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15 Jul 2022

3DEXPERIENCE, CATIA, Cloud, DELMIA, ENOVIA, Transportation & Mobility Lauren Murdoch 0 comment

Xos Decarbonize Truck Deliveries with the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform

Los Angeles-based Xos is on a mission to decarbonize commercial transportation and facilitate fleet owners’ seamless transition from traditional internal combustion engines to 100% battery-electric.

As demand for its electric trucks and fleet services continues to grow, the US company needed an end-to-end platform to manage all product development and accelerate time-to-market.

The company worked with Dassault Systèmes business partner Adaptive Corporation – A TriMech Company, to implement the 3DEXPERIENCE Cloud Platform, complete with CATIA, ENOVIA and DELMIA apps, to bring its design, engineering and manufacturing processes together in a single, secure, standards-based environment. Xos uses the platform to industrialize production and manage each vehicle throughout its lifecycle. Watch the video below to learn more:

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform enables Xos to meet its customers’ design requirements while keeping costs down as it brings more new vehicles to market. Benefiting from accurate data, robust design capabilities, concurrent engineering and full transparency, the company gains agility to develop its electric vehicles at speed. The platform is the foundation on which to further grow Xos’ business and launch innovative new products and services.

Decarbonizing Truck Deliveries

Delivery vehicles are a major source of pollution. The Hellenic Institute of Transport in Greece estimated that between 20% and 30% of a city’s carbon dioxide emissions in Europe now come from last-mile deliveries. In the US, 27% of total greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation industry. Regulators are calling for change, and companies like Xos are making it happen.

Xos is a fleet service provider and OEM dedicated to decarbonizing commercial truck fleets. Founders Dakota Semler and Giordano Sordoni, two former fleet owners and operators, sought to build a solution for the issues they faced first-hand around increasing emissions regulations and the rising costs of maintenance and fuel. Their Los Angeles-based company designs and manufactures 100% battery-electric Class 5 to 8 medium- and heavy-duty trucks that travel on last mile, back-to-base routes of up to 270 miles per day.

xos-heavy-truck-inner_0 — Xos is on a mission to decarbonize commercial transportation and facilitate fleet owners’ seamless transition from traditional internal combustion engines to 100% battery-electric. (Image © Xos)

“About 70% of Class 3 to Class 8 commercial vehicles operate on routes that are under 200 miles per day,” said Dakota Semler, CEO of Xos. “They return to base every night where they could access dedicated charging infrastructure. And that makes them ideal for electrification. We don’t need to wait for the technology to mature to be able to solve these kinds of routes.”

Today, dozens of Xos battery-electric trucks operated by the likes of FedEx Ground, Loomis and UniFirst are out on the roads making deliveries to households and businesses across America. Customers choose Xos based on its ability to deliver vehicles that meet their requirements in terms of range, payload capacity, cost efficiency, ease of operation, and ease of charge.

“Apart from us, there’s nobody building ground-up commercial electric vehicles engineered for this space that are actually holding fleets accountable and truly delivering a total cost of ownership saving,” Semler said. “Starting from the battery pack, we engineer durability into our vehicle systems. We also focus on delivering total cost of ownership savings in under three to five years. By engineering our vehicles to achieve that, we’ve been delivering value to customers from day one.”

Fast growth, high demand

The demand for Xos’ products and services is high. To keep up, the company expanded its workforce fourfold since it launched in 2016 and opened a new 85,000 square foot headquarters in Los Angeles in May 2021 as well as two new flexible manufacturing facilities. As the scope and scale of its company continues to grow, Xos realized it needed a powerful technology platform to manage all its product development processes in one place.

“As we’ve grown, one of the biggest challenges we’ve faced is high demand, and it’s not slowing down,” Semler said. “It has been really challenging meeting that demand with our existing systems and manufacturing capacity. Prior to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we had separate computer-aided design (CAD), product lifecycle management (PLM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems operating in disparate environments. As we switched between them, we risked making mistakes and experiencing carryover issues. Now, we can incorporate a lot more of the value chain into a single system. Anything we can do to shorten that product development lifecycle enables us to go to market and achieve a faster return on our investment, and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform enables that.”

Xos selected the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on cloud with the key objective of unifying its technology and accelerating its product development strategy.

“The biggest business impact of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform is the ability for us to quickly get up to speed with the rest of the market,” said Matt Sommer, Director of Product and Development Operations and IT at Xos. “Being an earlier stage company, it’s difficult for us to quickly implement all the tools and processes that we need to be able to operate a full business. With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on cloud, we’re able to do that quickly without having to worry about IT implementation and other work that would distract us from making great products.”

“The 3DEXPERIENCE platform has enabled us to deliver our technology in a much more cohesive way,” Semler added.

“Operating in the cloud allowed us to set up our infrastructure early and correctly so that as we scale production and grow our engineering teams, we know the infrastructure will continue to support us.”

A cloud implementation made sense for Xos on many levels, particularly as it gave the company access to enterprise-level IT without the upfront investment.

“We chose the cloud versus on premise, because it gives us all the tools and processes that we need to be successful without needing all the infrastructure in place,” Sommer said. “The cloud is becoming more and more advanced every day, and we believe that the tools and features available in the cloud are on par with what you could get with an on-premise installation.”

Xos partnered with Dassault Systèmes business partner Adaptive to implement the 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

“What we value most from our collaborative relationship with Adaptive is the ability to communicate, get support, and receive services as we need them to keep our business operating”

Building a strong value network

As it works around the clock to keep up with demand, Xos values working closely and securely with its value network.

“ENOVIA on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows us to collaborate efficiently with our partner network by seamlessly adding them to our environments and giving them secure access to the specific data they need,” Sommer said. “We manage innovation with our value network by being collaborative, so we really appreciate the ability to interface with everyone quickly in an efficient way that’s not through email.”

“Being on the cloud allows interoperability across time zones, across companies and, ultimately, leverages the team aspect of working together with our partners,” Semler added. “In a traditional CAD environment, you just don’t have that flexibility. A team in another time zone can carry on with a particular project and then the next morning we can pick up from where they left off. We’re getting much greater levels of productivity with this approach.”

Custom design

Xos’ proprietary battery system, the X-Pack, and modular chassis, the X-Platform, are purpose-built for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles.

“One of the core reasons our customers come to us is for our technology,” Semler said. “It starts with our proprietary battery system, which we’ve built from the cell level up. We also develop the software to control the vehicle, operate all of the power electronics as well as the onboard safety systems. And our modular chassis platform allows us to accommodate a wide range of different commercial vehicle use cases. Everything from a parcel delivery truck, all the way up to a Class 8 tractor or vocational vehicle.”

With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Xos manages all these different elements within the same environment.

“One of the biggest impacts of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform that we feel every single day is the ability to scale and grow beyond our existing footprint of engineering and design,” Semler said.

“Things like parametric modeling and the embedded tools for routing and the specific engineering and surfacing tools – we have all of that capability within one system. And then to directly carry it forward through our PLM is pretty innovative. It enables us to move quickly to operate with leaner teams and, ultimately, to do more with fewer resources.”

These capabilities allow the company to develop custom-built truck fleets that meet customers’ specific safety, security, reliability and sustainability requirements.

“ENOVIA configuration management has been key in our ability to do this for our customers,” Sommer said. “Because of the nature of our business, we have a highly configurable product and ENOVIA allows us to keep track of all variations and manage change in a much more efficient way than we were able to previously.”

The company is now in the process of implementing DELMIA, which it will use to design and manage its growing number of manufacturing plants.

“DELMIA is key to our success over the next few years,” Sommer said. “As we grow as a company, we need the ability to quickly and efficiently boot up new facilities around the world. We truly believe that DELMIA is going to be one of the key reasons that we’re able to do this, especially with access to all its rich features on the cloud so we can deploy it from anywhere.”

xos-hub-interior-inner — When Xos deploys an electric vehicle to a customer, the company delivers the associated charging infrastructure and maintenance services with it – all managed on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. (Image © Xos)

Xosphere™

Xos’ fleet-as-a-service offering, Xosphere™, provides customers with a comprehensive suite of products and services – such as charging infrastructure, vehicle maintence, and leasing and financing options – all available in one intuitive user platform to help them more easily make the transition from diesel vehicles to electric.

“When we deploy any Xos electric vehicle to a customer, we have to deliver the associated charging infrastructure and maintenance services with it, which we manage on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform,” Semler said. “We have an internal saying that technology sells our first truck to a customer, but maintenance, service and support is what sells the next trucks after that. Maintenance is an incredibly important aspect, particularly for commercial vehicles operating on the road so long every single day. It really becomes one of the core cost centers for fleets to manage and, ultimately, try to reduce. By handling all aspects of the vehicle on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we can generate better uptime performance. We also now have the visibility to deliver all the associated services and support they need.”

As Xos looks to the future, the company hopes to make it even easier for fleet owners and operators to embrace electric mobility.

“We have a lot of exciting things coming down the pipeline, including new products that we’re engineering within the 3DEXPERIENCE platform,” Semler said. “We’re also using it to build out our portfolio of services, which we refer to as the Xosphere, such as our fleet management tools – service ticketing, vehicle support and energy management. Ultimately, we believe that the Xosphere on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform will be the single tool that fleets will use to manage all their fleet assets, not just Xos trucks.”

DISCOVER HOW YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR ELECTRIC PROJECTS

Electric vehicles are nothing new. They have been in the picture since the dawn of the automobile. But they never became industrially relevant because gasoline was a cheaper energy source than electricity. Now green motives are turning the wheel. Automakers have to reinvent the traditional powertrain and embrace the shift to electric.

Download the eBook to find out more

Focus on Xos

Xos is a leading fleet services provider and original equipment manufacturer of Class 5 through Class 8 battery-electric vehicles and the tools to adopt them. Xos vehicles and fleet management software are purpose-built for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles that travel on last-mile, back-to-base routes of up to 270 miles per day. The company leverages its proprietary technologies to provide commercial fleets with zero-emission vehicles that are easier to maintain and more cost-efficient on a total cost of ownership (TCO) basis than their internal combustion engine counterparts.

Headquarters: Los Angeles, CA

For more information: www.xostrucks.com

Focus on Adaptive Corporation – A TriMech Company

Adaptive Corporation – A TriMech Company enables innovation by applying technology to streamline business processes, reduce costs and improve efficiencies throughout the product life cycle. Adaptive’s unique “Digital to Physical” product portfolio includes CAD, CAE, PLM, business analytics, metrology and 3D printing. Our solutions help our clients reduce costs and cycle times throughout product planning, development, manufacturing and after-market service.

Location: Hudson, OH

For more information http://www.adaptivecorp.com

08 Apr 2019

Electric Vehicles, Transportation & Mobility Juliann Grant 0 comment

How the Growth of Electric Vehicles Will Impact CIOs and Their IT Strategies

It’s no surprise that electric vehicles (EVs) will radically change the automotive industry. The question is if you’re a CIO, do you stay on the sidelines to observe and play conservatively or charge ahead and innovate to grab a share of the market early?

There are suppliers who want to see more certainty and confidence in the market before they dive right in.

But one thing is certain: This shift will drive CIOs to evaluate their current supply chain and rethink their technology. Electrification opens up possibilities that require new software and service platforms for the entire ecosystem. They’ll need to digitally connect with consumers and track things like electricity production, charging stations, and usage. IT can be the driver for mainstream consumer adoption of EVs.

This article gives you a brief summary of a report on electric vehicles by Gartner Analyst Michael Ramsey. You’ll get an overview on the potential sales of EVs, what CIOs in the automotive industry need to know in planning for the future, and what obstacles could slow progress.

Let’s first look at the stats to see the projected growth of EVs.

EV Growth Over the Next Decade

In the last four years, EV sales have tripled, but it’s expected to jump more steadily moved forward. In 2018, production of battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles was 1.8 million (1.8% of total vehicles).

According to Gartner, over the next five years automotive companies will spend approximately $260 billion launching more than 200 new EV models.

Edison Electric Institute and the Institute for Electric Innovation forecast approximately 7 million electric vehicles will be traveling on U.S. roads by the end of 2025.

It is projected to take about 10 years to hit mass EV ownership. By 2030, LMC Automotive forecasts sales of battery electric vehicles to climb to 18.1 million. That means hybrid and EVs could make up 48% or more of all car sales in 2030.

What Changes Will EVs Drive?

With the rise of EVs come big changes—from the auto industry to the electricity system to the consumer level. On the other hand, EVs introduce possibilities of competitive advantages in speed, quality, and lower costs. Gartner explains the adjustments CIOs have to consider and the actions they can take preparing for the long term.

There are several major changes, but here we’ll look at two of them.

2 Changes of the EV Effect:

1. EVs reduce part complexity with fewer moving parts.

Mechanically it’s simpler. Gartner interviewed experts at the engineering firm, Munro & Associates. They explained that EVs don’t need parts like the internal combustion engine, transmission , or exhaust systems making the mechanics simpler.

The complexity shifts to the electrical components for things like the electric drive train, reconfigurable interiors, battery and thermal management systems. Electro-mechanical components will also replace hydraulic parts like oil and water pumps.

Benefits: This affects the entire supply chain and means shorter development and assembly times.

Gartner recommends CIOs evaluate and rethink the following:

Evaluate the current supply chain.
- Do your current PLM systems have the capabilities to devleop EVs?
- Is manufacturing capable of executing the assembly?
- What is needed to revamp the supply chain and does the existing ERP system work well with it?
Compare current software platforms to new third-party software.
- CIOs should work with engineers, finance, and manufacturing to evaluate existing software and compare new third-party software designed for EVs. Once they determine the shortest path with the best quality and lowest cost, then they can decide if it’s time to change vendors.
Develop a case to move to the cloud.
- IT is responsible for providing smooth communications internally and with customers. now is the time to develop a case to move to cloud-based software that will enable the organization to streamline their operations and information exchange and seamlessly connect to consumers and their EVs.

2. Electrification opens up new opportunities to collaborate.

This is the time to rethink your ERP system and focus on long-term customer experience beyond the sale of the EV. This means collaboration with other companies in the ecosystem and with consumers.

Gartner’s recommendations:

Gartner recommends CIOs use IT to help gather and share information with all parties on critical matters such as charging these vehicles safely, conveniently, and cost effectively. Consumer trust is at stake every step of the way.

Some suggestions include:

Create a new system for charging capabilities.
- Collaborate with utility CIOs to provide vehicle location and charging status to help them plan for electricity production and usage.
- Work internally and with ERP vendors to create a new system that handles charging issues like battery state of charge (SoC), charging availability, and billing solutions.
- Create an ongoing dialogue with consumers through new digital services.
Develop industry standards and universal charging access to network providers.
- CIOs can collaborate with and create connections between charging network providers and EV owners through cloud-based identification so they’re not left without resources.
Prepare for blockchain solutions for accountability or innovation.
- Understand and prepare for blockchain solutions where the data is decentralized, easily verifiable, continually updated, and securely validated. Blockchain would allow for accountability of energy generation and energy usage credits for charging EVs.

Obstacles

Even though the future shows high projected growth, there are obstacles that could slow the rise and adoption of EVs.

Some of these obstacles are:

Recharging times still too long: Could take 30 minutes to 12 hours at a charging station.
Lack of public charging stations: Limited charging ability in the workplace and along the highways.
Unacceptable driving ranges: Current driving ranges fall short of the average consumer’s expectations of 245-300 miles before battery needs charging.
Lack of universal connector standards: High-voltage fast charging stations require multiple adapters not usable in some EVs.
Lack of universal access to chargers: Chargers are part of either free, subscription-based, or closed-access disparate networks with limited connections between them.
Consumer appeal has dropped: Higher EV pricing, low gas prices, loss of consumer interest in fuel efficiency, and end of tax credits has limited the appeal to switching to EVs.
Billing and accountability challenges: Challenges in billing and accountability for generating energy and tracking production and usage.
Need more education on EVs: Many consumers don’t understand the difference between an EV and a hybrid, the advantages of EVs, and what car manufacturers really offer.

These 8 obstacles are just a few of the challenges today that could impact the growth of EVs. However, they won’t stop the movement to electrification.

Gartner suggest CIOs understand and keep on top of the obstacles, changes, and opportunities. Evaluate their existing supply chain and IT strategy. Then study the recommendations to prepare for this shift.

CIOs must implement changes that make sense for their company to successfully impact the EV market. Automakers have to strike a balance between ROI and developing smarter technologies that delight and build trust with consumers.

Summary

There is high projected growth in electric vehicles in the next decade. As with any industry disruption, obstacles will get in the way and could slow the rise and adoption of EVs, but won’t stop it.

Electrification will create disruptive changes with new possibilities for CIOs and their IT systems in the automotive industry.

Two major changes include:

EVs reduce part complexity with fewer moving parts and will disrupt the supply chain.
Electrification opens up new opportunities to collaborate.

IT can be the driver for mainstream consumer adoption of electric vehicles. It’s important for CIOs in this industry to watch the progress, understand the implications, and take advantage of new opportunities with electrified vehicles to succeed.

For more in depth information please read the full Gartner report, “What a CIO Needs to Know About the Rise of Electric Vehicles.”

Do you need help to evaluate your supply chain? We’d be happy to discuss a complete Digital to Physical Product Lifecycle solutions. Contact us today.

10 Jan 2019

3DEXPERIENCE, Electric Vehicles, PLM Strategy Juliann Grant 0 comment

3DEXPERIENCE Powers Rimac’s New All-electric Hypercar Taking High-End Sports Cars to the Next Level

Nestled on the coast of the Adriatic Sea is the small country of Croatia. It was most famous for summer vacations, but is now becoming known as the destination site for automotive innovation. Mate Rimac, an entrepreneur and Croatian automaker, is changing the game in transportation with his company, Rimac Automobili. Rimac is not only designing and developing new drivetrains, battery systems, and high-performance electric vehicles (EVs), but they’ve also created the hypercar of the 21st Century.

What Gives Them the Edge?
Rimac is using state-of-the-art software—an advanced product lifecycle management (PLM) platform with a custom model-based system simulation for global collaboration and better integration.

Rimac was founded five years ago with its mission to take sports cars to the next level and build an electric hypercar. From the start, their development processes were digital and virtual as much as possible. They recognized that the key to building an extremely complex system, such as an entire car, is the ability to model, simulate, rapidly iterate, and repeat, over and over again. In other words, minimize the physical prototypes in favor of digital versions.

Tools for Complex Physical Systems

In the beginning, Rimac successfully used SOLIDWORKS 3D CAD to develop and validate lightweight solutions for battery power in EVs. As their customer base increased, and the electrical system of their new C_Two model became more complex, they migrated to Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

Choosing the right digital software, tools, and processes are key to modern vehicle design and production. Being able to create, simulate, iterate, verify, and test drive an electric vehicle virtually without a physical part saves substantially on development costs that would otherwise be out of reach.

Dassault’s 3DEXPERIENCE Platform enabled Rimac’s development team of 100+ employees to work in CATIA (CAD), ENOVIA (cPDm) and other applications on the digital manufacturing side, such as CAE SIMULIA and DELMIA. They also had access to Dassault’s data-driven database in ENOVIA.

But due to the complexity, Rimac needed even more customization. Fortunately, they were able to partner with Modelon, a Swedish software developer. They specialize in model-based systems engineering (MBSE) and simulation, to create an open-standard, model-based system.

Modelon solutions are based on Modelica (open-standard language) and FMI (open-standard model format). Modelica was created to model complex physical systems containing, for example, mechanical, electrical, electronic, hydraulic, thermal control, electric power, or process-oriented subcomponents—exactly the complexity Rimac needed. Even better, Modelon’s open standard–format means their solutions seamlessly integrate with a wide variety of software platforms, such as 3DEXPERIENCE and other PLM tools, allowing users to share and collaborate consistently from product concept to operation.

Results of Rimac’s Approach

Rimac’s incredible success has proven the value of their approach. With the help of 3DEXPERIENCE and Modelon solutions, they’ve created cutting-edge electric drivetrain technologies, which they supply to several large automotive players, including Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover, and Renault. Rimac has also developed two of its own electric hypercars, the second containing an innovative four-engine electric drivetrain in which one engine drives each wheel. Porsche was impressed enough in the company’s technology that they bought a 10% stake in Rimac, forming a development partnership.

To find out more about how Rimac is using 3DEXPERIENCE and Modelon, see engineering.com.

And to find out more about how a comprehensive Digital to Physical PLM platform can help you overcome your challenges in bringing new products to market, contact us.