Local Motors

Anybody heard of this? It's supposedly a new car company that operates on a combination of crowdsourced designs that are selected by contest, and with a "build your own car" approch. The company apparently intends to specialize in low-volume manufacturing. The whole thing kinda sounds like American Motors Company for the new millenium to me.

Here's the website.

http://www.local-motors.com/

I could go on but I think I'd rather hear everyone's thoughts.

Its interesting, but how many people want to toil for free so some other guy can profit?

Did Kramer have something to do with setting up this business plan?

ignorant, that's kinda what I thought. Seems like there's a lot of coolspeak on the site, but it all boils down to a "build your own fancy LoCost for $50000".

It's a shame, since the idea seems to have a lot of potential for the enthusiast market, but I think they're gonna ultimately blow it.

Worst website ever, I cant even see anything on it.

I thought 'design by committee' was how you ended up with useless, ugly stuff that nobody wants.

Well, then wadda bout this? It's called the Rally Fighter

Are any of you in the Phoenix area? Local Motors is bringing the Rally Fighter there on 11/23 - and we'd love to see you guys in person.

The design & development process is pretty simple - since you guys know what you like, and what you want, you can either contribute design ideas or help guide development. The idea is to avoid the typical "watering down" of concepts as they are developed into production vehicles.

It's true that customers come in to build their cars with a personal Local Motors builder trainer. The process only takes two weekends of your time. It's not an experience for everyone, only die-hard car lovers who are willing to work to see the car they love on the road.

Let me know if you have any questions! And definitely let me know if you're in the Phoenix area, as we'd love to see you.

Cheers,

Ariel Local Motors aferreira@local-motors.com

Man, you guys are really pessimistic. Even when there's a relatively cool idea laid out for you on a platter.

As for working on a design that someone else profits from - I can tell you that there are plenty of working designers and student designers that would gladly do the work for free just to get noticed or have an actual product available that they had a hand-in. It's a dream for most and a pretty fair trade-off in the scheme of things. You do realize how few designers get a chance to produce an actual car, right? And how many of them are stuck designing door handles for Kia? This kind of resume-booster is usually very sought after.

Also, where did it say "Design by committee"? At least the initial overall design is done by one person, then voted on based on popularity. I haven't read more into the process than that yet, so I'll refrain from making anymore observations. If there's something I missed, by all means point it out.

Sure the idea has some obvious pitfalls, but it seems like they have some good momentum and their own community of sorts. Also, at least one car is already built, which says a helluva lot more than "Check out this great idea!" I guess we'll have to see if it lasts the test of time and money though.

btw - website works just fine for me. I had no problems getting the info I wanted, nor were there any glitches. (firefox ver. 5.4.3 on a mac)

Matt B wrote: Man, you guys are really pessimistic.

I know, I've been feeling very cynical lately, and most of my posts seem to be portraying that (see my recent posts in the Toyota Echo discussion for example).

Anyways, looking through the site they had several postings where you could vote for the style of a certain part of the car. For instance, the tailights/rear hatch had 6 or 7 different styles that you could vote on to be the style put on the car (at least that's how I understood it). This is the type of thing that can get you into trouble - a lot of different people voting on little aspects of the car without necessarily taking into account how that fits in with the overall style of the rest of the car. I assume Local Motors has veto power in case a bunch of people joined and tried to vote for a Homer-esque separate bubble area for arguing kids, but putting every little thing up for the vote of a lot of inexperienced people is not the best way to get things done.

Bob

In reply to Schmidlap:

Ah, yeah I missed that part. I'd have to agree. However, if the designer came up with 3 different ideas that they felt worked, then it might work. Dunno, does sound like the recipe for a very compromised end product.

In reply to Schmidlap:

Bob - you're right. We call it "bi-modal" intelligence. The company is certainly responsible for guiding the product choice, especially in regards to constraints due to cost, DOT or FMVSS requirements. The community tends to balance itself out quite well - you'll find that all in all these folks are quite savvy, and have (in my humble, biased opinion) excellent instincts & taste.

Thanks for your willingness to investigate a new idea!

Ariel Local Motors aferreira@local-motors.com

ignorant wrote: Its interesting, but how many people want to toil for free so some other guy can profit?

I thought that was the point of the internet...

Clem