Could Local Motors 3D printed bus make housing more affordable

[www.springwise.com]

Just thinking aloud...

Local Motors bus can be 3D printed in 10 hours and assembled in 1 hour accourding to the article above. By eliminating the need for costly public transport infrastructure - underground & overground trains, bus drivers & stops - could it:

(1) reduce the added value of existing city centre locations?
(2) enable the much more lower cost creation of new cities?

Thoughts please...

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2016 04:29AM by Senake.

... yes, of course

When around 1996 in Germany I've asked, if printing whole houses out of fluid materials (not only walls, but interieur too) would reduce the costs and building times, it was rejected for "massive losses of jobs in the building area".

So we have here to wait, until this thechnology comes to us from China or other places, where they don't think much about impacts on jobs or cross-influences to other related areas

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

1996 is a while back - I would be interested in hearing about your house printing solution. I have a whole house mass production and shipping solution too - see [www.buzztechnology.co.uk]. My thoughts on the job front are that if people own the tech (a la RepRap), then hopefully, income from jobs become get less necessary...

Local Motors (and others) bus solution could make things happen a lot faster than reducing house manufacturing costs though as the capital cost per person is a lot lower.

... I had several different ideas for "3D-printing buildings or general structures" - one was around inflating preshaped/sewed fabric parts with concrete ... another would be based on a "swarm" or "flock" of smaller autonomous robots forming thin-walled parts of the buildings from fast curing materials and others following them and filling it with the end-materials like concrete or isolating foam ... another was about forming conductive meshes out from steel-rods as "skeleton", and then spraying them with some foamed materials, caught by electrostatic, so they wil bond to the rods an 'grow' or fill the gaps ... and some other concepts ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

Creating jobs is better then eliminating them. 3d print things that take large factories dedicated to single products, and require everything be shipped in a completed form often in its final packaging across thousands of miles. Don't put laborers out of work. I don't see how large complex 3d printers that individuals will own will empower communities over health 16-56 year old happily employed labor force. Seems contrary to the reprap spirit of empowering those with less, seems like printing a building empowers the construction company with the capital to invest in such a machine to fire its labor force and undercut other companies and create a monopoly on cheapo poorly built buildings. McHousing

3d print fittings and fixture and tools, build a communities ability, print the entire house so they need no tools or knowledge, its not helping its hurting.

my opinions only, open for discussion.