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29 the head of operations, and a fnance person. By the start of production, there will be approximately 10 production people who will work in four teams of two in separate assembly bays, with two team leaders foating between vehicles. As production rises, more will be added, though the group is focused on improving productivity at each step to keep headcount under control. Sixty-fve hours have been budgeted to build each E10, though Ali expects this number to drop to 50 to 55 hours as the teams gain experience with the process. Central to this process, and the company's proftability, is the fact that the E10 production car has no doors. "Doors are problematic and can be the death knell for any niche manufacturer," says Ali. "It was a lower risk and took less investment to build the frst one as a step-in car instead of taking chances with a new product, a new process, and a new workforce. You can't put on the order form an option for 'doors that work'." The next step is to build E11 in 2016. It is a new car in that it adds doors to the E10 concept, and makes the E10's optional windshield and wipers standard equipment. It will be followed one year later by E12, which adds a fxed roof, front and rear crash structures, and airbags. As if to sum up these plans, Ali states: "We are learning to crawl at the moment, and will then move on to walking before we learn to run." Mass Market DCFP Ask Antony Dodworth about using his DCFP panels for vehicle light weighting, and he'll warn you that, "This is a lot lighter than and as cost-efective as aluminum, but only if you start with a clean sheet design." Using continuous carbon fber, or what Dodworth describes as "making things monolithic," makes a design a little bit lighter, but tremendously more expensive. Further, trying to adapt a "black metal" design to DCFP will fail because you need a greater section thickness to use the benefts of the low-cost composite. "The construction method is familiar: it's still a press and a piece of tooling," says Dodworth. "However, you only need one heated aluminum die versus three to four tool steel dies for steel panels or fve for aluminum." To take advantage of its properties— both mechanical and cost—he says it's necessary to get designers and engineers into the same room early in the process. "It takes some cleverness to design parts you can make, and some compromise from both the stylists and the engineers to get them to look right and be manufacturable. Yet, if you work together during development, you both end up with something with which you are happy." p Large black DCFP side panels are formed in hot aluminum molds and bonded together with front and rear bulkheads and foor to form the cockpit. A 6.0-mm fange provides the bonding surface, and seals the panel extremities from water, dust, dirt.