Car Produced With a 3D Printer

Lanxon writes "A prototype for an electric vehicle — code named Urbee — is the first to have its entire body built with a 3D printer, reports Wired. Stratasys and Winnipeg engineering group Kor Ecologic have partnered to create the electric/liquid fuel hybrid, which can deliver more than 200 miles per gallon on the motorway and 100 miles per gallon in the city."

Comments

Re:So it's just a body?

[Pojut]

Don't discount it. Once the technology improves, this could be a way of making less expensive, much stronger bodies for vehicles. You could then put whatever engine/suspension you wanted under them.

It could provide the opposite approach taken by the Trexa EV.

Re:So it's just a body?

[vlm]

Once the technology improves, this could be a way of making less expensive, much stronger bodies for vehicles.

Not sure about that, but am certain that it would simplify life for repairmen. It took about three weeks to obtain a mysterious minor little trim piece by the front grill for my wife's Toyota about a year ago. (the bracket-y thing by the fog lights ish area) Life would be a lot simpler if you could just print a replacement.

Irony of tools of abundance & scarcity ideolog

[Paul Fernhout]

Well, I think transcending irony is the most important issue. :-)
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. So, while in the past, we had "nothing to fear but fear itself", the thing to fear these days is ironcially ... irony. :-)"

But copyright might come second? :-)
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/open-letter-to-grantmakers-and-donors-on-copyright-policy.html
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-funding-digital-public-works.html
    http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/msg/1e499c6db59117a2?hl=en&