If Jim Kor (Kor Ecologic) gets his way, building a fuel-efficient car may one day be as simple as pressing “print”. Well, almost as simple.
Kor heads a team of Canadian engineers designing a car whose plastic body can be manufactured with a 3D printer. They've already made a prototype of their car, dubbed the Urbee, and are working on a second, more advanced version called the Urbee 2. David Baker, a reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, quoted Kor from a presentation he made at the 2013 VERGE technology and sustainability conference in San Francisco in October:
“What we like about 3-D printing is it can print anything. And when you can print anything, you can think of everything.”
Kor and his team members are using Kickstarter to fund their plan to print their Urbee car body and to take a trip from New York to San Francisco on 10 gallons of biofuel in 2015. They are working with Stratasys, headquartered in Minneapolis, a leading 3D printing company to develop and ultimately to print the body for their car.
This is one of the latest developments in the use of 3-D printing on products that can be produced faster and cheaper than in the past. In the following 10½ minute video, Jim Kor explains the project and why he believes that this project represents the future of the automobile industry.
From the entire Construction Citizen team, we hope you enjoy the video, and may you each have a very Happy Thanksgiving!
Photo courtesy KOR EcoLogic.
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