Re-thinking the way we design trucks
The other day I stumbled upon this innovative design by Izhar Gafni: a bike made out cardboard (see featured image). The bike weighs 9 kg, can stand more than 200 kg and cost 9 $ to manufacture.
This got me thinking. In regards to the Volvo Group and its strong objectives such as a “revenue growth by 50% in the APAC region and 25% in Africa” it would be interesting to re-think completely the way Volvo designs its products in order to capture new market shares in emerging markets. This of course is already partially addressed today by doing what we call “reverse engineering” and “frugal innovation”. Big automotive players spend indeed part of their R&D expenses into re-thinking how to adapt product development to the bare needs of the emerging markets.
But we are quite often blinded by what we already know and low-cost commercial vehicles are still quite similar to traditional products. Why not take Gafni’s approach and take the opportunity to innovate completely on the way we design our trucks?
I guess what I’m getting at is: when will we see a Volvo “Cardboard Truck” on the roads ?
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