Meet Urbee! A futuristic car designed to be highly efficient and lightweight as well as reasonably cheap and simple to reproduce.
Experts say this could be the greenest car ever.
It won't, however, be on sale for a few years.
Urbee 2 is shaped like a teardrop, and it's interior is made from 3D printed plastic parts. The engine and chassis are metal.
And it's all made through 3D printing. What is that? Well, here is the online definition I found…. 3D Printing (often called rapid prototyping or additive manufacturing
) is a manufacturing process that allows computer generated 3D models
to be transformed into a physical objects through a layered printing
process. The techniques were initially devised in the 90s as a means to
produce relatively inexpensive prototype parts for industrial and
automotive design work, however as costs begin to fall, 3D printing is
finding its way into an expanding variety of industries.
Urbee engineers say it takes three months to print the three-wheeled car, which holds two people.
The car weights about 1200 pounds, and the prototype model is expected to consume only 10 gallons of ethanol fuel on an epic journey from New York to San Francisco!
The company now is on a plan to prove it all. They believe Urbee will have a maximum of 10 brake horsepower, and most of the driving would be between zero and 40mph using the car's electric motor. But the engine can use the ethanol to reach higher speeds.