World’s first 3D-printed car on sale next year
If they’re 3D-printing houses these days, then surely a 3D-printed car is no great stretch?
A Chinese company called Polymaker clearly didn’t think so. It has created a Smart ForTwosized city car in conjunction with an Italian engineering firm called X Electrical Vehicle (XEV). And there wasn’t a steel fabrication plant in sight.
The pint-sized EV heralds the way such cars will be built in the future, says Polymaker.
The 3D-printing process also made the car’s design and construction much simpler, with Polymaker saying the number of plastic components in the car were reduced significantly from what you might expect in a conventionally manufactured vehicle: just
57 parts, versus over 200 normally.
Yes, you’re right:
3D-printing of components isn’t a new thing; Mini recently announced bespoke panel inserts for its cars, while Bugatti took
3D printing into the realms of the exotic, showing off a 3D-printed brake caliper on its Chiron hypercar that is 2kg lighter than an original machined part. This, however, will be the first time an entire car (or most of a car at any rate) will be built in this way. Just think of the reduction in overheads; future Elon Musk entrepreneurial types could be building cars in their bedrooms. Well, their garages at least . . . Polymaker says the little city car will weigh half as much as the Smart ForTwo it is kind-ofsort-of based on, will have a battery range of around 150km/h and will be capable of an earth-shattering top speed of 70km/h. Which will be fine for the urban commute, one would imagine.
The big step to mass-manufacturing, of course, will be how well it fares in crash testing.
If it shatters into a million pieces on impact . . . well, bye-bye Polymaker-XEV city car.
It’ll be on display (on a plinth that has also been 3D-printed, we’d like to think) at the Beijing Auto Show at the end of April.