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Local Motors’ Parent Firm Receives $15M Investment for Autonomous 3D Printed Shuttle, Olli https://ift.tt/3m1ZdwS Founded in 2007, Local Motors is a ground mobility company that’s focused on developing methods of designing and building transportation. The company runs microfactories in its home state of Arizona, as well as Tennessee, Maryland, and Berlin, and has used 3D printing to make several vehicles, such as the Strati, the LM3D Swim, and the electric, self-driving Olli shuttle. Olli has been successfully deployed in a number of places around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Germany, Italy, Washington D.C., Ohio, New York, California, and more. Local Motors is actually one of two subsidiaries under parent company LM Industries (LMI), which calls itself the world’s first digital vehicle manufacturer and was named to Fast Company’s 2020 list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for Shaping the Future of Mobility this spring. LMI has just announced that it received $15 million in funding from Mirai Creation Fund II, which is managed by Japanese asset management firm SPARX Group Co., Ltd and invests in innovative technologies in the fields of robotics, intelligent technologies, hydrogen-economy technologies, electrification, and new materials.
Since Local Motors began series production for the latest iteration of the Olli—the third generation Olli 2.0—LMI says that there’s been a “significant resurgence” in interest from people looking for safe, reliable transportation.
The funding comes two years after Local Motors secured over $1 billion in financing for Olli customers from sustainable transportation leasing company Xcelerate and Elite Transportation Services. This latest $15 million raise from SPARX will be used to move product development along for the autonomous 3D printed Olli, as well as drive production and deployment for the shuttle, getting it to the consumers and customers looking to change up local mobility in a major way. This is all well and good, but we had some questions. Over the years, LMI has changed its direction multiple times, focusing on both 3D printed public transportation and private passenger cars, open source vehicles, and even a crowdsourcing design site for branded competitions through its global community of designers and engineers, Launch Forth, which is also the company’s social media and co-development platform. We wondered if perhaps LMI raised this $15 million to pay the bills so it could keep trucking, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. So we reached out to Rogers to ask about some of the company’s developments in regards to a possible change of focus.
With the focus clearly to be on Olli for the near future, we wondered if LMI would be pursuing personal 3D printed vehicles any longer, or would instead dedicate its resources solely to forms of mass transit.
That doesn’t directly answer the question of whether or not LMI will stop 3D printing personal vehicles in lieu of mass transit solutions, but it seems like Rogers is confident that the company could focus on both if needed. We also asked what the company’s current financial situation was like, and if LMI has been generally profitable in its other projects.
Finally, while writing this story, we also noticed that the Launch Forth URL automatically redirects to the Local Motors website, so we wondered if that site was now defunct.
One thing is for sure: no matter what exactly is going on behind the scenes with LMI, Local Motors is continuing to address the demand for clean, safe autonomy. The company has been working hard this year, despite the pandemic, to validate the safety of its vehicles and prove that their 3D printed structure performs just as well during a crash test as vehicles made with conventional manufacturing. This summer, it also announced a partnership with Florida-based Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) provider Beep, and is planning to deploy hundreds of its autonomous vehicles there in the near future.
(Source: Business Insider / Images: Local Motors) Printing via 3DPrint.com | The Voice of 3D Printing / Additive Manufacturing https://3dprint.com October 21, 2020 at 09:02AM
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