Local Motors is prepping to take their car printing model – labelled by the company as Direct Digital Fabrication – from proof of concept to road-racing reality. With the construction of two car printing plants, one in Crystal City, Virginia (just outside of DC) and one in Knoxville, Tennessee, the company plans to allow customers to have custom cars designed, printed, and assembled on site. To kick off this new form of auto manufacturing, the company is beginning with a new car design to be selected via their most recent crowdsourcing contest, titled Project Redacted.
Submissions to Project Redacted are still open for six more days. Once it closes on June 15, the Local Motors community will be able to vote for the winning design from June 19-25, at which point, the design will be approved and enter into production. At this point, one of the more popular designs in the contest is MODE, by community member buCARsa, but that doesn’t mean that it will necessarily win the contest.
Whoever wins will get to see their car produced, potentially at Local Motors latest Mobifactory (Mobi), which the firm will be opening in Crystal City on June 11. The facility, which is ideally placed in a city with a number of other makerspaces, will be open all summer, where attendees will get to see the Local Motors Verrado electric drift trike, their first crowd-sourced vehicle, the Rally Fighter, and the 3D printed Strati car. The Mobi will also host weekly workshops, like “Science of Drifting” and “3D-Printing 101″, and monthly events, such as drag race slalom courses.
So, if you’re into 3D printed cars (who isn’t?), you can RSVP to attend the free event, where you’ll see drifting experts demo the Local Motors Verrado drift trike and get a free t-shirt. And, if you’re into designing 3D printed cars, you can still submit your designs to Project Redacted for a chance to see your dream vehicle brought into the real world.
Awesome stuff. Possibilities of this technology are endless.