‘The most expensive business card ever made’
Zero-emission concept vehicle aims to show that Canada can hunt for next generation of cars
Project Arrow, announced this fall, aims to produce the first all-Canadian, zero-emission vehicle. Sort of. Spearheaded by the Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association of Canada, the initiative is really about selling Ontario’s auto-parts savvy to the world — and in the process ensuring the sector’s survival in the coming disruption. APMA president Flavio Volpe is under no illusions about that disruption: it will be fierce.
Your association has produced concept cars before. What’s different about Project Arrow?
We’ve been doing demonstration projects for the past six years, using vehicles made in Ontario to show automakers commercially ready technology from our supplier members. Project Arrow is the natural next step. The Germans, the Japanese and other automotive superpowers have an advantage because they have national carmakers to carry their brands overseas. Somebody described Project Arrow to me as the most expensive business card ever made.
So this is more a marketing exercise than a commercial product?
It’s somewhere in between. We’re building an actual vehicle to Canadian Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. As a trade association, we’re a few hundred million dollars short of what’s needed for a commercial venture, but we hope to inspire a bit of the Silicon Valley automotive startup culture in Ontario. If one of our sector partners wants to take it over the line, we will have done all the homework.
Do you think electric vehicles will ever being fully embraced by Canadians?
Right now, the price delta for owner
ship is greater than the savings on gasoline because lithium is very expensive and the energy density of batteries make range an issue. The second part is the effect of cool climate on range. But battery advancements will fix that. The mitigating factor are decisions like California’s to stop the sale of vehicles with
internal combustion engines as of 2035. We see the next15 years as a clear timeline for battery chemistry technology, and automakers are responding.
Can electric cars be viable without government subsidies?
Government subsidies play a big part now but electrification is bigger than battery electric vehicles. And Project Arrow is not evangelizing electric vehicles. We’re saying that the future is zero emissions. Besides, the electric motor isn’t exotic. The first Canadian patent for an electric vehicle dates to 1893. The world went the internalcombustion route because of how much further you could get on gasoline and how much easier it was to build a gasoline distribution network.
What do you think of the argument that to cut total vehicle emissions, we should be promoting hybrids rather than EVs because hybrids are more practical and affordable? Lower emissions in 100 cars is better than no emissions in one car.
“It isn’t trivial that Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, is betting heavily that fuel cells are the future.”
FLAVIO VOLPE
APMA PRESIDENT
The hybrid-electric option is much more practical for consumers right now. Ultimately, we may end up jumping past EVs to fuel cells, and hybridization will be what bridges the gap. I think Tesla is amazing but I also think it may be the Napster that leads to Apple Music.
Automakers have benefited from the pandemic because people want to avoid public transit and sharing vehicles. Unlike the last downturn, car sales are booming. Are parts manufacturers tapping government supports?
There hasn’t been a government subsidy to our companies except for wage subsidy and rent in some cases. But since we reopened in May, the industry hasn’t asked for, nor has it received, any government subsidy. Everybody is healthier since 2009. In fact, our members stepped up, volunteering to manufacture PPE and ventilators. I humbly submit that the industry paid back a lot of the goodwill that the people of Can
ada and Ontario gave it the last time we needed them.
What do you think are the most exciting car technologies on the horizon?
I think fuel cells have the potential to revolutionize how we transport goods and people. Transportation fleets and mass transit run on routes so you can build a “hydrogen highway” with refuelling stations, like ONRoute. While hydrogen is difficult to store and distribute, we have an incredible abundance of it. It isn’t trivial that Toyota, the world’s biggest automaker, is betting heavily that fuel cells are the future.
But the best enabling technology for autonomous and connected drive are electric platforms, because you want the powertrain to respond in unison with the instructions from the vehicle’s central nervous system. Whether it ends up being hybridization or electric or fuel cell, it’s very plausible that before you and I shut our eyes for the last time, we will have a totally autonomous transportation sector given the amount of money everyone from Google to Goodyear is investing in a zero-contact future. I took some APMA members to the Perimeter Institute to discuss car technology from a theoretical physics point of view. One researcher said, “Do you understand quantum imaging? You can project a solid, opaque image but it’s not there. If cars don’t touch each other and you can do quantum imaging, why do you need exterior panels?” Imagine if we could take vehicle weight down. Recycling requirement goes down, range goes up, taxing natural resources goes down. It will be like going from horse to car.
Do you see all these technological changes leaving some industry members behind?
I absolutely see a disruption. Tesla is the most valuable automaker and they make only five
per cent of the vehicles Toyota makes. Everyone waited 10 years for Tesla to collapse but now all the major automakers have disrupted their own models. With the Industry 4.0 revolution in manufacturing, we’ll see a generation of new automotive startups because digitization and machine learning have reduced the barriers to entry in capital.
And this is to say nothing of the Chinese. China has the world’s biggest auto-manufacturing sector in the world’s biggest car market. They skipped internal combustion and are going straight to EVs. And they’re vertically integrated on the mining side. And they’re state-owned so who cares about profits? They will flood our markets with very, very good vehicles at very, very competitive prices. That’s a disruptor that will disrupt the disruptors.
Few people could even name a Chinese car brand.
I can. Shanghai Auto, Beijing Auto — they’re named after cities. I regularly talk to three Chinese automakers that all make more cars than Ford and all are planning a North American en
try. If they’re going to manufacture in North America, we have to convince them to manufacture in Canada because if they go elsewhere and win market share from companies we supply, we’ve got a problem.
Project Arrow is named after an ambitious Canadian innovation that famously failed. Isn’t that a bad omen?
Not at all. Avro Arrow flew twice as fast and twice as high as anyone else but it depended completely on one ally being a customer. The engineers who built Avro Arrow were fired on Feb. 20 and on Feb. 21 many of them joined NASA. Some went to the Brits and helped create the Concorde.
That project’s spirit of innovation far outlived the project itself. We’re giving a nod to Canada’s postwar leadership that gave that team a clean sheet: Show us what you can come up with. I’ve got a clean sheet with Project Arrow. I’m not beholden to 250 dealers or the U.S. Air Force. We’re going to build one car — show me the best you’ve got.