Dreaming up the five-day car

European directive to tackle automotive overcapacity.

In a bid to tackle the excess numbers of cars which European manufacturers produce every year, the European Union has come up with the idea of the five-day car, which aims to build a car to a customer’s requirements within a week.

As 20th century automotive manufacturing was built on the principle of mass manufacturing and economies of scale, there is an excess of vehicles made every year. In Europe alone, there are 22 million cars produced, despite there only being demand for 15 million.

The engineering challenge

Now, as a way to tackle this, the ILIPT project (Intelligent Logistics for Innovative Product Technologies) is looking to address the engineering challenges this presents.

According to project coordinator Rene Esser of ThyssenKrupp Automotive: “The only way to ensure the economic survival of organisations, establishments and employees in the European automotive industry is to escape, in the long run, the competitive pressure from cheap labour countries. ILIPT tackles both the conceptual and the practical aspects of the automotive industry’s radical new concept: the delivery to the customer of a bespoke vehicle only several days after placing the order.”

The project, which is running until June 2008, has a €16m budget, €9 million injection from the European Commission and involves the participation of partners such as BMW, Siemens and TRW, as well as SMEs and universities.

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