Urbee 3D Hybrid Coming to SEMA 2010

The upcoming SEMA show will offer visitors the change to meet a wide variety of special vehicles, each offering an original approach. However, if we would be asked to choose one of the most unusual creations that will make its way to the Las Vegas event, we’d have to forget about custom muscle cars or tweaked imports and mention the Urbee, the world’s first car to have its entire body 3D printed by additive manufacturing process.

The Urbee has been developed by Stratasys and the Kor Ecologic engineering group and uses an electric/ liquid-fuel hybrid powertrain. Its developers promise that the car offers a fuel efficiency of 200 mpg (1.18 l/100km) for the highway and 100 mpg (2.35 l/100km) for the city, for both gasoline and ethanol. The vehicle also comes with a charging system.

The Urbee was one of the vehicles that took part in the 2010 X-Prize Competition, with its development being followed by the Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet, for future broadcast. A full-scale prototype of the Urbee will be displayed for the first time at the SEMA show.

“Other hybrids on the road today were developed by applying ‘green’ standards to traditional vehicle formats," said Jim Kor, president and chief technology officer, Kor Ecologic. “Urbee was designed with environmentally sustainable principles dictating every step of its design."

“Our goal in designing it was to be as ‘green’ as possible throughout the design and manufacturing processes. FDM [fused deposition modeling] technology from Stratasys has been central to meeting that objective. FDM lets us eliminate tooling, machining, and handwork, and it brings incredible efficiency when a design change is needed. If you can get to a pilot run without any tooling, you have advantages,” the executive added.