In 1959 Toyota's Motomachi factory became Japan's first full-scale car assembly plant.
Skipping over the residential-friendly MakerBot Replicator, the company used a beastly industrial VX4000 3D printer to craft three 1:3 scale models of the car with a plot to blow them to smithereens.
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Now, six years after those initial discussions, and with sponsorship by General Motors, Mitchell and his team are soon to start work on a full-scale prototype of the City Car.
Not since the days of the Chevy Chevette will we have seen a small car infestation on the scale that we're likely to see in 2006.
Volvo Car Corporation starts small-scale production of the Volvo C30 Electric this year, and next year the company will start selling the Volvo V60 Plug-in Hybrid.
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Meanwhile Fiat Auto, which will remain in the holding company, will be free to gain scale from mergers or partnerships with other car firms and to raise capital.
The EV1 is a full scale, 100% electric-powered race car built to resemble a modern Class 1 unlimited open-wheel machine.
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But the slumping European economy and the success of its rival BMW's Mini brand has nudged the manufacturer to make a full-scale re-entry into what is still the most profitable single car market in the world (though China is now bigger in volume terms).
Basically, Tesla is making a move from niche to mainstream once it has a handle on two critical things (1) manufacturing at scale (2) a cheaper battery to make the less-expensive car viable.
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Just driving the car even being engaged over phone calls during the journey may scale the distance and complete the journey but we can not expect creativity and above all there is inherent risk in carrying out the casual act.
At that scale, Proton seemed to stand a chance of holding its own against the multinational car makers when Malaysia opens its domestic car market in 2003.
There's a classic neon McDonald's sign, a scale model of an old Texaco service station where kids can play at fixing a car and a mock-up of an early Holiday Inn, complete with cheesy laminated coffee tables.
The new versions of the Punto and Palio in a few years will share chassis as well as engines and gearboxes, enabling production of some 2m vehicles from a single platform, and yielding the sort of economies of scale these days enjoyed only by the likes of Toyota, with its Corolla world car.
Car-sharing services such as Zipcar are already doing this on a small scale in places like Boston, New York and Washington, D.
It should ultimately be capable of making ultralight cars at automotive scale and cost, halving steel cars' weight and fuel use, improving safety, costing no more per car and saving oil equivalent to finding a Saudi Arabia under Detroit.
Occasionally the threat lay in that buzzword of today, globalisation, and its concomitant demand for greater scale: Chrysler merged with Daimler-Benz because, even as number three in the world's largest car market, it was too small to prosper alone.
But without large-scale funds for investment in public transport, it has been all too easy to portray it as unthinkingly anti-car.
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