Most fascinating green car of 2014: Local Motors Strati

Based just outside Phoenix, Arizona, the startup is the car industry’s equivalent of a farm-to-table restaurant. Both espouse the virtues of housing production close to the consumer. Do this, their proprietors contend, and watch the benefits pile up: slashed carbon emissions from lower dependencies on freight vehicles, reduced stress on road infrastructure and a heightened sense of pride in the plated (or garaged) product.

Fascinating Cars of 2014

Editor Matthew Phenix and deputy editor Jonathan Schultz revisited the most fascinating cars of the year. Click herefor more honorees.

Local Motors has always empowered hobbyists and professionals alike to contribute – via internet-based collaborative tools – towards all aspects of a vehicle’s design and engineering. But it wasn’t until 2014 that the promise of Local’s lofty principles began to take slow, deliberate, painstaking shape.

Rendered in line after line of carbon fibre-infused polymer, the Strati 3-D printed car rolled off the floor of Chicago’s International Manufacturing Technology Show in September. The fully formed, operational electric car was engineered and designed over years, but the printing of its body and final assembly took just two days to complete.