Gomotiv Innovative Vehicle Design to be on Display at CES 2024

The Australian firm’s deep pool of talent provides high quality, globally competitive design services for a rapidly changing automotive landscape.

The advent of all-electric vehicles, new EV brands and their proliferation around the planet creates new challenges – and opportunities – for the auto industry. More than any other time in the century-plus car business, EV startups have a potential edge over incumbent brands in areas such as software development, direct sales and clean-sheet vehicle architecture, but may lack experienced in-house design capabilities.

“There are a lot of new brands, the EV landscape is changing and the way vehicles are being developed is changing,” says Robert Thorpe, Studio Director at Gomotiv, an Australia-based transportation design firm that will see its work showcased at CES in Las Vegas January 9-12. “But not everyone has the pool of talent in house that is needed to establish a compelling brand identity through vehicle design. That’s what we do: Dive into what the brand is, where they want to go and develop a design language to match.”

End of an Era, Start of a New One

When the final GM Holden Commodore rolled off the assembly line in Australia in October 2017, it marked the end of a century of auto manufacturing Down Under – and left thousands of auto workers and hundreds of experienced vehicle designers unemployed. In what some saw as the end of an era, Thorpe and Fred Blochlinger (founder of Outerspace Design) viewed it as the start of a new one and an opportunity to leverage Australia’s formidable vehicle design talent. 

Over more than three decades Outerspace has combined design and engineering expertise to create successful products in industries such as consumer electronics, fitness, agriculture and more. Gomotiv launched in 2020 by gathering an all-star team of veteran vehicle designers and before long attracted the attention of global automotive clients such as Ford, Hozon, Chery and VinFast.

“When the automotive industry left Australia, we didn’t want the specialist design skills to die out here,” says Blochlinger. “So we set up Gomotiv as an alternative to the European studios and we’ve been pleased that we’ve won out against those long-standing design houses.” 

Initial work undertaken by the Gomotiv studio for OEM clients included participation in 2D sketch concept development (such as the advanced concept for the VinFast VF7) and rapidly expanded into 3D proportional and concept models, packaging studies, high end visualization and animations and now full show car design and development and full production car design and release. As the team has grown they completed nearly 30 different projects for VinFast. “VinFast has a strong vision and drive to differentiate in the market and as a design studio that is very exciting,” Thorpe says.

Decades of Global Experience

While Gomotiv is a new design firm, its staff has decades of design experience from around the globe. Thorpe worked at General Motors for 17 years, where his last role was Associate Director of the GM California Advanced Design Studio. “A lot of the latest Cadillac show cars and a whole range of different concepts across all the GM brands came out of the studio,” Thorpe says.

“We were  confident  that the design talent in Australia could compete globally with established independent studios,” he adds. “While we may not have the cachet of the established European design studios, Gomotiv effectively harnesses the talent pool in Australia to form a super-competitive team that can execute cutting edge programs for global customers.”

The team now includes nearly two dozen people working in design, digital sculpting, studio engineering and program management who previously worked in senior positions at Ford, General Motors, Toyota, McLaren, Jaguar, Kia and other major OEMs. Gomotiv Creative Director Justin Thompson brings nearly 20 years of global design leadership to the team, with tenures in China and the U.S. “The team is the best I've ever worked with across my career – and it’s coming through in quality of the work,” Thompson says.

An advantage that Gomotiv has is that the auto industry in Australia was much smaller. “It meant that people working in the design studio were talking almost daily to the manufacturing engineers, engineering teams, purchasing and marketing teams,” Thorpe says. 

“There was this amazing cross-pollination and respect between all the functions, whereas in other places I’ve worked there were silos, which is not a very efficient way of working,” he adds. “The speed at which we’re working and the types of programs we’re building for our customers draws on this experience – and would blow anyone's mind from a traditional OEM.”

The breadth of experience of the Gomotiv team is also a huge benefit to clients when it comes to producing actual vehicles. “A skilled design team understands the engineering process,” Thorpe says. “There are a lot of people who can sketch nice cars, put that into an AI engine and get a beautiful piece of wallpaper. But if you want to make a vehicle that meets all the requirements to get on the road, that's a whole other level of experience that you just can’t get overnight,” he adds. “Our team has this and it is demonstrated for clients like VinFast.”

Things Are Changing Fast

Design plays a vital role for any vehicle brand and is particularly important for new entrants in the market. “It’s where your brand goes, where your pricing goes, where your portfolio goes,” Thorpe says. “A lot of new brands are becoming much more aware that they need to create a brand identity and to do that you need to have good design from an experienced team.”

And with Chinese car companies and newer EV automakers such as Tesla gaining market share globally, Thorpe believes established OEMs should reconsider how vehicles are designed. “I think traditional OEMs realize that things are changing and changing fast,” he adds. “And they need to be prepared to work in different ways – and fast. That’s where Gomotiv adds value.”