Cars have gone form a “get me from point A to point B by
burning gas” mode of transportation to a dream project for innovative techies.
Car can now run on electricity, be summoned by smartphone
apps in cities all over the world, and are being developed to navigate without
a human behind the wheel.
And now, they can be 3D printed too.
Two companies recently announced the release of LSEV, a small
electric car who’s every visible component is 3D printed except the chassis,
seats, and glass.
At just eight feet long, four feet wide, and five feet high,
the LSEV looks a lot like a Smart Car, but is even a little bit smaller.
LSEV is the brainchild of Shanghai-based 3D printing
materials company Polymaker and Turin, Italy-based electric car startup XEV.
The car reportedly has a max of 43 miles per hour and can go
up to 93 miles on one charge. The relatively slow speed means LSEV won’t be
much use for highway driving, but the 93 mile range will allow for a good
amount of city or local driving.
A great example of a vehicle that drives a lot but doesn’t
drive too fast is your neighborhood mail delivery truck. As it happens, one of
SEV’s first large orders came from Poste Italiane.
The Italian postal service provider reportedly wants 5,000 3D
printed electric cars. An additional 2,000 LSEVs have already been ordered by
ARVAL, a car-leasing company owned by French banking group BNP Paribas.
While LSEV isn’t the first-ever 3D printed car-American
companies Local Motors and Divergent 3D each have their own versions – it is
being marketed as the first one that’s mass producible.
LSEC’s production is scheduled to start in late 2018, with
the first deliveries for the European orders taking place by mid-2019 at a
price of $10,000 per car.
Printing the parts for one car and assembling them into a
finished product currently takes three days. This may sound like a long time
compared to, say 3D printing an entire house in one day, but it’s about on par
with the time it takes to manufacture a regular car, estimated to be 30-35
hours.
Just trade out stamping, welding and painting for printing,
metals and rubber for enhanced nylon, polylactic acid, and rubber-like
thermoplastic polyurethane.
Even if a lot of time isn’t saved in LSEV’s manufacturing,
with just 57 parts, it’s undeniably simpler than regular cars, which average
over 20,000 parts (that’s counting every last screw and bolts). Many cities
around the world have been built in such a way that cars are an indispensable part
of them, especially US.
Being able to produce cars more quickly and cheaply, then it
mostly a good thing, especially when the cars are electric.
But taking a longer-term view, it’s worth considering whether
faster, cheaper, simpler car production will serve us down the road.
One glimpse of highways or city streets packed bumper-to-bumper
with honking, stressed-out is enough to make you wonder if there’s a better
way.
Of course, this doesn’t mean innovation in the auto world is
going to grind to a halt. But it is nice to think there are likely people out
there working on 3D printed electric bikes, better public transit, and new car
sharing and ride hailing solutions, too.
