An editorial read from the Channel archive, kept in the relaunch for its coverage of prototyping.
Cody and Tyler Kor, 20 and 22 respectively, plan to travel from coast to coast and back approximately two years from now in Urbee 2, the 3D-printed car their father Jim Kor and a team of engineers built. The Urbee has been a project since 1996, a project meant to create a low-energy car. They have succeeded - the Urbee uses 8x less energy than a typical car. Jim Kor's two sons plan to take Urbee 2 on a cross-country road trip , using up only 10 gallons of biofuel on the way. How is the Urbee 2 so efficient? It "honors the physics and thermodynamics of movement under 60 miles of an ocean of air." Urbee's aerodynamic design and its use of two different energy sources simultaneously contribute heavily to its efficiency. Jim Kor and his team believe that by 2050 all cars will look something like the Urbee. Kor says our deteriorating environment desperately needs our attention and he hopes crowds will respond to the project and donate money. The first body was 3D-printed with the help of Stratasys. This means that additive manufacturing will go down in history as helping achieve producing the lowest-energy car to date!