What does it take to start a car company or build cars from the ground up?
- Thread starter Dormianu
- 17 comments
- 795 views
- 568
- United Kingdom
It certainly won’t be overnight, but at your age you have plenty of time to make it happen.
For a start you may be able to learn quite a lot about motor vehicle engineering by acquiring something like a dirt or a quad bike and learning absolutely everything you can about how it works.
Just be careful not to hurt yourself.
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- 1,020
- Madison, WI
- FerrariF1GT
- FerrariFan24
Do you have lots of money? If not, you’ll need to find investors who’ll be willing to put their nose into your company and persuade them that your product will sell and turn a profit for them.
And unless you’re willing to do all the research and work that goes into designing and building a car yourself (there’s plenty of resources out there; nobody is stopping you), you’ll need to hire people to do that, and they will want to be paid lots of money.
Take some business and engineering classes while you’re still in school. Borrow some books from the library. I hope you like math because I suspect you’ll need to know calculus to be successful in the engineering and economics sides of things.
And unless you’re willing to do all the research and work that goes into designing and building a car yourself (there’s plenty of resources out there; nobody is stopping you), you’ll need to hire people to do that, and they will want to be paid lots of money.
Take some business and engineering classes while you’re still in school. Borrow some books from the library. I hope you like math because I suspect you’ll need to know calculus to be successful in the engineering and economics sides of things.
UKMikey
Premium
- 18,108
- Grea'er Laandan
- UKMikeyA
- UKMikeyA
- 2,201
- Germany
Summary, you need a vision of a car that does not yet exist so customers would be tempted to buy yours instead of any other car+ either:
- lots of knowlegde and time to build your car yourself, resulting in a very low volume production, better find some friends during your time learning everything necessary who share your vision.
- huge amounts of money to pay for all those people doing the work for you, making your vision a reality.
- 50,871
- Australia
- SpacedustDaddy
What’s the product? One seat? Two seats? Coupe, sedan, van, pick up?
Just make sure it has a device for connectivity. That’s seems to be most current consumers care about. Look at what cars people are buying today and what they’ll be buying by the time you turn twenty.
Automatic transmission, seats four, fits two to four rolling suitcases, easy to get in and out for a woman of about 5’4”, easy to adjust for driver comfort, power windows/door locks and all the driver safety aids. Time and mileage length of factory warranty. The longer the better, in both categories.
Honestly, if I were your age today and wanting to do this(I was and wanted to design cars), I’d be door knocking at Toyota. Looking at their(and their partners) kei car segment to get a foot in the door.
Just make sure it has a device for connectivity. That’s seems to be most current consumers care about. Look at what cars people are buying today and what they’ll be buying by the time you turn twenty.
Automatic transmission, seats four, fits two to four rolling suitcases, easy to get in and out for a woman of about 5’4”, easy to adjust for driver comfort, power windows/door locks and all the driver safety aids. Time and mileage length of factory warranty. The longer the better, in both categories.
Honestly, if I were your age today and wanting to do this(I was and wanted to design cars), I’d be door knocking at Toyota. Looking at their(and their partners) kei car segment to get a foot in the door.
- 11,206
- Sweden
- eran0004
You need a degree in engineering, a degree in business management and a degree in industrial design.
Then you need investors.
So if you’re at least four friends, then three of you can go for each of the degrees and the fourth one will try to get rich and/or influential enough to secure the investments.
Then you need investors.
So if you’re at least four friends, then three of you can go for each of the degrees and the fourth one will try to get rich and/or influential enough to secure the investments.
- 2,903
- Columbus, Ohio
Alternatively if you see a market segment that's been severely underdeveloped and the have the ability to make people think you're a tech genius, you can just bypass the first three parts and secure enough investment capital to lure people who actually are tech geniuses away from their current jobs, which makes things a bit quicker.
- 4,577
- SoCal
- GTP_MooCow
Learn from those who have recently done it or are trying to:
Get inspired
In no particular order:
Canoo
Rivian
Tesla is the success story, but they had to fight and steal for decades, losing several times over
Vinfast
Lucid
Rimac
Koenigsegg
Singer
All the Chinese brands
It's not easy but you gotta be strong and fight for your ideas...
What are you trying to do ?
What problem are you trying to solve?
Is your solution unique ?
Are you gonna make it cheaper than anyone else, yet safe and easy ?
Not as easy as you think, but if your idea is good, don't give up....
Get inspired
In no particular order:
Canoo
Rivian
Tesla is the success story, but they had to fight and steal for decades, losing several times over
Vinfast
Lucid
Rimac
Koenigsegg
Singer
All the Chinese brands
It's not easy but you gotta be strong and fight for your ideas...
What are you trying to do ?
What problem are you trying to solve?
Is your solution unique ?
Are you gonna make it cheaper than anyone else, yet safe and easy ?
Not as easy as you think, but if your idea is good, don't give up....
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- 13,865
- Adelaide
- Neomone
If you're not very sure whether it has been made before, you have insufficient knowledge of the automotive industry to be designing a car that you sell to other people. If you can't build a car from the ground up, you definitely have insufficient knowledge of cars to be designing a car that you sell to other people.
That's not trying to be rude, that's just where you are right now. Everyone starts where you are. But don't get too far ahead of yourself by jumping straight to starting a car company. There's lots of stuff that you can do first that will be much more useful if you actually want to design and build a car, and lots of knowledge that you need to gain.
Get a kit car and build it with your friends. Build a go-kart. Find a 24 Hours of Lemons event and build a car for it. Strip down and rebuild an engine. Refurbish a classic car or motorbike. Write some car reviews. Get into an engineering course at a university that has a motorsport team. Go work for an actual car manufacturer and learn how their design/build process works.
There are obvious financial barriers, but those can be overcome if you're sufficiently good at your job (and happen to get lucky being in the right place at the right time and know the right people). You need to become good enough at designing and building cars first before you can even think about starting a car company. The best way to learn is to look at what other people have done. You don't necessarily need to copy what they have done, but you need to be able to have an informed and rational opinion on why any given aspect of a car's design is good or bad.
