“Constraints enable creativity” – Oilstainlab CEO on design for manufacturing

After the HF-11 concept swept social media with its raw form, independent Californian studio Oilstainlab had to quickly prove it was more than just an internet spectacle and very much focused on making that radical design buildable. 

CEO Nikita Brian is one half of the twin-founded brand – yes, the founders really are twins. Together, with a small team experienced in motorsport, they embed engineering, cost and production from the outset. Taking their learnings from OEM studios, they use tight constraints to fuel creativity and take 99% of the original vision through to build.

Car Design News spoke to Nikita to learn more about the HF-11, what it was like to break free from the OEMs and the value of integrating manufacturing within design (DfM).

As a small brand, you can't show something that you can't build

Car Design News: Can you start by giving us a bit of background about Oilstainlab? 

Nikita Bridan: Let’s start with the ‘old’ car [referring to the Half-11 prototype]. When we started, we were still working at the OEMs, so it was a weekend project. The old car was driven directly by my brother and I’s s limited fabrication skills [laughs], so that determined the shape of the car – that's why it was a vintage-inspired project of the era of primitive tools.

We then exited the OEM space and had learnt the production and concept car process – which are two very different things as one takes two years, one takes five years – and saw how concept cars can get destroyed very quickly once they're put on a production platform. We were also very aware that, as a small brand, you can't show something that you can't build. So from the start it needed to be something that we had full intent to build. 

We set up a team that had done similar projects, but mostly in motorsport, where, again, there isn't a lot of concept cars. So, everybody there is sort of prepared to build a car. From the first car, it needs to work. It needs to be competitive.

CDN: You’ve already mentioned the importance of designing to build. What value do you think DfM brings? 

NB: Younger designers, myself included, often think that constraints limit creativity. But having a decade of experience in the OEM studios, and there being two of us, we've learned that constraints and good engineering can enable you.

There were times when I was working at Toyota and we wanted to make the car wider, so we would come up with an engineering argument to win design argument. You get these clever solutions to problems. 

[With the HF-11] we started with a clean sheet. There was no one telling us it needs to fit in a box, so we could immediately incorporate the technology we thought would be viable. You have to approach it from a very big picture,understanding costs, timelines, technologies, what's available, what do you want to risk and what do you not want to risk? You want that as early as possible so you can enable design, engineering and performance without really compromising later.

You see it with a lot of supercars. They announce a base price, say US$600,000, and then by the time it gets to production, it's like, oh, well, it's no longer a V12, now it's a V8 and also it costs US$2 million. We didn't want to do that.

Integrating all this at the start empowered the interior, exterior and aero teams. They had a clean sheet to play with. 

CDN: Even with this knowledge of the importance of DfM, were there times when you did have to compromise on your design due to manufacturing challenges? 

NB: Everybody likes to say there's no compromises in these things, but of course, it's always a balance. I think our biggest compromise, or shift, was we've created the original car, the Half-11 prototype, and that car was beloved for its rawness and volumes, which were pretty radical. I mean, the car was lower than a GT40, it was 37 inches tall or something, so low noone could sit in it – the doors were tiny. So, the biggest adjustment we had to do was for people to actually fit in it. We had to change a lot of the ergonomics. There's a number of things that most people will never notice.

Cost is driven by complexity and complexity is driven by not understanding manufacturing methods. So, if you can understand the manufacturing method first, you can design to those constraints. I have two examples – one is the door design and two is the exhaust system.

The exhaust system is fully 3D printed. Most people think with 3D printing you can do whatever you want, but that’s not true. You need to build in special geometries, you need to build in support materials – and all of that drives cost and complexity. So for us to achieve what we needed to achieve, we actually had to compromise on design – but most people will never really know because you're adjusting things from maybe a 60-degree draft to a 45-degree draft. It waters down the vision a little bit but for the uninformed, they don't know any better. They've never seen the original.

Another example would be the door. In this carbon supercar world, a door is made up of seven to nine pieces that are bonded together. You require jigs, manpower, trimming. We wanted to do it in two pieces, but we ended up doing it in three. That drove the design of the inner door pocket, the hinge structure and everything because you're optimising for draft angles, single draft surfaces.

I think from the initial concept that was always the idea, so you design with that in mind. You don't design crazy pockets or anything, you work with the constraint. Because of that, we have a very unique door because I don't think most people think like that. So again, it enables creativity and creates a really cool volume inside – but it's primarily driven by manufacturing costs and complexity. 

Even though it's never been easier to make things, it's probably harder than ever to make good things that last a long time and have relevancy.

CDN: What do you think is most misunderstood about DfM? 

NB: Things are changing month to month now, but it seems that if you do an AI rendering, you can build it. I also think that even experienced designers will balk at constraints, but I genuinely think that constraints are what enable creativity because if you have a white sheet of paper, you can do anything and that doesn't necessarily show a particular cleverness or any problem solving. 

It's never been easier to build things with the democratisation of all the software, engineering tools and simulation programmes. But it's also never been easier to get so damn lost if you don't know what you're doing. And we see many of these projects constantly where people ask for help and say “we're really lost.” Our response is usually, “well you probably should have done 15 years at an OEM before you did this.” Even though it's never been easier to make things, it's probably harder than ever to make good things that last a long time and have relevancy. That's what we're aiming for

CDN: What was it like ‘breaking free’ from the OEMs? 

NB: There's a lot of battling between divisions. The engineering guys want to lead, then the design guys are like, no, no, no, we're the most important. There's obviously some internal tension there.

Of course, there are amazing cars that have come out of that tension, like the Lexus LC500. Crazy engineering, design synergy, super cool. We were fortunate to be around those projects, learn from them, and then create our own process that we thought would be appropriate for a company that's building 25 cars, not 25 million. 

CDN: What were the main learnings you’veincorporated into how you work now? And what are some things that you didn’t like that you don’t do anymore? 

NB: There are things that are amazing – you can do things and you can fail, and money is not really an issue. I remember doing a set of headlights at Honda, and I think they were 250 grand for a show car. It's also very cool that you can use the latest technology, and you can learn about the suppliers.

There's also a really big team that helps you with a very broad knowledge base. The bad part about a big OEM is that effectively everyone inside the company is pitted against each other to get a promotion. Very rarely is everyone working in synergy because everyone wants the bonus at the end of the year, or to be the next chief designer. So, there can be a toxic competitiveness.

Whereas if you go to a startup, there's more of that team spirit, which we really like. We like that people are building something that genuinely matters. Obviously at a startup you can't make mistakes like you could before – you don't have the resources and the suppliers won't talk to you. We’ve tried to emulate the Skunk Works programme –you've got the contacts of the OEM, but you're in this small, isolated silo and no one really knows what you're doing. 

There's like 10 or 12 people maximum. We ultimately have a really strong dialogue immediately between engineering, manufacturing, finance and business.