When Kevin Lo entered an international contest to design the first fleet of 3-D-printed electric cars, the Hewlett-Packard engineer wanted to come up with something that suited a variety of tastes.
“I actually kind of styled it after a woman’s shoe,” said Lo, who lives in east Vancouver with his wife and two sons.
The design was a winner for the 39-year-old, his first top prize out of 21 entries in contests offered through Arizona-based Local Motors. On the company’s online forums, people posted macho-looking designs. Lo thought something softer and more gender-neutral would have greater appeal.
Local Motors plans to use Lo’s design to debut a low-speed electric vehicle in 2016 and later a highway-ready car. Although the company isn’t sure how many it will produce, the car will be built in a Knoxville, Tenn., facility that’s supposed to open in the fall and have the ability to print up to 3,000 cars in its first year, said company spokesman Adam Kress. It’s supposed to showcase the viability of 3-D printing in the auto industry and would be the first widely produced 3-D-printed electric car.
The privately supported technology company designs and builds vehicles, often using crowdsourced ideas. Oakridge National Laboratory in Tennessee partnered with Local Motors to get the concept of 3-D printing cars off the ground; the lab provided the company with its original printer, Kress said.
Jean Paul Capin, Local Motors’ chief financial officer, said Lo’s design will evolve as the company moves through prototyping and the first print, but Lo will be involved in the process.
The contest specified that the car should have a soft top, which Lo incorporated along with removable body panels. He started with five designs and whittled it down to two versions of the same car, which is called Reload Redacted.
The “swim” version, illustrated with a surfboard on top and outward facing speakers, is something that appears best suited for the California coast. The Golden State also happens to lead the United States in electric vehicle sales, so that’s no coincidence.
And perhaps, someday, the car will be driven down Santa Monica Boulevard.
For the contest, the company’s online community, along with a panel of judges, voted for the design they liked best. One of the judges was former “Tonight Show” host and car enthusiast Jay Leno, who liked that the car was sporty and fun but also something he could commute in.
“I’m hoping to meet Jay Leno,” Lo said.
Who knows, he said, perhaps the car he helped design will be featured on Leno’s new show “Jay Leno’s Garage.” The car is expected to sell for $18,000 to $30,000.
Lo doesn’t describe himself as a car guy — his family has a sensible Toyota Sienna minivan and a 2005 Acura TSX — but he’s excited about the future of car manufacturing and 3-D printing. The technology is something HP works on at its printer division in Vancouver but that Lo can’t talk about in detail.
There’s a lot of research and development that goes on at the Vancouver office, he said.
Lo actually began entering design contests to get better at his job. HP asked him to work on customer experience, which looks at the way people interact with a printer. How do the control buttons look and feel? How does the printer sound? (HP has a sound-proof room used to listen to the sounds printers make.)
He wanted to gain outside experience on design and user interaction, so he began researching car design. That was more than four years ago. Fast forward to today: Lo has continued his interest in how cars work and function, so he keeps entering design contests for fun.
Reload Redacted’s body and chassis will be made out of carbon fiber reinforced plastic pellets that are essentially melted and extruded out, kind of like a hot glue gun, Lo said. The traditionally manufactured 2015 BMW i3 uses the same strong but lightweight plastic in its foundation, and the material is also used in race cars.
The printer takes the digital blueprints of the car and basically draws it layer by layer, a process called direct digital manufacturing. It comes out of the printer in one piece, Capin said, so there’s no need to bolt or weld panels together. The ridges on this printed piece can be polished and painted to look like a conventional car. The rest of the 3-D car — such as the interiors, windows, and steering wheel — are assembled using traditional parts.
Local Motors’ first attempt at printing a car took 140 hours. After five months, the company whittled the time down to 44 hours. For Reload Redacted, the goal is to print it in less than 12 hours, which is about 100 pounds of car each hour, Capin said.
Auto manufacturers use 3-D printing to make low-cost prototypes that are easy to change and print again, Capin said. Once they’ve come up with a final design, however, it’s traditionally made using a mold or stamp. To make the expensive mold worthwhile, companies have to make thousands of a certain type of car, Lo said. The cars are built and sent to a sales lot, where customers pick the one that best suits their needs and wants.
These days, consumers appear to desire more of a personalized, custom product, Capin said.
Owners of Volkswagen Beetles and Mini Coopers are examples of car owners who value having a customized or even made-to-order car. On the Mini USA website, potential buyers can choose every detail from the paint colors — whether or not they want those classic bonnet stripes — to whether they want to add heated seats or a sunroof.
“I think the technology follows the need,” Lo said.
What a 3-D printer is told to do can be easily changed or parts can be swapped out, Capin said. “That’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. It allows us to customize vehicles much more efficiently.”
There are limits to what 3-D printing can do, though. A semitractor-trailer would be too big for today’s printers, and 3-D metal printing technology isn’t quite there yet, Capin said.
“In the future it’s likely we’ll integrate forms of metal printing,” he said.
Right now, it’s cheaper to make cars using stamping technologies. As the cost goes down, auto companies may start 3-D printing at least some car parts, but it’ll be up to the manufacturers to make that switch, Capin said.
The first version of Reload Redacted is slated to be built by the end of this year.
