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Local Motors’ self-driving shuttle Olli is electric and made from 3D printed parts. | Source: Local Motors
Local Motors, the company behind Olli the autonomous shuttle, is closing its doors this week.
The company began in 2007, but didn’t start dipping its toes into the world of autonomous vehicles until 2016 when it launched Olli.
Olli 1.0, the first version of the vehicle Local Motors made, is a low-speed pod that could run for 60 miles on a single charge. The shuttle was designed for environments like hospitals, military bases and universities.
In 2019, the company released the upgraded Olli 2.0. With a top speed of 25 miles per hour and the ability to run for 100 miles on a single charge, Olli 2.0 offered more range than the original version.
In October 2020, the company announced it would be testing Olli on the streets of Toronto. Olli hit the streets in 2021, but would only carry out tests until December, when an Olli 1.0 shuttle collided with a tree, resulting in the attendant being critically injured.
After the collision, the City of Toronto stopped its trials of the self-driving shuttles. An investigation by the Durham Regional Police Service found that the shuttle was being operated manually during the accident.
Local Motors is headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, and it runs two micro factories in Chandler and in Knoxville, Tennessee. These factories are where Olli is 3D-printed.
The company is shutting down due to a lack of funding, according to The Drive, the publication that broke the news.
Local Motors is the second company developing autonomous shuttle services to shut down this year. Optimus Ride announced that it would be closing operations and that its staff would be acquired by Magna International.
A source told The Robot Report the COVID-19 pandemic took a major toll on Optimus Ride’s business. The company’s main operating environments were retirement communities and commercial business parks. With people, especially the elderly, not leaving their homes during the earlier stages of the pandemic and remote work becoming more commonplace, Optimus Ride’s business took a hit, the source said.
While Local Motors has not made an official announcement regarding its closure, the news was confirmed by unofficial announcements from employees on LinkedIn.
“I am disheartened to announce that Local Motors will cease to exist as of January 14. I was only there a few months, but loved every minute of it. I made some great friends, both locally and globally, which makes it worthwhile,” Chris Stoner, former VP of sales and customer success at Local Motors, wrote. “The autonomous vehicle space is an exciting emerging market with plenty of opportunity. Experiencing first-hand the skill and dedication of the people I worked with, I have no doubt AVs (like Olli) are the future of transportation.”
This is a disheartening story with regards to Olli and Local Motors, I it possible it could be saved by Government funding or Crowdfunding.
As Elon Musk can tell you, starting a radical new automotive company is extremely challenging.
Too many other competitors venturing out in AV shuttle territory too, I guess. And they are most of the time extremely well-funded, securing developments for a very long time. LM should have focused on what an AV should be in nature: both safe to the passengers as well as to vulnerable road users such as cyclists and pedestrians. It then could have decided that the big autonomous SUVs and MPVs other AV developers are experimenting with, isn’t such a great idea.
These folks were a bunch of serious @sshats. I visited their Knoxville site as part of an ASME conference tour. The bro’s running the tour actually took pride in the fact that nobody in their audience could hear them over the construction due to their lack of some simple preparation. The building was just a shell, the 2hrs was a total waste of time for the 40 folks who had taken an interest in their purported innovations. During the conference they described a business model based on donated time (fair enough) and stolen resources (compute and CAD licenses paid for by volunteer’s employers). Some interesting products, but a nonsensical business model. #techponzi
@sshats was too kind.
After working here for 4 years, I can tell you with 100% certainty that funds were not the reason they shut the doors. Sure, they may have ran out of money – but the gross mismanagement of this company is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever witnessed in my adult professional life. Just rich white people throwing away money for their pet projects. Nothing they ever created or sold was a viable product. They just wanted to “push the envelope” of mobility while also stringing along their employees with the hope of some kind of success ANYWHERE in the process. That success never came.
If it helps I grant you the knowledge that the old CEO is currently living in an rv