JULY 2020
NEWS www.theengineer.CO.UK
REE Automotive offers endless
options for electric vehicles
Flat battery-pack chassis extends design choices
A JASON FORD reports
completely flat chassis
coupled with drivetrain
components housed in a
vehicle’s wheels will give
automotive designers
limitless freedom when creating
tomorrow’s electric vehicles.
This is the claim of REE
Automotive, an Israeli start-up
whose REEcorner architecture
integrates components including
braking, electric-motor, steering,
and suspension into the wheel
before being integrated into a flat,
battery-packed chassis dubbed
REEboard.
According to company CEO and
co-founder Daniel Barel, REE is the
only company in the world that
provides steering, braking and drive
by wire on a single wheel. In-wheel
condition monitoring is AI-driven
and each REEcorner module can be
swapped out in under 20 minutes if
a malfunction cannot be fixed with
an OTA (over the air) solution.
“Each REEcorner is completely
independent, there’s nothing
connected physically to other
corners,” he said. “The degrees of
July 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk 6
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freedom we’ve got by doing that are
unparalleled by anybody else’s.”
The company is technology
provider that has access to a global
network of 300 manufacturing
facilities thanks to numerous
partnerships formed since its
inception in 2013. REE’s target
markets are passenger EVs,
autonomous cars (the platform is
said to be autonomous ready), EV
taxis and shuttles, last mile delivery
trucks, heavy trucks and buses.
The scalability of the platform
lends itself to any form of electric
vehicle thanks in part to REEboard,
which is not hamstrung by housing
drive components, making it
simpler, lighter and easier to
manufacture. The platform also
offers the largest interior space for
the smallest exterior footprint.
“If you want to change the
wheelbase, if you want to change
height…there are no ripple effects…
the board is almost agnostic to the
corners,” Barel said.
“If Tesla, for example,
want to increase the
range then Elon Musk
needs to create a new battery
technology that can pack more
energy in the same space, which
is what they’re doing and its quite
costly,” he continued. “We can
pack more range by adding more
batteries, reducing the cost. Then of
course you can build anything you
want on top of that. It’s completely
flat. You can build anything…
any shape, any size. There are no
limitations, it’s a blank sheet of
paper.”
REE emerged from stealth
mode in 2019 and is working with
Toyota-affiliated truckmaker Hino,
Mitsubishi Corp, FiatChrysler,
Musahsi (Honda), American Axle
and suspension specialists KYB
Corporation.
According to Barel, being a
technology provider has allowed
Ree Automotive to operate outside
the constraints that have dictated
automotive design for over 100
years.
“Nobody knows what a vehicle
is going to look like in 10 years,” he
said. “What will be the range? What
will be the wheelbase? Will
it be autonomous or
not? We said, how do
you tackle this? You
tackle it by building
something…
modular, taking
today’s vehicles and
tomorrow’s
requirements.”
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