Rally Fighter
= first crowdsourced designed car, by Local Motors
URL = http://www.rallyfighter.com/
Description
Stay Davis:
"Hold your horsepower. Open-sourcing a car is not the same as open-sourcing a web browser. Can an open-sourced jalopy survive against the lean mean driving machines of Detroit, Germany and Japan? Local Motors’ showstopper, the Rally Fighter, argues that it can. It is a sleek all-terrain vehicle with (arguably) stunning design and extreme durability. It looks like it could eat a Jeep Grand Cherokee for breakfast and belch up a Hummer H3. The Rally Fighter originated from a web design tournament and was chosen as the first design for production. It is now available for purchase for $74,900. There are 25 of these already on the roads and 140 deposits have been put down for future orders. This design made it through not only because of its popularity within the open community, but because it was identified as buildable yet unique. “We wanted something different that could also come to market. We actually wanted something that would be polarizing. Something that would be really liked by one group of people and maybe not so liked by another group,” says Mr. Rogers.
The Rally Fighter is a large vehicle, the size of a SUV, but has the weight of a small sedan. Its base measures 116 inches by 83 inches of track width and it weighs 3200 lbs. Specs for the Rally Fighter are: 6.2 liter, V8 engine and 430 horsepower (at 5900 rpm), 424 lbft (at 4600 rpm). The final version of the Rally Fighter uses composite panels for the doors, body and inner shells. There is no paint on the Rally Fighter, though you may customize it with your own design of vinyl skins. “We wanted desert drivers to absolutely love it, whereas North-Easterners will probably find it inappropriate, but we will get to them soon, with our next models. We want to get this first model to be seen throughout the Southwest and make people realize that a true difference has been made,” says Mr. Rogers. Though a few Rally Fighters have been sold in Boston and Russia, the marketing direction is clear for the Rally Fighter: Crocodile Dundie’s vehicle of choice.
It took the Rally Fighter 18 months to go from initial concept to production. Traditional manufacturers need three to five years, for a standard car to make it through this full cycle. Local Motors plans to further reduce this time to 12 months for its next models, but needs the cooperation and feedback of consumers to achieve this. Mr. Rogers argues that in order to get through the whole battery of tests within the impossible timeframe of 12 months, their customers are going to be involved in development.,Local Motors is asking future customers for their opinion during every stage of the development through a wiki. Customers continue to develop the vehicle after they take it away. Of course, all the basic safety tests are done before the model is released, making the Rally Fighter officially street legal. But the open-source model allows for rapid development to a stage that is “good enough to get to customers.” Great customer ideas are incorporated in the next production vehicles. It’s all about communication between the different parts of the community." (http://miter.mit.edu/article/open-source-cars-are-here-lessons-learnt-local-motors%E2%80%99-take-open-hardware-revolution)
More Information
All designs and CAD drawings are available online at: http://www.rallyfighter.com/open.php