A guy I once knew, bought the factory purchasing experience for a high end automobile. The experience was similar to a luxury vacation, except that he (with his wife in tow) visited the factory where the car was made, took some laps on the race track with his new purchase, and then drove it across Euroland (Autobahn driving) to the Netherlands (where it was shipped back the US). Obviously, I thought it was very excessive (I get much more value out of my laptop than my car at 1/50 of the price, but hey, things don't have much of a hold over me), but it reflected an intellectual and emotional investment in a big purchase that you don't see very often.
That level of investment is one reason why the open source automobile start-up called Local Motors is interesting (unfortunately, their website needs a complete overhaul). It's a decentralized car manufactory that invites the prospective owners to help build the cars, from the selection and customization of the design to actually joining the team that builds it (or doing it yourself if you have the inclination).* That creates a connection between customer and product that you don't see often, and is very much in line with the "maker" spirit we see growing out there: you actively build what you want rather than take what is sold to you.
The other reasons that open source automobiles are interesting is that it overcomes the slowness of innovation we see in traditional traditional car manufacturing. The designs are open sourced. This means that designers from around the world are able to generate innovation either alone or in teams with others and deploy them as plans that have the potential to get built (including electric vehicles). The other is a factory free manufacturing process. The company has a community directory of vetted mechanics/builders that will either build it for you or help you build it.
I've had a little experience with decentralized manufacturing. My team built a decentralized and global (30 countries) manufacturing system for a start-up in the professional print industry a couple years back that will likely serve as an early model for open source manufacturing and 3D fabbing. One of they keys to making this work, is to build a platform (a system that regularizes and centralizes commonly used processes). From this perspective, some things I'd like to see include:
- A better software enabled process for adding, modifying, and advertising designs. A template process works well here to ensure all bases are covered. A process of forking the designs would be interesting too.
- Review processes. From safety to integrity to efficiency. This can be partly crowdsourced.
- Standards. In most cases, open source manufacturing in any industry requires the use of standards -- a minimal rule set -- from design to production. This not only speeds things up, it reduces costs.
- Manufacturing automation. A ticketing and quality control process for decentralized production centers. It sounds easier than it its, but it's essential.
Once the platform elements are cracked, this has the potential to revolutionize the industry. Add in standardized, low cost and commoditized chassis/drive trains/software (or better yet, standard designs that can be inexpensively fabbed locally), particularly for electric vehicles, and the rest will be history. Goodbye GM, Toyota, Honda, and Tata.
NOTE: Granted, this may not be the company that cracks this opportunity space, but it's interesting to see it in motion.
* This is similar to the kit plane community that sprung up due to the failure of the small aircraft industry (it died due to lawfare: insurance/liability).