The Open Source car, or OScar, is the car for the people, designed by the people. Its name could have been Volkswagen but, unfortunately, it has already been taken. But with any name it could bear, this project ambitions to bring some car models available to every body which provides useful features tailored for most of common needs.
The concept derives from the Open Source softwares, mainly known by its guru application Linux and GNU, and tackles the conventional way of thinking of car makers. Here, the speech doesn’t include “patent pending”, or “mass consumer marketing campaign”. Here, the bottom line would be: “you want your dream car, come on in, you could build it”.
Participatory culture From industrial designers to children in school, everyone is invited to participate. After all, no one has the monopole of the brightest ideas. For instance, the car design proposal should show four doors, weight around 1000kg, be electrically powered by wheel hub engines, and remain simple, understand provide small number of mechanical parts and components.
The work has been distributed into four big categories or forums:
- integration: mainly design proposal for the first version of the car,
- modules: where every component of the vehicle is forged,
- tools: to ease the car conception, all of them have to be open source either,
- networking: the communication center of the OScar project.
So far, the project has just started. No details were unveiled about how and where the car would be assembled. But building a no-brand car is an easy work and takes more just a few sketches. Sooner or later, it will also face some harsh critics from car makers, not eager to drop their profit margin. We wish OScar a very good luck. Hope it could bring some cool design car and “reinvent mobility“.
But something told us that you will be the first to add a comment to this story. Simply click on the button 'Add your comment' to start expressing your opinion.