danya greening and his team spent 12 weeks designing the car it's made up of 143 d. printed parts made of nylon and other industrial grade materials the pod cars designed for short distances in an urban environment later this year the car will be equipped with an electric motor so that it can go out on its 1st test drives each part is equipped with a digital fingerprint chip that will allow the parts to be printed on demand on any 3 d. printer. but lowkey is still very much a car of the future the german auto industry is still largely wedded to traditional manufacturing methods and combustion engines experts say car makers overall tend to be slow to get on board with innovation. to change that in germany will have to make friends with experimentation and failure we favor stability and conformity with safety norms that's good but if you want to go digital you have to practice. researchers and developers agree the auto industry will need to go all in on mass production 3 d. printing it's the only way they say for the industry to remain economically competitive and flex