Simone Cicero has posted an extensive interview with the team lead of Wikispeed.
Joe Justice of Team Wikispeed
Joe Justice started Team Wikispeed and got 10th place in one of the divisions of the Automotive X-prize. He is continuing to lead his international team of volunteers towards the 100mpg future.
Here are some highlights from Simone’s interview:
- Wikispeed builds ultra efficient cars and we do this with seven days development cycles using agile methodologies. Those methodologies include several aspects, for example about managing distributed teams – like with SCRUM – or methods to ensure an high quality bar and focused work – much like Extreme programming and Test Driven Development as part of XP – that we reworked for the manufacturing process labeling it Extreme Manufacturing.
- Wikispeed is missionized to rapidly solve problems for social good. We don’t just make cars. I recently gave a talk on methods for vaccine distribution to help eradicate Polio: we worked with a group that develops low cost medical centers and communites for this and we’ve done significant work with them.
- We do this with OSE (Open Source Ecology). OSE gives us the platform to share ours designs, our budgets, our build practices and our maintenance videos with the world so that people can build their own ultra low cost commuter cars.
- Instead of us going into a traditional employer that keeps a larger percent of our work…everyone will have an equitable share that is proportional to the amount of value he contributes to the world. We’re not there yet but we’re moving closer: open source hardware movements are making this more possible than ever before.
- Will traditional manufacturing disappear and will people be involved themselves directly in the manufacturing process of their own goods? There’s a trend towards localization and communityavailability of manufacturing that we haven’t seen since the trade guilds days – particularly in Europe – and with these available pieces of manufacturing like theGlobal Village Construction Set (GVCS), the hackerspaces and fablabs maybe someone in your community will build your next bread owen or window garden, your next cat feeder or your next pair of pants…I do see this as a fairly near opportunity that will co-exist with traditional manufacturing and eventually be growing in market share.
- Obviously we can still not print core i7 miniaturized size circuitry but we are getting closer to this and by thanks to the open source community we’ll be able to iterate and improve so I do see us, able to produce our next quad core CPU and I do see us able to reduce and reduce and reduce the amount of energy needed to do this.
- We need absolutely to develop more energy and resource efficient ways of production and maybe local production and local manufacturing coupled with the international network of ideas is the solution to adapt to a more sustainable way of living. Maybe, thanks to open source development we can make a difference, instead of waiting that this solutions are developed in the closed of traditional businesses, and the important think is that we move in this direction, that is worth investigating.
- Wikispeed takes the role to ensure this kind of products pass the regulatory testing that makes this products actually usable: without this our car wouldn’t even be allowed to go on the streets, that’s why we carry on safety and regulatory testing.
Wikispeed modular 100mpg car
openalia 