Abstract
This paper starts with a review of the history of vehicle body architectures and their influence on the structure of the industry, and outlines a central theme in the paper that there is an intimate link between production technologies and market strategies. Thereafter, it is argued that environmental and economic pressures are challenging the dominance of the all-steel unitary body (the Buddist paradigm), leading to the search for alternatives. Palliative measures, notably platform strategies and modular assembly, are unable to compensate for market stagnation and fragmentation. The alternatives are more than new designs of car, more than new material and process combinations. There has similarly been a proliferation of other core automotive technologies in terms of fuel, engines and transmissions. Collectively, the shifts in core technologies may create both a radically different automotive industry, and new ways of providing automobility.
Put another way, new vehicle architectures have to be more than technically viable, they have to be accompanied by a viable business model.