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Developing 3D-Printing Tech for Cars (medium.com)
New submitter kynthelig writes: There are a hundred reasons why 3D printed cars might not work. But that's true of almost any great idea in tech. A few automotive entrepreneurs have developed a vision — along with actual physical cars — that rethink the assumptions about how cars get built. The result has a smaller environmental footprint than either conventional or electric cars, allows for faster innovation, and retools car manufacturing into a local, community-oriented business. The car revolution isn't just in automating them: it's also in how we build them.
Cardboard also has a lower environmental impact than all that crap they use for cars.
That does not imply that if I built a car out of cardboard that could pass safety regulations, it would still have a lower environmental impact. All that required equipment might be the big factor there, not the legendary inefficiency of automobile production lines. ;)
I'm surprised that there's not a market in refurbished cars.
Accident free models with no frame problems or known gremlins. Go over the mechanicals with a fine toothed comb, put the suspension wear parts back to new, make sure all the systems work and work within new specs. Swap out the interior with a new interior -- seats, headliner, console, maybe even dash and instrumentation. Paint the body and replace any worn parts.
Make the car nearly new appearance wise. I'm sure it's a ton of labor, which is why I would kind of expect some kind of cottage industry in India (like shipbreaking). The parts might be expensive, but the idea would be to put in aftermarket components as much as possible, and maybe at some kind of scale build your own and build in upgrades to dash/electronics.
Maybe it's all unrealistic, but I do know there is a cottage industry in rebuilding insurance writeoffs. I knew a guy whose business it was to buy insurance wrecks, repair or rebuild them and then sell them. I saw a couple and they were really nice and cheaper than used models of the same age.
I just think the carmakers like Toyota have built some increadibly durable cars that often wear out not because the drivetrain is worn out, but because the interior is shot, the paint is faded. Refurbished (with good attention to the drivetrain) it'd be like new, especially if the interior had infotainment upgrades.
3D printing hype is getting out of hand.
Why would anyone buy an unfinished looking $53,000 3D-printed car like THIS, when you could buy a 500+ horsepower 2016 Shelby GT350 for about the same price? The resale value alone would make the 3D printed choice foolish.
If 3D printing was as promising as this article makes it sound, then why can't I buy individual parts like custom 3D printed hoods? It's certainly more realistic to buy individual parts than 3d printing an "entire" car. It's just not anywhere close to being cost effective.
Local, community-oriented businesses are total BS. This will never get off the ground for anyone other than the present big car companies and only in 20 or 30 years when their present assembly lines wear out. The government already has so many rules and regulations regarding the design, building and testing of cars that many fine cars in use overseas can not be sold in the USA. And I am talking about cars and trucks built by companies like Toyota, Volkswagen and other big names who can only afford to revise and test their best selling vehicles for sale in America. So it is just a pipe dream to think that smaller, innovative, local businesses can get in on car manufacturing using 3D printing.
I asked my car, it said it was not interested in 3D printing.
No, you don't. You buy batteries, motors, controllers, and 99% of the structure from Hobby King and you 3D print the hood ornament or a weird part for the camera swivel.
Sure, and you don't write in English, your English teacher is writing in English through you. And you're not typing, the food you bought at the food store is typing.
Production has inputs.
Watch this video of BMW's I3 factory building new tech vehicles in a new tech factory. Now read TFA and learn that Divergent Technologies process doesn't use 3D-printing for the bodies (too heavy) or even the vast bulk of the chassis - the hyped 3D-process is for glorified lugs (they term them "nodes") used to build a tube frame. Consider the relatively tiny contribution of lugs to the assembly of a fully equipped car and it makes very little difference how those lugs are produced.
Then there's the claim that by printing different styles of lug (and some other parts, but not the bulk of the car) they can easily switch from building one type of car to another. If this is not wishful thinking intended to attract gullible investors, I don't what it is. To make effective use of this, they would need a super-agile assembly line stocked with most of the parts needed for all the vehicles they will possible build. The article admits that 3D-printing doesn't solve the majority of parts needs.
There's also the notion that by 3D-printing parts, replacement parts can be made on demand without special tooling. This is a very good point, and undoubtedly one that traditional car manufacturers are starting to look into, even for parts that may have been cast or otherwised conventionally produced for vehicle production.
Lastly, there's the anti-EV nonsense from Kevin Czinger, Divergent's CEO. Let me say that I believe his 1500lb natural gas-powered concept car has a lower environmental impact a Tesla SUV recharged off today's power grid. Today's electric cars are not a clear win when charged with coal generated electricity. Especially when you consider a heavy EV with very large batteries like that Tesla. The real promise of electric vehicles is their ability to use - and drive the development of - renewable sources of electricity. Green cars of the future will have to be both light and shun fossil fuels.