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Honda Releases its Concept Cars for 3DP with a CC License

Concept cars shows are like the fashion shows of the autoworld. Whenever a car company comes out with a concept car, I initially become excited at the sleek lines and eccentric shapes that make up the hypothetical auto. Then, a wave of disappointment washes over me as I realize that the car will never be put into production, no matter how awesome it is. Honda is one car company that seems to be aware of this. Because you’ll never be able to drive one of their concept cars yourself, they’ve released them as a series of CAD models for you to modify and 3D print.

puyo 3d printing model Honda
The Honda Puyo Concept.

Honda’s new website, honda-3D.com, features a handful of Honda’s concept cars, which you can view in 3D in a clean-looking virtual environment or you can download for yourself under the Creative Commons license. I’m particularly drawn to the Puyo and the Fuya-Jo.  Car and Driver explained that the 2007 Puyo concept, with no hard edges and a soft interior, was meant to be a silky smooth car that evoked the sound “Puyo” upon touching or entering it.  The Fuya-Jo, Honda’s 1999 concept, was designed for club kids, featuring a dashboard modelled after a DJ’s mixing deck and a steering wheel resembling a turntable. The company described it as a  “short yet tall 4-seater that induces the same kind of experience as riding skateboards or rollerblades, or dancing in clubs.

 Fuya-jo 3d printing model Honda
The Honda Fuya-Jo Concept.

Releasing its designs in the Creative Commons is an interesting marketing gimmick to draw people to the Honda brand, but it’s not the first time that an auto manufacturer has worked with such a license.  Local Motors crowd sourced the designs for their Rally Fighter and Fiat launched the Fiat Mio crowd sourced concept car in 2010, both of which released data in the Creative Commons. The Mio project, after receiving 11,000 ideas from 17,000 users, yielded “a compact and agile car, comfortable and safe with innovative traffic solutions for big cities, a pollutant-free engine and the capacity to receive personalized updates, and changes in configuration, and having interface between car and user.

What this may represent, then, is the growing trend of crowd-sourcing ideas for products that will ultimately serve the crowd. By giving away its concept car designs, albeit sparse in terms of actual mechanical information and the layout of the interiors, Honda could be signalling a trust that corporations may have to place with the public. It’s exciting to think that, given the capital and the know-how, anyone might be able to take the shape and style of the Fuya-Jo club car and make their own without getting sued by Honda. What would be even more exciting, though, would be if public transportation designs were crowdsourced for the people of the world.

For the video launched in conjunction with this project, and for more quirky and cool looking Honda concepts, watch below: