Engineer Jim Kor wants to make a car that is efficient, affordable, simple, and safe, and that can be easily produced in small or large numbers.
And he's doing it with 3D printing.
The car he's developed is the Urbee 2, a two-seat, three-wheel hybrid.
Thanks to its big windows and teardrop shape (which gives it an excellent coefficient of drag), it looks like a vehicle out of "Minority Report."
"Printing" the Urbee 2 (which takes about 2,500 hours, according to Wired) makes it lighter, and not only because it is made of ABS plastic (except the engine and base chassis, which are metal).
The prototype weighs less than 1,200 pounds. In comparison, a Smart car weighs just over 1,800 pounds. Because an electric motor will handle all acceleration up to 40 mph, the prototype's engine only has to produce a measly 10 horsepower.
A big advantage of 3D printing is that it minimizes the importance of economies of scale, so small numbers of cars can be produced at reasonable cost. And if the team wants to make a change in the design, it does not have to change a complex assembly process, just a bit of code.
The Urbee 2 may sound like a dream, but Kor is confident. He plans to one day drive from San Francisco to New York on 10 gallons of gas, he said in an interview with Wired:
We’re trying to prove without dispute that we did this drive with existing traffic. We’re hoping to make it in Google [Maps'] time, and we want to have the Guinness book of world records involved.
Whether or not that's possible, it's clear that Kor and his team have made an eye-catching, potentially game-changing vehicle. Watch it go:
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