Sometimes, ideas are so brilliant, so good, that they affect the world in countless ways. For example, Ralph B. Rogers had many ideas in his day, including working with Cummins Diesel Engine early on, making Indian motorcycles lighter to go faster and to co-found the Children's Television Workshop which created one of the best-known children television show in history. You may have heard of it: Sesame Street.
John “Jay” Rogers is Ralph B.'s grandson and he, too, is quite the entrepreneur. His love of cars began in his childhood but it wasn't until he returned from a stint in the Marine Corp that he dove head-first into the car business.
As a businessman with large footsteps to follow in, Jay Rogers did not go at it in a “normal” way. He is the founder of the world's coolest car company, Local Motors. In fact, the company's motto is “Make c.o.o.l. cars,” cool being an acronym for “Community, Open, Ownership, Local.”
Instead of hiring a team to design a product and hope the buying public at large likes it, he decided to use principles such as co-creation, also known as crowdsourcing, and open source, where the masses bring forth ideas that the company can work with and eventually apply to the product which, even when completed, can continue to evolve. In other words, there are no technical secrets and nearly everything can be changed within the confines of the co-created car.
Some have called Rogers a 21st Century Henry Ford. He believes that niche cars are a profitable way to build and sell cars. Low-volume manufacturing is possible through local micro factories such as the one they have in Chandler, AZ, and that this will be the way of the future. He also is convinced that concept cars can be real cars, unlike the way it used to be when Harley Earl used to make them for GM.
The concept behind Local Motors is to create and build local factories in a number of areas and have each factory build its own cars with locally available resources. It's a very enlightened concept and has sustainability written all over it. Rogers figures that a production run of 2,000 cars can and does make sense. This is a far cry from huge assembly lines and millions of cars...
Time is money and that will never change. What Local Motors does is spend less time finagling with the concepts as they move to production in only 18 months, as opposed to 4 or more years like the big carmakers. The plan is to further reduce these delays. All of these steps enable Rogers to build cars in 1/5 of the time and with a hundredth of the cash. That's crazy.
Local Motors uses competitions to determine winning designs. They currently have tens upon tens of thousands of design ideas, all of them accessible on The Forge, the website where pro and budding designers can submit their ideas. The community that participates in the competition varies widely in age and background. The contests themselves are regional. For example, once such competition was created for an Alaskan car. It's all very cool, pun intended...
Once the car “comes to life” and is purchased, the buyer becomes part of the build process. Over a period of six days and nights, the new owner is required to take part in certain portions of the actual assembly process. As Jay puts it, the “do-it yourself nation is upon us.” I fully agree.
John “Jay” Rogers is in the process of changing the North American automotive business. The cycle of greed and BS is one of the many issues that have crippled the car business on our side of the planet and he wants to change that. Unlike the current system, he's looking to instill trust and open practices. I wish him all the luck in the world.
LM's first creation is the Rally Fighter. I was lucky enough to take this incredible vehicle for a spin while in Arizona.
If you want to learn more about Mr. Rogers and his vision, I invite you to view the following video.
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| Photo: Mathieu St-Pierre |
John “Jay” Rogers is Ralph B.'s grandson and he, too, is quite the entrepreneur. His love of cars began in his childhood but it wasn't until he returned from a stint in the Marine Corp that he dove head-first into the car business.
As a businessman with large footsteps to follow in, Jay Rogers did not go at it in a “normal” way. He is the founder of the world's coolest car company, Local Motors. In fact, the company's motto is “Make c.o.o.l. cars,” cool being an acronym for “Community, Open, Ownership, Local.”
Instead of hiring a team to design a product and hope the buying public at large likes it, he decided to use principles such as co-creation, also known as crowdsourcing, and open source, where the masses bring forth ideas that the company can work with and eventually apply to the product which, even when completed, can continue to evolve. In other words, there are no technical secrets and nearly everything can be changed within the confines of the co-created car.
Some have called Rogers a 21st Century Henry Ford. He believes that niche cars are a profitable way to build and sell cars. Low-volume manufacturing is possible through local micro factories such as the one they have in Chandler, AZ, and that this will be the way of the future. He also is convinced that concept cars can be real cars, unlike the way it used to be when Harley Earl used to make them for GM.
 |
| Photo: Mathieu St-Pierre |
The concept behind Local Motors is to create and build local factories in a number of areas and have each factory build its own cars with locally available resources. It's a very enlightened concept and has sustainability written all over it. Rogers figures that a production run of 2,000 cars can and does make sense. This is a far cry from huge assembly lines and millions of cars...
Time is money and that will never change. What Local Motors does is spend less time finagling with the concepts as they move to production in only 18 months, as opposed to 4 or more years like the big carmakers. The plan is to further reduce these delays. All of these steps enable Rogers to build cars in 1/5 of the time and with a hundredth of the cash. That's crazy.
Local Motors uses competitions to determine winning designs. They currently have tens upon tens of thousands of design ideas, all of them accessible on The Forge, the website where pro and budding designers can submit their ideas. The community that participates in the competition varies widely in age and background. The contests themselves are regional. For example, once such competition was created for an Alaskan car. It's all very cool, pun intended...
 |
| Photo: Mathieu St-Pierre |
Once the car “comes to life” and is purchased, the buyer becomes part of the build process. Over a period of six days and nights, the new owner is required to take part in certain portions of the actual assembly process. As Jay puts it, the “do-it yourself nation is upon us.” I fully agree.
John “Jay” Rogers is in the process of changing the North American automotive business. The cycle of greed and BS is one of the many issues that have crippled the car business on our side of the planet and he wants to change that. Unlike the current system, he's looking to instill trust and open practices. I wish him all the luck in the world.
LM's first creation is the Rally Fighter. I was lucky enough to take this incredible vehicle for a spin while in Arizona.
If you want to learn more about Mr. Rogers and his vision, I invite you to view the following video.
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