The creators of autonomous shuttle Olli form LM Industries, a company designing and building future-looking products with partners like Allianz, Airbus and the United States Marine Corps
Today, the creators of the Rally Fighter and Olli announced the formation of LM Industries Group, Inc., a technology-enabled manufacturer focused on mobility products headquartered in San Francisco. LM Industries is the world’s first digital OEM – which can take concepts to deployed products in under one year, all on its unique digital thread. It brings products to market in an entirely new way, designing with its global community of experts, and applying technology such as 3D printing to create and assemble products in small batches at agile microfactories. The process challenges the century-long dependency on mass manufacturing which has failed to keep up with the modern pace of technological innovation.
LM Industries creates transportation, accessibility and mobility products with customers such as Allianz Group, Airbus and the United States Marine Corps, by combining co-creation, technology, and microfactories into one modern manufacturing process that builds high-quality, low-volume products at unprecedented speeds. Its efficiency allows products to be upgradeable like software – iterated regularly and fluidly to match rapidly changing consumer preferences. Bringing Launch Forth’s design and Local Motor’s microfactories into one parent company provides clients with a better alternative to mass manufacturing that gets the right products into the right people’s hands at the right time. With shared resources and capabilities, LM Industries will explore more ambitious and ground-breaking projects to solve the most pressing issues of our time.
“Mass manufacturing is a relic of a past era. We’re in the middle of a mobility revolt where current modes of transportation are not sustainable and do not match up with rapidly changing consumer preferences,” said LM Industries CEO and co-founder John B. Rogers, Jr. “We can’t keep producing products the same way we’ve been accustomed to. The world is moving too fast for traditional manufacturing to keep up. LM Industries is on a mission to transform mass manufacturing to micro-manufacturing in order to match the new pace of technology and quickly changing consumer needs.”
Allianz is partnering with Local Motors to deploy Olli in multiple cities in order to help accelerate the understanding of insurance in our shared, autonomous world. The global insurer is also designing new mobility solutions and imagining the future of mobility insurance with Launch Forth. Now Jean-Marc Pailhol, Head of Global Market Management & Distribution at Allianz SE, joins the LM Industries board to help guide future product development and encourage strategic global partnerships.
“Because they will be pushed by pollution and traffic constraints, the large cities will be the first to accept and implement the disruptive mobility products such as autonomous or flying vehicles for public transportation. LM Industries checks all the boxes with its product features: 100% electric, 100% autonomous, 100% connected and 90% 3D printed with the ability to produce in micro factories near bigger cities,” said Pailhol. “In the future, a large part of the mobility market will be taken by small factories making solutions near the cities in which they are needed. LM Industries has a real competitive advantage in that they are a step ahead of the other AV manufacturers and have a real value proposition with their microfactories. When I met Jay Rogers nearly two years ago, I quickly recognized the relevance of his value proposition from co-creation to micro-manufacturing to mobility solutions like Olli.”
The latest project from Allianz and LM Industries is an accessibility device that can be customized to match any activity level or style choices. For the past 150 years, the design of the wheelchair has remained fundamentally the same, with the same benefits and many of the same problems. With limited upgradability and the stigma of a medical device, it is time for a major shift in mass mobility that is inclusively designed with accessibility in mind, but that is also functional and fun for all people.
Other in-progress projects include a modular logistics vehicle and an unmanned cargo system with the United States Marine Corps. The success of this effort shows the elasticity and nimbleness of LM Industries to provide on-target solutions in both the commercial and military sectors. If this project continues to achieve results ahead of schedule, it stands to augment the US military with a much needed responsive capability for vehicle systems development.
“LM Industries has proven to be an agile, adaptive, and innovative partner in maturing our hybrid logistics vision,” said Lieutenant General Michael G. Dana, Deputy Commandant for Installation and Logistics. “Through the Launch Forth initiative, we are developing critically needed logistical capabilities for 21st century expeditionary operations. By leveraging the power of co-creation, we will rapidly develop time sensitive, demand-driven capabilities for our Marines.”
“As we have proven with Olli and other products, we can change designs based on consumer preferences in a day and custom-develop a fleet of large machines in a matter of weeks,” said Rogers. “Our vision goes far beyond ground mobility; our manufacturing process can be applied to virtually any hardware product, from aviation to infrastructure, housing and other large industrial products. If Amazon created a new eco-system to monetize the long-tail of ordering things, LM Industries has created an ecosystem to monetize the long-tail of making things. Ecosystem shifts like this come once in a century.”
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