Building a Better World Through By-Wire ft. Daniel Barel of REE Automotive

Previously, I founded a few companies before in different areas and it has always been the same. It's always an uphill battle. It's always challenging regardless of business that it is. You just have to, you know, wake up in the morning, keep on fighting a good fight.

You grow a little bit more on the rough side in the desert, if you know what I mean. And you know, because Israel is, the Middle East is a rough neighborhood. I had to, you know, join the army for quite a few years when I was 18 and I served for about, you know, in different ways about 15 years all in all. And during my tenure in that, you see a lot and of course it has its toll, but it also teaches you quite a lot. And I think the two things that I've learned by seeing so many things is one, honestly, everything is possible. Everything is possible. Just plan it right. Make sure you plan and prepare properly and everything is possible. And second, never stop. Never ever stop until you hit your goal. And I think those are the two things that growing up I've been taking with me ever since. Also today at REE, everything is possible. The amount of times we've heard that what we're doing is impossible. It won't work. You can't do it. It's never been done before. Nobody was able. But we kept on trying. We hit the walls. We went not through the door, through the windows, not through the chimney, you know, and all that. But at the end of the day, we never stopped and we got to where we got today. So yeah, I think that's what we see today.

Well, the Israeli hummus is, you can get in a very heated debate on which is the best, you know. I mean, there are quite a few camps there and you better choose carefully. So, I'd avoid the mess of stating what is my favorite here, but I can definitely share with you later the absolute best for us in Israel. And if you're there, I'll be more than happy to take you.

What we've done with REE is we wanted to create something. We're just two months shy of 10 years old. You know, people tend to forget these days that 10 years ago, electric vehicles were not a matter of when. They were literally a very big matter of if, right? And many thought that that's just a phase. We decided to create some sort of a technology capability company that would accelerate the shift through electric vehicles. We spent a lot of time thinking what it means and we came up with a strategy saying that we need to be something very agile. We need to be something that completes and does not compete with others in order to accelerate that. And we have to have a very unique and very advanced technology. And with that, we created what we call today the REEcorner. We've taken what makes airplanes fly and drones fly for the past 50, 60 years and put it into cars. So, we've taken all the drive shafts and couplings and gears and all that of the vehicle and put wires instead and connected them to a set of computers and said, 'Hey, this is how you drive the vehicle now.' And you might ask yourself, 'That's great, right? Why the hell would you want to do that?' It opens so much capabilities and opportunities for automakers like us in the industry. And just simply put, we can build today vehicles much faster and much more customer-oriented than anybody else out there. And we're doing it because we just basically put our corners, our wheels anywhere we want in space and build a car around them or a truck around them or a bus around them in any size, shape or form. And that level of flexibility is very unique to REE. So REE is not an OEM and is not a tier one. It's something new. We're a tech company in the automotive world and we're designing, manufacturing, and selling vehicles in the commercial segment.

So the REEcorner is basically your motor, steering, your braking, and the entire control in the corner of a vehicle times four. Okay? So, think about each of your corners, which essentially is where the wheel is, having a motor, steering system, a braking system, and a control system for that corner. And that allows you to be able to drive, steer, and brake each of those units separately. It's interesting because the technology is allowing us to have each corner independent. For example, if the corner needs to turn, the corner can decide whether it's going to use the steering actuator, it's going to use torque vectoring or any other means of making the vehicle turn per corner. And of course, that later on will be aggregated to the REEcenter, which is the central computing system. But each of those corners is fully independent. Not only that, it is built from the bottom up with full redundancy. One might say, 'Yeah, but what happens if you lose steering?' We have redundancy within the steering itself. So for example, our steering has six phases and two motors within them, different power loops, but even if that unit completely fries, the other three can take over. So the driver is far safer and far more in control of the vehicle itself. Right now, the corner mechanically is built out of two parts. Simply put, the outbound and the inbound section. The outbound section is what everybody would see if they look under the truck, which is industry standard. You'll see an industry standard suspension, brake caliper, nothing special there, which is important for the service and maintenance in a very ordinary way. And the inbound part, which is once we install it, is going directly inside of our chassis, a very complete and flat chassis and fully protected, is the by-wire system. This is where all the wits is, right? This is where the actuators are. This is where the control, the ECUs and everything is placed and that is proprietary to us.

If you take your phone and turn it around, that's how the REE platform looks like. Unified, flat from end to end. What's important about that is that you can utilize the full dimensions of that vehicle. You can build any type of body you want on top of that, any internal design of it. And because each REEcorner is independent, we can build the chassis and the platform around those corners relatively freely. So it can take different shapes, different length, different width, different payloads to that. Essentially, it hosts the corners and the battery. That's all. It's a big battery pack. It's completely flat. And if you can make the vehicle lower and more accessible, I mean, that's huge health-wise and also, you know, business-wise, they can deliver more packages faster. Also, because everything is confined within the REEcorners, the REE platform is essentially a battery pack, meaning you can build that battery pack in any size and capacity you want. So it can be longer, it can be shorter, it can be wider. And that modularity is very characteristic of REE and the REE platform with that ability to take different shapes and sizes based upon the same corners.

As we said before, we brought it in from aviation. But remember, a plane is being operated or flown by a very high-skill professional. We had to create a system which is easier to control but much safer. So what we've done is we created an array of ECUs. We basically have five ECUs, computers, one in each corner and a central one that connects them. And what's interesting about the X-by-Wire technology is that we're the only company today that actually has vehicles on the road, to the best of my knowledge, that are fully by-wire. It's not just steer-by-wire. It's not only drive-by-wire, it's everything. Steer, drive, brake, and full control by-wire. And that is important for three reasons. One, it allows the vehicle to operate better and safer than traditionally because the REEcenter can make decisions very fast. Calculating the grip on each of the wheels, calculating the angle, calculating the speed, weather conditions, etc., can yield much better vehicle dynamics. Period. Second, by yielding better vehicle dynamics, we can actually reduce significantly the wear and tear of that vehicle. And last but not least, it is of course ideal for autonomous vehicles, right? Autonomous vehicles have to run by-wire. And by being the only truly by-wire company out there, it allows us to be very relevant for autonomous driving today and in the future.

By-wire technology, I think we've not even started to scratch the surface. There is so much to do. Having said that, as a young EV company, I don't know if 10 years is young, but I like to think about it as young. You know, that's young. Thank you for that. I think focus is key. Focus in the development on the product side, mainly listening very carefully to the voice of the customer. We've been spending a lot of time with our customers, years. Sometimes the voice of the customer in EVs is very interesting because some of our customers know exactly what they want. Some just want something better than what they have, but they can't articulate it. So, our product team have developed the capability to, you know, sit down with the customer and translate their desire, their wishes, their need into engineering. I think the days of 'you can get it in any color you want as long as it's black' Henry Ford are over, at least for now, right? You know, the customer voice is very strong and the customer now only leads the product development and the proper product that they want to use. And I think we should listen to them. All of us, I think, should listen very carefully to what our customers want and then go and build it.

I think that if you want to be a major player in the industry, you don't have to do everything. You shouldn't do everything. You should concentrate on what you do very, very well. Your core. And you should make it very appealing and very easy relatively to others to join you in your test. And this is where we came with the complete, not compete. So for example, REE is a sub-brand. You will not see a REE vehicle. You will see a 'powered by REE' vehicle, like an Intel inside, right? You can have any different computer you want. You can have any brand, any shape, any design, but it has a small sticker says 'Intel inside', right? Same with us. So we complete, we don't compete with other OEMs. They can say, 'Hey, you can use the REEcorners for everything you want.' That's done. We're not also competing with our partners in manufacturing. We're an assembler by choice. We chose not to be a manufacturer. We only assemble sub-assemblies, which means that the units, the parts that we get from our suppliers are already pre-assembled. So, we actually create more value for them as well. We're also working through dealers. That's important for us not to go above their head and go directly to the market. What we're basically trying to do on every aspect almost, I think that you'd see at REE, is that we're trying to complete others and for them to complete us. We are trying to work with almost everybody in the industry.

One of the people I respect and admire says, 'Better is before us.' And I think that's what we want to see. We want to see that 10 years from now, that we've made a dent in the universe and the by-wire technology, powered by REE, is a market standard. But that has been only the beginning and better is before us and we would be reaching new heights and new capabilities, whether it be passenger vehicles and not commercial, whether it be autonomous. I want to make sure that we are part of those parties who lead it.