Las Vegas He comes from Turkey, competes with the Chinese and sits at the booth in Las Vegas, but he happily conducts the conversation in German. Mehmet Gürcan Karakaş is grateful for every opportunity to polish the language skills he has acquired over the past 30 years at Bosch.
But the smart manager, who went from being a divisional manager at the Swabians to head of the Togg consortium, not only learned German during his time in Stuttgart, he also learned how the automotive industry works. And therefore also knows why she is getting out of step. Life and, above all, business, he realized, no longer takes place on the street, but on the Internet. It was not for nothing that all manufacturers tried to somehow get the network into the car.
“But these attempts are doomed to failure,” says Karakaş and wants to try it the other way around: “We’ll get the car online and make it part of a comprehensive ecosystem,” announces the Togg boss. Because unlike in the last 100 years, the money is no longer in the hardware, i.e. in the car, but in the data and access to the driver, says the manager and once again compares the car with the smartphone.
Anyone who cannot make this change will be relegated to a hardware manufacturer. “We don’t want to be another Foxconn, we want to be an Apple,” says Karakaş, who therefore wants to earn his money at some point with the services and data and no longer with the car itself.
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And better tomorrow than the day after tomorrow. “To do this, however, a car has to be designed fundamentally differently than before,” says the former Bosch manager, drawing attention to the “Advanced Smart Mobility Ecosystem” that his team brought with them to Las Vegas.
At first glance, this is a modern, but by no means visionary coupe sedan from the compact class with the screen landscapes that have become standard in the meantime, the shape of which was created through the interaction of Pininfarina and the former VW design boss Murat Günak.
“We’re bringing the car online and making it part of a comprehensive ecosystem,” announces Togg boss Mehmet Gürcan Karakaş (middle with smartphone).
But at second glance, the four-door is above all a computer on wheels that wants to impress with a new electronic architecture that is as important to Karakaş as the platform is to other manufacturers. They, and not the floor assembly, will be the central, competitive element of a car in the future and therefore decisive for success.
That’s why Karakaş talks less about the performance and range of the naturally electrically powered sedan than about the four instead of the usual 100 control units and about the new operating system with artificial intelligence and comprehensive networking that enables completely new services.
Billion dollar budget and high expectations
Not only does this make intermodal route planning child’s play, for the first time you can also easily pay for services like other means of transport from the car. “And this payment function is just one of more than 20 new applications that we have identified together with potential customers from more than 1,000 ideas as innovative and desirable services and implemented them for our cars.”
He’s not going to be much more precise yet, but these are all functions that don’t exist anywhere – and that are desirable enough to get customers to switch.
Of course, the approach is not entirely new and resonates with almost all start-ups – regardless of whether they are called Tesla, Lucid or Nio. What’s new are Togg’s origins. Because Karakaş company is not a start-up and does not come from China or the USA.
Togg comes from Turkey and is written out as Türkiye’nin Otomobili Girişim Grubu or in English: Turkish Automobile Initiative Group and is a merger of four large companies from retail, truck construction and logistics. That makes things exciting.
Because Turkey is still a pretty blank spot on the automotive world map. Although hundreds of thousands of cars like the Ford Transit or the Fiat Tipo are built on the Bosphorus every year for third parties, they have not yet done anything more in their own name than the three prototypes of the Devrim from the 1960s.
The four-door is above all a computer on wheels that wants to impress with a new electronic architecture.
Karakaş came out with the aim of changing that, budgeted 3.5 billion euros, got the Chamber of Commerce and Industry on board and started an impressive race to catch up. It’s no wonder that President Erdogan likes to be pulled in front of the cart and repeatedly pushes onto the premiere stage.
So far, Karakaş only has grandiose plans and high hopes. But soon he wants to create facts: The shell of the factory in Gemlik in the north-west is finished, they are just setting up the first production lines and production, initially designed for 125,000 cars a year, is to begin in winter.
“There are hardly any cars and no infrastructure”
However, it doesn’t start with the futuristic limousine from Las Vegas, but with a comparatively conventional SUV, which you also have to buy and cannot book as a service, as Karakaş imagines later.
There is the first in the format of the BMW iX3 with 200 or 400 hp and a range of 300 or 500 kilometers and the prices should be at the level of conventional competitors such as the Nissan Qashqai, the Peugeot 3008 or the VW Tiguan, says Karakaş. “If we can beat them, we don’t have to worry about competition from electric SUVs.”
Doesn’t he have to, at least not for now. So far, Turkey has been a developing country when it comes to electromobility. “There are hardly any cars and no infrastructure either,” admits Karakaş.
But with the close connection to the state, the Togg boss wants to change that quickly, has worked out a plan with the government and proposed a network with around 250,000 pillars to politicians, which should be enough for the country’s initial equipment. “At 30,000 euros per charging station, that’s a manageable investment.”
The Togg vehicles want to impress with a new electronic architecture.
Although there are certainly better countries for the first serve, Karakaş still wants to start in Turkey. For him, this is not only a question of honor, but also a question of success. Because if we don’t make it in our home country, then we don’t have to try anywhere else, he’s convinced.
But if Togg gets off to a successful start in Turkey, then Karakaş will start exporting in 2024 and then Germany will be at the forefront. So it’s quite possible that the former Bosch manager will be able to demonstrate his language skills more often in two years at the latest – and won’t have to travel to Las Vegas first.
More: Togg applies for the formation of a GmbH in Germany