The way Chris Borroni-Bird sees it, the skateboard chassis — the architecture that underpins most of today's battery-electric vehicles — would have been invented by someone else if General Motors hadn't done it first two decades ago.
"When you think about a ground-up design for an electric vehicle, the skateboard is the obvious choice, the obvious solution," Borroni-Bird, GM's former director of advanced technology vehicle concepts, told Automotive News. "You lower the center of gravity, improve road-holding, have more freedom in design, you get better crash protection for the front of the vehicle, and there's more storage, so it creates a lot of benefits."
The skateboard chassis just might be the most important piece of automotive hardware created this century. Not only has it been key to making EVs viable, it has also opened a door for dozens of startups looking to seize the opportunity.