Olli

= self-driving mini-van, designed through crowdsourcing, and produced in 2.5 months

URL =

Description

ALINA SELYUKH:

"It's a self-driving system rather than a vehicle, an app-solicited shuttle bus powered by the learning and predictive computer technology of IBM's Watson — all targeted at cities or companies rather than individual buyers.

...

"Rogers' first big idea was building up localized and digitized made-to-order manufacturing, powered by 3-D printing, to unleash the so-called economy of scope, an antithesis to the economy of scale.

"High volume, low pricing power, low cost, low margin — that's what Toyota or Hyundai have done very well with the automotive industry," Rogers says.

His sights are on low volume, high price, low production cost, high margin: "My economy comes from being able to drive up my price because I can introduce new technology and get you to pay more because it's not available on another vehicle."

Rogers says his aspiration is to create a million vehicles, "each one of a 20,000-unit run, where I'm profitable on a hundred vehicles in each of those runs." (http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/06/29/471599187/a-24-year-old-designed-a-self-driving-minibus-maker-built-it-in-weeks?)

Status

• "The original Olli is being test-run this summer around National Harbor, south of Washington, D.C." [1]