To say that the American automotive industry is well-established is a bit of an understatement. Once there were literally thousands of car companies competing in America; now, there are just “the Big Three” and a handful of smaller companies like Tesla Motors. There is also Local Motors, a car company with a twist; the cars are designed via “crowd sourcing,” with input from people all over the world. They’re best known for their Rally Fighter off-road vehicle, which carries an estimated price of $59,000 and is also LS3-powered
It sounds like a gimmick, but the results are nothing to laugh about. DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, put out a challenge to all would-be vehicle designers to submit a future combat recon and evacuation vehicle. Local Motors answered the challenge and was chosen from 150 entries as the winner. We think the LS3 V8 engine helped tip the odds in their favor.
Called the XC2V Flypmode, the whole project was put together in just 14 weeks with input from Local Motors’ diverse fan club. XC2V stands for Experimental Crowd-Derived Combat Vehicle, and it is designed as both a combat recon and emergency evacuation vehicle. Using a GM-sourced LS3 engine as a powerplant and a tough Ford rear end, the XC2V has a carrying capacity of over 6,000 pounds. That’s enough to carry a multitude of weapon and support systems on the Local Motors-sourced tubular chassis and it offers 360 degrees of view thanks to a unique window setup.
One of the coolest aspects of Local Motors is that you actually have a hand in building your car at L-M’s own “micro-factory” in New Mexico. But they may have to build a bigger factory to handle military orders, as DARPA has tapped the XC2V as the winner of their crowd sourcing experiment. That doesn’t mean production is going to happen anytime soon, but military contracts are sort of the golden goose that many startups really need. We could definitely see this bad boy scooting across battlefields of the future, and we may see more crowd sourcing from DARPA in the near future as well.