Slashdot Mirror
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."
That's all well and good but I bet all that folded paper won't hold up too well in the rain.
You wouldn't steal a car.
But would you download one?
I wrote parts of this stuff
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.
Living With a Nerd
Looks very cool, just don't know what would happen during a high speed crash. Maybe it would bounce off the other cars and land safely in the distance?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Maybe they have some nice new tech, but the 3D printers I have seen produce stuff that is not well finished. The resolution just is not near perfect, you can see and feel little bumps and ridges.
And how have they scaled it up? You only do this stuff for prototype, not production due to cost.
However, you can make "impossible" shapes. That can be pretty cool.
why does the picture in the article look like a still from a low rez video of a photograph of a badly-photoshopped computer rendering?
i could live a little longer in this prison
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.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
With all this green technology promised to us, I wonder if there is consumer demand. Look at the 1980s: after the government regulations that gave us crappy front wheel drive cars, consumers switched to large gas-guzzling SUVs (I wonder if fuel efficiency would have stayed better if we still had the large RWD sedan layout, with our current engine improvements).
The truth is, no-one wants a slow, cramped and wimpy go-kart (except for some hippies). People want a practical and fun car. If you force these shopping carts on us, we will just start buying more light trucks (eww).
How much do the printer cartridges cost (and how many would it take to print a car)??
I'd love to see 3D printers become more common and affordable, and see open source move to physical objects (like an open-source car!)
Burying that much plastic as a coffin is not eco-friendly. With most 3d printer "ink"-plastic it should be feasible to re-melt the stuff into base material and that would qualify for cradle2cradle, and therefore it would be eco-friendly.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
The two-passenger hybrid aims to be fuel efficient, easy to repair, safe to drive and inexpensive to own.
Nothing about that picture, from the low driver orientation to the tin-can size, exudes safety.
Even the picture from their homepage looks horrible.
I want one of those printers. I hear that I can order one from Yemen, but for some reason I'll have to pick it up at the local Synagogue.
Don't go thinking that you'll be able to just print replacement parts. 3D printing/reprapping is going to be as encumbered by copyright issues as video and audio is. Further, there will be trademark and patent issues as well (eg, printing a part with an embossed logo and/or patent numbers on it). It might wind up being simpler to go to a wrecker's and get the mystery trim from there.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
mod parent insightful! It's true
So it's a 3D printer? Can it print a Klein bottle? If not, I'm not buying one.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
As a threat to interstate commerce? Kinda like telling the farmers they can't grow their own animal feed? If you think that self publishing artists are a threat to the industry, wait until you have everybody self replicating everything they need.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Actually, solving these issues are maybe the single most important political issue to shape the economic face that the 21st century will have.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Now, some enterprising person could build a car body from scratch and truly verify if Adam and Jaime got it right.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
OK, so they're printing these bodies, right? Hence, they could have had at their disposal a vast array of CAD software, right? Hence, they could have easily come up with a half good design, right?
But they clearly didn't. Why?
If I were half as smart as these people seem to be, I'd present more and better pictures of the result and I would attempt to come up with something pleasing to the eye. There seem to be one or two images of this car on the Internet that indicate they are very insecure about the aesthetics. My take is it is a tricycle and that it looks like shit. I also seriously doubt if ever a printer will outproduce a mould.
This technology will however be great for prototyping car bodies. Maybe, some day, even Japanese, Korean and Chinese cars will be designed to look half nice instead of bloody awful.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
It will be interesting to see what unions have to say about this innovation. Clay body knockers are union members and this would effectively eliminate many their jobs.
Every time I read one of these negative kinds of responses to these new, super-small, super-efficient vehicle alternatives about how unsafe they are going to be, I can't help but think that the poster is missing the point.
Yes, compared to vehicles commonly available today, these will probably be structurally inferior.
But these vehicles are for the future. In the future, probably the near future, many people are going to be choosing between going to work on foot or a bicycle, because they won't be able to afford to drive any of the vehicles commonly available today.
Compared to going on foot or a bicycle, these kinds of cars are just fine.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Naw, we can just torrent the part specs from Car-PirateBay.com and get em for free. Additionally the torrented parts have stripped out the DRM that requires the printer to use substandard plastics and intentionally place flaws and weak spots in the printing pattern to ensure a frequent replacement rate.
But then the AMIAA (Automobile Manufacturing Industry Association of America) will start suing random VIN numbers hoping to catch part-pirates.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Don't go thinking that you'll be able to just print replacement parts. 3D printing/reprapping is going to be as encumbered by copyright issues as video and audio is.
It's already completely legal to create knockoff replacement parts and to sell them with information stating their application so long as you do not misrepresent yourself as the company which made the originals, for example by improper use of their logos. This is already done for body parts, sensor/sender units which basically consist of a potentiometer wrapped up in some custom plastic, trim pieces, window seals, glass pieces, and basically every other piece (including interior trim) where there is sufficient demand to create a lookalike.
Or in other words, this problem has already been addressed where it applies to automotive parts, and it is not the issue you claim it to be.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
True for shade-tree mechanics. But even just as a supply-chain compressor it would help. In my situation it was a Toyota certified mechanic doing the work whom was delayed...
Even further up the chain, car assembly plants will have to figure out how to balance the probably higher cost of printing parts vs shutting down the entire plant while waiting for cheaper mass produced parts to arrive from subcontractors (or bust strikes at subcontractors, etc)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Now that's a fun line of thought; would the arguments for/against piracy and copying be changed when people could literally create physical items from pirated material? "Oh, where did you get that sculpture x building? Oh, off of some bittorrent. Isn't it keen?" I suppose we can create CD's with illegally copied music, but I somehow feel it would be interpreted differently.
I'm looking forward to the time when thepiratebay will have the latest sports car for download.
On a serious note, 3D printing could kill the physical product industry. Will there be DRM on car blueprints? Hm.
...you just crumble your ride to dust on arrival.
Two links for videos of fixing something at home with a 3D printer:
"YouTube - Better Living With MakerBot - Episode 1: Kitchen Lamp"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBzyZSVK_Gs
"Better Living with MakerBot - Episode 2: The Wall Socket "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9tnqHS2vFo
You could recycle plastic you already have with better home technology, in theory. Just like you can build a machine shop from "scrap":
http://www.lindsaybks.com/dgjp/index.html
What does it mean to say it is "cheaper" to mass produce things than print them on demand if you need to incur costs when you store them, ship them around, wait for them, secure them, deal with sending back wrong orders, keep track of stuff, and still need to repair and replace stuff on demand anyway? If that made sense, why do people have 2D printers at home when it is probably "cheaper" in some sense to print everything at a large central facility and have it mailed to you in boxes once a month?
If your 3D printer breaks, you ask your friend to print you a replacement part. Or you use another 3D printer you have at home. What do you do when you misconfigure a Debian system and it won't boot? You use another computer to surf the web looking for a solution and to create a boot CD-ROM or boot USB Flash drive.
Anyway, maybe it is good that it is "just a hobby" (even as that is not quite true), because 3D printers are part of ushering in "the end of work (as we know it)".
Related group I'm involved with:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Don't discount it. Once the technology improves, this could be a way of making less expensive, much stronger bodies for vehicles.
Right. But the paper jams are going to be murder to fix.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Consider the price of toner, wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a conventionally assembled car?
Well, I think transcending irony is the most important issue. :-) ... irony. :-)"
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
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&
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Even as I agree with your point: http://www.robots-dreams.com/2010/02/3d-printing-robot-parts-is-a-reality-already-video.html ... Well, now we have a great example to actually show them..."
"We often get into discussions and debates about the potential for 3D printing, especially as it relates to robotics. We tend to take the positive side of the debate, and paint a rosy picture of what we believe to be a not-too-distant future where researchers, developers, and even hobbyists will be able to crank out real-world manifestations of their dream concepts, and test them under practical conditions at reasonable cost and with very short timeframes.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
That not funny. That's a very prophetic. Such a scenario is the future! We live in a world where Intellectual property is worth more in man hours than raw materials themselves.
Life is not for the lazy.
When can I buy it??
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Just go to http://thepiratebay.org/autoparts
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I'm reminded of the Slashdot article about the robot made out of Legos which solves a Rubik's Cube in 12 seconds. Of course, one of the components to this robot is a computer and the computer is not built out of Legos. This is no more a car produced with a 3D printer than that was a robot made out of Legos.
But the the headline "Parts of Car which it is Possible for 3D Printers to Produce, Produced With a 3D Printer" doesn't have that same ring to it.
The image shown in TFA is fake. An exceptionally bad one btw., I'd do a much better job.
The car shown further down the linktrail is a small model with a second class model paint job. It's photographed at an angle as to hide the fact. The model probably _is_ printed with a 3D printer and painted afterwards. I doubt one could print entire bodyparts of a car with rapid prototyping without running into serious size, stability and/or cost issues. Printing negative moulds for small parts, or the small parts themselves might be feasable, but full scale bodywork is done at a fraction of the cost and way more faster and stable with molds, fiberglass compound and a spraygun.
Bottom line: Crappy fake article with false claims (aka lies) about a bullshit press release about some crappy fake vaporware product that will never see the light posted after near non-existant reviewing by a slashdot editor. So generally business as usual. Nothing to see here, move along.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Naw, we can just torrent the part specs from Car-PirateBay.com and get em for free.
You mean PirateGarage.com?
Looks like it was printed on an Epson.
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
Until then...not interested. Put something that looks nice, with curves, something that raises the testosterone levels a bit, eh?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Well, you'd think so, but creating the model for the replacement is beyond your average mechanic's computer skills. (And mine too.)
Someone has to provide the source data to print it, and with X many thousands of model-years out there, it's not going to be possible to just say "Eh, fax me another fender, I don't have one on hand".
I like the foundation of your idea, though, because it would reduce waste and expedite repairs.
The original manufacturers will have to get on board if it becomes reasonable to print replacement parts, and I bet you they will charge through the nose per use of their data, and won't go back very far into the past for parts that we'd want today. You'll probably see a markup on 'printed' parts versus new manufactured parts from the factory because of licensing alone.
Yeah, who cares about openness. It is all about looks and prices... [/sarcasm]
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Really really bad PS job. Without real pictures, is this a story at all? Where is the actual prototype? Who's smoking crack here?
I'm tired in the EXTREME of "new" car designs being touted as "100mpg" or "200mpg" as if it were something remarkable or fantastic...then finding the car is basically a plastic shell on a tricycle frame. 3 wheels means the vehicle is licensed as a motorcycle, not a car, so the typical safety requirements don't count. It's EASY as hell to design and even build, a high mileage vehicle when you get to ignore all the things that are dragging down MPG on traditional cars...things like pollution control, crumple zones, air bags, even bare minimum crash safety.
Build (not propose) something with 4 wheels, is street legal, that gets 100mpg, and I'll listen...until then this is just noise.
It would be amusing if the 3D printers actually had a reasonable pricing structure such that, when tolerances became fine enough, it would be cheaper to print out a plastic sheet with the "ink" actually embedded in the sheet. After all, if you need to be able to print out large physical objects at a reasonable cost then a thin sheet of plastic would have to be just a fraction of the price. Wouldn't that just ruin the day for all the companies that manufacture regular ink cartridges?
:)
And suddenly i'm reminded of the plastic "flimsies" used in the Vorkosigan universe instead of paper
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
And speed and handling...don't forget those. All those are reasons I buy a particular car or not.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Don't go thinking that you'll be able to just print replacement parts. 3D printing/reprapping is going to be as encumbered by copyright issues as video and audio is.
It's already completely legal to create knockoff replacement parts and to sell them with information stating their application so long as you do not misrepresent yourself as the company which made the originals, for example by improper use of their logos. This is already done for body parts, sensor/sender units which basically consist of a potentiometer wrapped up in some custom plastic, trim pieces, window seals, glass pieces, and basically every other piece (including interior trim) where there is sufficient demand to create a lookalike.
Or in other words, this problem has already been addressed where it applies to automotive parts, and it is not the issue you claim it to be.
I wonder how that applies if the design of the car in question is covered by a patent
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Can't wait to receive my electric car kit and assembly it at home.
You mean traffic jam.
He said "is going to be", not "is".
What's going to collapse civilization is litigation. Everything is going to be illegal, or we will all be lawless.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Naw, we can just torrent the part specs from Car-PirateBay.com and get em for free. Additionally the torrented parts have stripped out the DRM that requires the printer to use substandard plastics and intentionally place flaws and weak spots in the printing pattern to ensure a frequent replacement rate.
And they'll call it, grand piracy auto.
The lawyers will make a mess of themselves just thinking about it.
And I said "has already been addressed", but thank you for the recap.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But that only applies to parts made using the Analog Hole. Proper digital copies made using a "computer" are entirely different, and need special protections.
I may have missed it, but when did 3D printing get cheap? I've always known it as being a rather expensive, time-intensive process. I would think that would become a major barrier, unless they've made some significant advancement on that front (which they may have).
You are missing the point. That is how it is today because we don't have good 3D printers in every home. When we do, and physical items become as copyable as bits, the issue becomes completely different and the ideas we have about such issues now will be challenged. That is an event in the future and potentially bad outcomes of that are also in the future. It is meaningless for the matter at hand that we have avoided those bad outcomes before the event. As an example of what will happen, just see Belial6 in this very thread calling for "special protections".
It's not cheap yet, but the price has (comparatively) plummeted in the past few years. I'd be surprised if we were more than 15 years out from affordable consumer models (sized to fit on a desk, not big enough to print a car lol.)
Living With a Nerd
You are missing the point. That is how it is today because we don't have good 3D printers in every home.
No, that is how it is today because manufacturers of aftermarket auto parts formed an alliance and fought a hard battle to keep it that way, and you can be sure that if anyone tries to change this they will fight hard again.
When we do, and physical items become as copyable as bits, the issue becomes completely different and the ideas we have about such issues now will be challenged.
Most people are not going to have the equipment to print a car unless we get true nanoassembly, and then you have some sort of stub that becomes an assembly chamber in any old open space, perhaps some carbonaceous balloon that "inflates" mechanically while maintaining vacuum. Further, particular copies of the design (the original files or their copies) will still be protected by copyright, and any patented parts still protected by patent.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In this case, function (Aerodynamics) dictates form.
My question is:
200 motorway, 100 city? This is FAR worse than the typical performance hit you see for conventional vehicles, and is abysmal for a hybrid. (Regenerative braking means you should pay very little penalty in city fuel economy, and if air resistance dominates your energy expenditures, city might even be more efficient due to the lower speeds involved.)
Also:
Is that on a pure hybrid cycle, or is that with the "electric cheat" of saying a plug-in hybrid gets (insane number) miles to the gallon (however, the number is highly dependent on driving patterns and what portion of the energy is from plugin charge vs. from liquid fuel)
Last but not least:
Does this vehicle meet all United States crash safety standards? Most of these "super high mileage" hybrids don't, so we'll never see mileage numbers like that in a real road-legal vehicle.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
One would presume that a mechanic would pay a licensing fee and then be allowed to print 1 copy of whatever part he needed, like newspapers do with copyrighted photos today. If it's a really popular part, like the 9 foot tall wings people put on their Civics, he could probably pay a 1 year volume license fee and print as many as he wanted.
Better yet, he could measure all the bolt holes and print his own part, that doesn't match the factory specs, but radically changes its appearance. Custom-designed bodykits anyone?
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
How is 200mpg worse than a conventional vehicle?
"I disagree with you" does not equal "flamebait."
I would say you car more about acceleration more than you do about top end speed. No good having a car that can go 300mph, if it takes it 20 minutes to get there.
I for one would love a car that went 0-75 in say, 4 seconds, and topped out around 90-100 a minute or 4 later. 0-30 should be in the first 2 car lengths.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
not all safety standards need to be met for "road legal", motorcycles are road legal, and are missing air bags for example. Mass produced production cars have crash test requirements. Kit cars or customs do not have to meet them all. Tings like safety belts for example I believe are required even in kit cars.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
i was thinking more like cars.thepiratebay.org and trucks.thepiratebay.org and appliances.thepiratebay.org and ... you get the idea.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
"Can they not make one that looks like a Porsche, Vette or Tesla, but not cost more than about $40K, "
As soon as you can get the real Porsche for $40K.
I don't disagree with anything in your post. It does not contradict what I've been posting.
He was referring to the fact that it takes a 50% performance hit (read: fuel economy reduction) going from highway to city.
Whereas a typical modern internal combustion family sedan might see 30mpg on the highway, and drop to 23mpg in the city...only a ~23% reduction.
Sure, you can slap a Tesla-looking body on a golf cart or Nissan Leaf, and there's your good-looking electric car.
Oh wait you want performance too? No way in hell right now, not on an electric car - and you may never be able to drive one out of the showroom.
Maybe if you build it yourself from an old car like an AW11 MR2 or Porsche 944 - look at the White Zombie dragster project for example. By doing this you're basically avoiding the need to pay for modern safety standards - this allows for a light, small, good looking and affordable car.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The lawyers will make a mess of themselves just thinking about it.
"It was a ghost! A ghost slimed me!"
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I thought they meant that the car had a 3D printer built into it. I was wondering why anybody would want that...
This makes much more sense...
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
I suspect that, while most parts aren't covered by patents, some of them would be and would not be legal to reproduce. Furthermore, the schematics that the manufacturer used to make them would probably be covered by copyright. Still, it wouldn't take long for people to re-create the geometries of the parts (just scan them in!) and have legal replacements available.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
There's a typo--it's not an Urbee, it's URIBE!!! GO GIA--oh, never mind, this is /. :-(
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
You wouldn't steal a car...
Exactly! And the next thing you know the RIAA will be cracking down on people pirating cars over torrents and printing them at home.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
3D scanning exists, it would just become way more popular.
You wouldn't go to the toilet in the policeman's helmet...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg
Civilization is not limited to US.
Just saying.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
0-30 should be in the first 2 car lengths.
Extensive R&D needs to be done in the field of automobile beverage holders before this will be feasible. Seriously. They suck.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
It's not THAT hard.
Just take a couple of sips of the beer first..then, just hold it between your legs like normal when driving!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I don't want to downplay the achievement here: the building of an entire autobody using a 3D printer is an impressive feat. However, there is still the question of more sophisticated parts of the vehicle. How do you build components like the engine, transmission, and battery which are parts that require much more complex manufacturing processes and exotic materials? I understand you can fab simple circuitry with these printers, but can you but what about power supplies and microprocessors? These are all items that can require extremely high levels of quality control. While this technology can help localize some parts fabrication (say, a new panel at your local garage), you will still need the complex supply chains to manufacture these vehicles. Then the question is whether it is still more cost effective to assemble all these vehicles in a single plant that have the advantage of learning or ship parts to local assembly sites for specialized assembly. Don't run off and warm up your torrent clients in anticipation quite yet.
Being able to print parts also does a lot for anybody who dreams of open source hardware.
True enough, but when you haven't left the country US civilization is still 100% of the civilization you *know*, or would refer to. leaving the country for a year or two wouldn't count.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Trust me, a regular American can live happily in many other different "civilizations" once his will have collapsed under the weight of legalausaurus rex (sed lex).
:) Not sure what "know" means when you put stars around it too.
Not sure what you mean about leaving US for a year or two. I must have spent only three weeks in USA in my whole life
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/02/printed-car
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/11/02/1359248/Car-Produced-With-a-3D-Printer
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
True, but I'd add one caveat, I can print my new car body of the week, but can I print the engine, drive train, electrical system etc...?
I don't think true "replication" is coming anytime soon.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Baby steps. It takes baby steps.
While we may never see a machine where you can convert matter and data into a fully functioning product in our lifetime, we may come real close.
I'm sure Ferrari would be rather pissed if I downloaded the replication schematics (BIN file?) and replicated a shiny new sports car for the cost of raw materials and energy to produce it. In short, I'm stealing their R&D. Essentially, I've committed piracy by any other name.
Now if I purchased a valid license from Ferrari, single user contract and all. Hey, why not if it's cheaper?
Life is not for the lazy.
They can't even make a gas guzzling corvette or porshe for under 40k so what they hell are you complaining about,
it was a spooky ghost
Don't go thinking that open-source hardware can't exist, now. That's just being pessimistic. However, it's probably for the best to start participating in the land-grab ASAP. Patenting programs is possible in the USA so... start patenting. Make a (software) process by which to turn a 3d printer into a car-hood-spewing machine, for instance.
1.File for a patent
2. Turn the rights over to the EFF.
4. Profit for everyone!
there is no step three, of course
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Sure they can make them look like that and sell them for a low price, but then everyone will think that they're fugly and cheap looking.
People are funny that way.
Except the USA has lots of nukes, plagues, military robots, computer viruses, and who knows what else that stand ready to defend US elite privileged scarcity-based litigious world view until the end -- or even after the end. So, no matter where you go in the world, US socioeconomic dogmatic religious policies (backed by the force of law) can have a big "impact". And since the USA's elite-tilted market economy is essentially though of as "God" by many (ignoring "the love of money is the root of all evil"?), whatever the USA does to promote or defend its version of "the market" and related laws is, by definition, "supremely good", even were it to mean the end of humanity. The USA has inched a little closer to that by reelecting a lot of economic conservatives just now.
By a Harvard University professor of Divinity: ..."
"The Market as God: Living in the new dispensation"
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm
"A few years ago a friend advised me that if I wanted to know what was going on in the real world, I should read the business pages. Although my lifelong interest has been in the study of religion, I am always willing to expand my horizons; so I took the advice, vaguely fearful that I would have to cope with a new and baffling vocabulary. Instead I was surprised to discover that most of the concepts I ran across were quite familiar. Expecting a terra incognita, I found myself instead in the land of déjà vu. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business sections of Time and Newsweek turned out to bear a striking resemblance to Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine's City of God. Behind descriptions of market reforms, monetary policy, and the convolutions of the Dow, I gradually made out the pieces of a grand narrative about the inner meaning of human history, why things had gone wrong, and how to put them right. Theologians call these myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption. But here they were again, and in only thin disguise: chronicles about the creation of wealth, the seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and, ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets, with a small dose of ascetic belt tightening along the way, especially for the East Asian economies.
The slogan "Better dead than Red" is another example of this thinking in the 1950s and 1960s. So "Better dead than live in a world of prosperity for all" could perhaps be a new mantra of the USA in the 21st century when 3D printing and shared information make widespread abundance possible, but everyone does not want to accept the shift to a new paradigm? See also James P. Hogan's prescient sci-fi novel "Voyage from Yesteryear" about this theme.
3D printing might totally reshape our socioeconomic landscape in the next couple of decades. So, essentially, producing a car with 3D printing is a *religious* threat to the US social paradigm built around scarcity. And religious threats can cause all sorts of crazy things to happen. I can hope that saner heads prevail and that the scarcity ideologues eventually give in gracefully when they think about the benefits to their children and children's children of a world that works for everyone.
From Einstein, on religion:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source."
An interesting essay by someon
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Motorcycles are registered in a completely different class than automotives.
The class is formally defined in such a way that a vehicle like this can't be registered as a motorcycle.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
As the other poster said, a conventional vehicle typically pays only 20-30% mileage penalty when transitioning from highway to city driving.
Any hybrid vehicle should pay FAR less penalty when transitioning. In addition, we're likely to eventually reach a point where hybrids get MORE mileage on the EPA city cycle than highway due to the fact that they are operating at lower speeds (hence spending far less energy fighting aerodynamic resistance).
So a hybrid vehicle that takes a 50% performance hit when transitioning from highway to city says to me, "fabricated numbers".
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
And the entire world is embracing the US litigating spirit.
Rethinking email
Or in other words, this problem has already been addressed where it applies to automotive parts, and it is not the issue you claim it to be.
Copyright terms also used to be only 12 years long. The law changes over time.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Troll? Never saw that one coming. Laptop touchpad strikes again?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Unless it's raining. Or it's cold out. Or it's hot out.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.