop has a direct impact on the manufacturing process, in need of a reinvention. A shift in production, towards highly automated and flexible micro factories, with a low carbon footprint, has begun. Any plant can produce less than capacity, but it would lose a lot money. With more agility, and the equivalent square meter size of a large grocery store, micro factories would be the solution to handle these smaller volumes of production while remaining profitable. However, there is quite a gap between what we want to achieve and where we are at now.   

Today, we need to be more open about how we handle production, and how we want it handled in the future. The challenge is to follow the example led by the semiconductor manufacturing industry with fabless business models. The designers have to adapt to a set of design rules and think their design according to the factory where it is produced. Today, factories are owned by car manufacturers, and the automotive sector is quite set in its ways with a controlled manufacturing process: first design, then production, then assembly. But going outsourcing would be a cultural shift for automotive designers. From the start, assembly must be taken into consideration. The design of the product will need to integrate the assembly process and feasibility to facilitate its automation later on.