Local Motors 3D printable car points to 'microfactories'

The Local Motors 3D printed car.

Local Motors is reinventing cars, and car-building, from the ground up, using 3D printing, carbon fibre, "Microfactories," and a wide range of customizable features.

Last year, when we saw the first example of a 3D-printed car from Local Motors, fellow TreeHugger Christine asked if this innovation could herald "a return to a more artisanal, small series form of manufacturing," and wondered if we can truly reduce waste with print-on-demand processes or if we will "find ourselves buried in a sea of layered plastic trash?"

Read the Treehugger story - “This 3D-printed car could be the future of sustainable auto manufacturing.”

(The contradictions in this story, or at least those it points to, are unsettling – we need inventive innovation such as that applied by Local Motors to produce its carbon fibre 3D printed car, but what we don’t need are more privately owned motor cars, even if they are produced by a claimed sustainable process. What we need is more public transit systems - Robert McLean.)