Volkswagen has bet on a Quebec company, Loki Box Design, to mark the occasion at CES 2023 in Las Vegas and launch with great fanfare its new operating system for its smart cars of tomorrow.
This is quite a tour de force that the Quebec company, Loki Box Design, specializing in the transformation of shipping containers into mobile structures, has just achieved. Just two months ago, the 2nd largest car manufacturer in the world, Volkswagen, contacted Loki Box in order to use its concept to promote CARIAD, the operating system that will be in their smart vehicle of tomorrow.
“He wanted our biggest structure, it was that or nothing. This is the concept he wanted,” explains Gabrielle Provencher-Beaudoin who had a first contact with the builder. And the structure in question is a lego of six 40-foot shipping containers that, when nested together, provide a three-story construction.
Logistics Challenge
Loki Box co-founder Gabriel Denis estimates that producing such a unit can take six months. However, when the contract was signed in November, there were only two months left before the opening of the Consumer Electronics Show, the largest technology fair in the world in Las Vegas.
“We usually calculate one month of preparation per container,” explains the man who leads a team of 60 people.
The race against time to ship the containers on the six trucks to Vegas, a 4200 km journey, was won, but that was without counting on the "blizzard of the century" which hit the United States at Christmas.
Biggest structure at CES 2023
The assembly of the structure was able to begin with a little delay on December 27, but once again the deadlines were tight. It was the first time a structure taller than two stories had been erected inside the massive Vegas Convention Center.
"The entire convention center had their eyes on us and thought we couldn't do it," said Gabriel Denis. The crane to stack the last two 40-foot blocks maneuvered just six inches from the ceiling, he explains.
For Loki Box, only one thing mattered, delivering the product in time for the opening of CES 2023 at 10:30 a.m. yesterday morning. "The client is super satisfied," says Gabrielle Provencher-Beaudoin, a smile in her voice.
CES 2023, focused on the intelligent mobility of tomorrow, is particularly important for car manufacturers. Several manufacturers are taking the opportunity to launch their new vehicle, starting with Volkswagen, which unveiled its new electric car, the ID.7.
