Cars are expensive to make and expensive to purchase. But what if you could print one out?
This is what one Chinese company attempted to do earlier this year. Sanya Sihai spent 44 hours printing out the frame and four days putting together all the components of the car. The car weighs 1,102 pounds, is 11.9 feet long, 5.5 feet wide, is totally electric and costs 11,000 yuan ($1,770) to build.
The car is fairly slow; it can't go faster than 25 mph. It's also really ugly. But this car isn't designed to be practical, it's designed to show the technical capabilities of a 3-D printer. So don't expect to see this car driving around your neighborhood any time soon.
While this is certainly a technical achievement, it isn't the first 3-D-printed car. Local Motors printed out its electric-powered two-seater Strati in 2014. The Strati not only looked better and had more functionality. However, it cost between $18,000 and $34,000.
"The density of the material is much lighter than that of the metal, only one-seventh or one-eighth," Chief Designer Chen Mingqiao explains in the accompanying video. "Lighter weight will help save energy in the future."
"It should be interesting to see how quickly Sanya Sihai is able to develop this car further, and if they will actually mass produce these vehicles in the future. While Local Motors remains leaps and bounds ahead of them as far as 3-D printed car manufacturing goes, it should be interesting to see how serious they are about creating their 3-D printed vehicles," reports 3Dprint.com.
Cars are not the only thing people have printed, though. There are also 3-D-printed buildings, 3-D-printed robots and 3-D-printed fashion accessories.
