With every design or strategy decision, we ask the same question: How will we maintain it?

So many have asked about maintenance. We won't have dealerships, so how can we maintain our vehicles? It starts with some basic approaches;

• A modular vehicle architecture designed to be fixed on the side of the road if necessary. Every decision we make is centered on modularity, ease of maintenance, ease of manufacturing.
• Digital health monitoring through cloud services and automated systems to identify problems before a customer even knows something is wrong.
• Remote services, powered by our vehicles. Our service technicians will drive to wherever you are, and repair your vehicle on site. If we can't, you get a loner while we take it back and repair it.
• A plethora of videos available on your phone and in your vehicle that will show you how to fix any problem or replace any part on your own. A video repair manual.

Maintenance, health monitoring, and parts logistics must be accounted for from day one. Every decision we make, every strategy we employ has this in mind. The above principles are not new in nature but new the automotive world. It requires us to develop everything from the ground up, with the understanding that we need data, and we need continuous control so we can always make ourselves better.

Tesla has proven this. Tesla's cars get better with every software update sent to their vehicles. However, it must go beyond this, what if we can make hardware better too? What if we can identify problems before they occur? This is our mission in handling maintenance. What if vehicles can be continuously upgraded, for their expected life, which might span more than ten years across many different owners?

It's an odd bet, I know, but it's important. Those that own vehicles today enjoy the convenience they bring, and those that live in more rural communities have a necessity for them. Our focus, however, is on those that do work — plumbers, contractors, electricians, maintenance crews. Dependability is a way of life for them, and a lack of reliability can mean a critical hit to their income. What if we could keep their fleet up and running? What if we can provide vehicle telemetry and health metrics to fleet owners so we can better coordinate maintenance and repairs when they do become necessary. What if we could provide a vehicle that needs little to no maintenance throughout its life cycle. That might be a stretch, but sometimes you need to set your sights far downfield and aim for that. We may never hit that goal, but the customer experience as we strive for it will be amazing.

Mark Hanchett

Atlis Motor Vehicles