The future prospects for open source business models in the world of electric vehicles

Abstract

In recent years, a series of incidents have drawn society's attention to issues of environmental awareness and energy security. As a result, electric vehicles (hereafter, "EV") are attracting attention around the world. To stimulate their economies, countries are preparing measures and policies to acquire EV-related core technologies and develop new markets quickly. In this paper, we argue that, given these circumstances, the development of open source businesses in the EV industry will contribute to solving a wide variety of problems, from industry-specific to social issues. Furthermore, we advance the hypothesis that this strategy may prove to be a model both sustainable and profitable. We qualitatively evaluate the utility of our hypothesis on the basis of the SIM-Drive Corporation's actual performance, which has been promoting a similar business model in the EV industry.