Local Motors was an American motor vehicle manufacturing company focused on low-volume manufacturing of open-source motor vehicle designs using multiple microfactories. It was founded in 2007 by John B. Rogers Jr and had headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona.[1] The company's lineup before its closure included the Rally Fighter and their 3D-printed Strati and Swim vehicles. The company developed vehicles using 3D Printing and utilized vehicle designs provided by the online community. In 2016, the company introduced an autonomous electric-powered shuttle named Olli.
Community
Local Motors' website is a community focusing on vehicle innovation. The content is created by the users who discuss designing, engineering, and building innovative vehicles. Members contribute their own ideas and projects which are discussed with the community.[2]
Co-creation is a technique used by Local Motors, General Electric, and LEGO to enhance new product development.[3][4] Select organizations partnered with the company to facilitate co-creation of their products including US Army,[5]Domino's,[6] and Airbus.[7] Local Motors used a co-designing type of customer co-creation in which the selective process is made by its community and some features such as frame and structure are scoped by the company. Firstly, users created drawing designs and the decorative ideas on their own style. Although the users are novices or experts, all users had the opportunity to participate in this step. After that users presented their designs on the website, and the best design selected by people in the community would be developed by the company. Finally, the company launched the co-designing car into the market. Using the co-creation method, the company gained customer's engagement and loyalty.[8]
One of the biggest community driven competitions was hosted by Local Motors in collaboration with Airbus .[9] This competition was hosted in Berlin, which is one of the tech hubs of Deutsche Ventures.
Propositions
The propositions that Local Motors offered are:
The car is produced and designed using the co-designing type of co-creation, which is called crowdsourcing.
The car was produced in 18 months, which is faster than the usual process by five times.
They were almost always road legal cars.
About $3 million was spent to develop the car, which is less than the amount spent on commercial models by mass automakers.
The company managed to efficiently spend about 3 million dollars by rethinking the car's features, so they designed a five-point seat belt, which costs $10, instead of developing an airbag, which would cost them $6 million.
The Rally Fighter[10] was the first model produced by Local Motors and is an open sourced vehicle. The car was introduced in 2009 after 18 months of development, which constitutes a record time to market compared to normal automobile industry standards, by applying innovative technologies and crowd sourcing techniques.[11] As the company described it, the Rally Fighter is "a fully capable off-road prerunner, with the amenities and luxuries of an every-day on road vehicle".[12]
In collaboration with Cincinnati Incorporated and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Local Motors manufactured Strati, the world's first 3D printedelectric car.[13] The printing took 44 hours to complete, and was witnessed by a live audience at the 2014 International Manufacturing Technology Show in McCormick Place, Chicago.[14] The car consists of 50 individual parts, far less than a traditional vehicle (which is manufactured with roughly 30,000 parts).[15] The Strati was designed by Michele Anoè,[16] a member of the Local Motors community, and is produced in small quantities to serve strategic partnerships, such as with NXP Semiconductors.[17]
LM3D Swim
In 2015, the company debuted a 3D-printed car named the LM3D Swim.[18] It was designed by Kevin Lo, a member of the Local Motors community.[19] The materials used are 80 percent ABS plastic and 20 percent carbon fiber. The vehicle uses technology provided by IBM that offered IoT connectivity.[20] The Swim is currently on display at the company's location in National Harbor, Maryland.
Olli
Olli
In 2016, the company unveiled an autonomous, electric-powered bus.[21][22] The vehicle was designed by Edgar Sarmiento, initially named the "Berlino" from the Urban Mobility Challenge: Berlin 2030. The French tech entrepreneurs Damien Declerq and Gunnar Graef have been instrumental in organizing the challenge in Berlin.[23] The vehicle was built by Local Motors and has IBM Watson technology installed to provide a personalized experience for riders. The vehicle was demonstrated live to their online audience on Facebook Live[24] at a media event in National Harbor. On January 2, 2018, Local Motors received a pledge of up to a $1 billion in financing and operational support to customers of Olli from Florida-based Elite Transportation Services (ETS) with additional funding of $20 million from Texas-based Xcelerate.[25]
Olli was manufactured in Knoxville, Tennessee using additive manufacturing techniques, including 3D Printing.[26] Traditional Steel-Tube chassis Olli vehicles were produced in Chandler, Arizona. The company has not announced pricing yet.
On December 17, 2021, an Olli bus operated by Durham Region Transit in Whitby, Ontario being driven in manual mode suddenly lost control and crashed into a tree. The attendant was critically injured and rushed to a trauma center in neighbouring Toronto[31]
Another pilot, West Rouge Automated Shuttle program, was announced in spring 2021 by the Toronto Transit Commission from Rouge Hill GO Station, but the service was never started after the demise of Local Motors in 2022.[32]
