Volkswagen ID.3 Products Development

[Tuesday, ‎3 ‎November ‎2020] This day was a very exciting day for the company, since this was the day that we finally made the first step into our new direction of R&D! We will for the first time scan a car ourselves to develop products on. And boy… this was a bumpy start for us.

Preparations

Finding the right partners to work with is one of the most difficult things a company will experience. Since this scan is required to be very detailed, otherwise your parts will not fit well on the car and there needs to be a lot of adjustment in the later stage of the creation, we had put quite some time in finding a 3D scanning company that could do a detailed enough job for us to scan the car.

Meanwhile we were really busy talking to owners of the new Volkswagen ID.3 and what their experiences were with the car so far, also we asked if they had any ideas for potential products. Some ideas considered, we made a list of the first handy products to have for every car owner.

After some networking and reaching out to people we found a very nice person that just received his new ID.3 First Edition and was willing to let us do the scan on his newly acquired EV.

The Scan

The day of the scan finally arrived and Yuan and I were excited to do this, after today we would finally be able to call ourselves “Product developers”! The scan was in Apeldoorn and our company is a 2 hour drive away, so we came in really early to get our stuff in his Model 3 and go.

At arrival we were surprised of the house we saw, the owner had built his own house and garden, all I can say about it is, wow, what a beautiful property he had built. We met with our scanner for the first time in person and he had some cool stories about the things he scanned before, from bones and people to the exhausts of Lamborghini’s! This made us feel like we made the right choice. We put the ID.3 in the right place and started the scanning process!

After finishing the scan our 3th party scanner needed to render and finalize the files. A few weeks later we received our files and sent it out to our manufacturing department, only to hear that they had never seen such bad quality scans, we could not use these scans at all… We had to look for a new scanner…

The Second Scan

After some searching we finally came across a scanning company called “Geopoints” and we decided to try and use their services, happily we now had a lease company that was generous enough to lend us their ID.3 to scan. We got the car to our workshop and started scanning!

After just a few days we received the files from Geopoints. Finally we had found a quality scanner! These files were great and we could immediately start the process of product development with our manufacturing department.

Engineering and Prototypes

Thanks to the actuate 3D scan data and our efficient engineering team, the first prototypes have been developed within 6 weeks. The first fitment is always exciting.

So we went back to our friends from the lease company to fit our first prototypes of the scan. The production of the products went surprisingly well since all of our ABS products fitted in a 1 time go! The middle console cover and the mud flaps needed no changes at all. The floormats were almost perfect, just needed a slight adjustment at the fixing points.

This meant the ABS products were ready to go into the final stage of production.

Production

So now that we had tested our prototypes, the time has come the put the first products into the production. For the first middle console covers we decided to use the colors: Matte black, matte white, Matte carbon and gloss carbon. For the mud flaps we left them unpainted since a lot of people will want a custom colour. A few weeks went by and not to brag, but the results were amazing for our first created products!

Product update 28 Oct. 2021

We are excited to announce that the following products are almost ready for production and will be brought to our website in coming 4-6 weeks 🙂

End Word

Our first experience as EV aftermarket developers went at first a bit rough, but ended up being a fun experience with a lot to learn. We are really proud to show our first line of products and are of course not even close to being done! There are some other cars we have scanned in past months, but that you will read about in our next blog posts, so stay tuned to read for what other EV’s we are developing accessories!

Any Suggestions or Product Ideas as ID.3 Owner?

Of course we are always looking for tips and ways to make your driver experience better, so please leave us suggestions on what to improve and what type of products you would like to see developed in the future. We are nowhere without you guys 🙂

Nothing is too crazy, what you want, we can create!

Disclaimer

EVlution B.V. (owner of Torque Alliance and PLUGEAR) in the Netherlands is the SOLELY party who has developed this product. Similar product sold under other trademark or platform are not original and the quality is not guaranteed. We’d appreciate your support for our effort and intellectual property so we can continue bringing more EV gadgets to Europe.