Dutch Use Open Source For Car Design


The Netherlands is pondering one of the most ambitious ecological goals in the world: putting 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020.

The benefits would be many fold. The first is an almost certain reduction in greenhouse gases – 90 percent if the electricity to recharge car batteries comes from wind power. The second is a steady source of new infrastructure jobs as the country builds recharging stations and other needed facilities.

Some proponents of the grand project, referred to as C,mm,n (pronounced common), also claim electric cars could save drivers money. It isn’t clear yet exactly how. But it probably assumes the price of oil will rise in the next 10 years.

So how does the country get from here to there? It kicked off a community design project by providing the blueprint of an electric car to any one interested in contributing know-how or elbow grease.

"Everyone is free to use and modify the design. The only condition is that any resulting derived designs are returned to the c,mm,nity as open source. We believe that the best results are achieved through cooperation," according to the project.

Apply open source to the car industry is something that hasn’t yet been attempted. So it’s anyone’s guess whether it will succeed.

But considering the industry’s recent record of technological advancement, crowdsourcing a car is welcome approach that probably won’t leave the industry worse off than today.