The Business of Electric Vehicles: A Platform Perspective

Platform business tactics are highly visible and dominant in business today. Prominent firms in industries such as information services, retail, and travel, have embraced platform thinking. Still, many others are engaged in a platform game without realizing it, often to negative consequences. The Business of Electric Vehicles: A Platform Perspective develops this theme with an illustrative focus on the battery electric vehicle segment of the automobile industry. It traces the development of the industry, identifies key decisions by various participants, and analyzes these decisions from a platform strategy lens. The authors emphasize that platform characteristics and network effects are at the core of the electric vehicle industry. For electric vehicles, the two-sided platform nature of the industry underlines the need for a well-coordinated strategy on both sides of the market. This analysis reveals that industry participants - vehicle producers, providers of charging locations, government and policy makers (with the notable exception of an industry newcomer, Tesla, which has astutely employed platform thinking in its core decisions) - have executed a flawed strategy that fails to recognize and leverage the platform aspect of the industry.