OScar (open source car)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

OScar is the first attempt to design an entire car using open source principles. The aim of the project is mainly to produce blueprints, using essentially open source CAD. The project is still far from producing a real car, but the progress has been continuous for some years.

The Goal of the project is not to produce a sophisticated car, but rather a simple and functional basic one, which answer basic people's transportation needs. A long term goal is also to introduce standardization in parts manufacturing (very much in the open source way) to use economies of scale. This is a radical change from the car industry current practices and business model, where every manufacturer has his own standards, this often leads to the manufacturer charging imortant prices for their clients. This revenue stream even constitutes an important part of their revenues.

Among the challenges this car will have to overcome, before reaching the manufacturing phase, is conducting crash tests and also abiding by very strict security legislation and pollution norms in the car industry.

[edit] See also

• Open source hardware

[edit] External links

• The project's Web site
• Article in Business Week
• Open Source Car on the Horizon an interesting thread in Slashdot
• About Standards in the car industry