A do-it-yourself car that comes in a box in pieces sounds futuristic. But the Urban Tabby makes that far-off dream a present tense reality--sort of.
The $5,350 to $8,000 vehicle won't be threatening General Motors or Toyota any time soon, but the "flat-pack car-in-a-box" is street legal and can be put together in about an hour, according to SmithsonianMag.com.
The first of its kind car comes from Hong Kong-based automotive company OSVehicle, which was co-founded by Francisco Liu and Ampelio Macchi. They spent most of 2013 designing a car that would let people with no mechanical experience build their own vehicle out of the box with an instruction sheet.
"By delivering to our clients just the components and not the full vehicle, we save a lot in transportation costs," Liu told Bloomberg News in a translated interview. "Everybody, in every country, can assemble his own car in his own garage for less than 6,000 euros."
OSVehicle reasons that offering the do-it-yourself car will give some manufacturers a chance to compete with lower prices than the typical carmaker.
For the Urban Tabby, buyers choose between a two-seater or four-seater base chassis, according to SmithsonianMag. The fairly straightforward additions include wheels, seats, a battery pack and a five-horsepower electric powertrain motor. It also comes with seatbelts and should soon be available with anti-lock brakes and airbags as options.
One of the unusual vehicle's perks is that it's extremely customizable, giving buyers plenty of range to mix and match different features.
"Both the Urban Tabby and its predecessor the Tabby, for instance, are versatile enough to accommodate different engines and layouts that include two- and three-wheel configurations," SmithsonianMag described. "With some creativity and a bit of 3D design software know-how, users can transform their vehicle into something that resembles a golf cart or even a truck."
Interested buyers can go here to check out the Tabby, which starts at €2090, or $3435.75, for the four-seater. The cars should ship in the spring.
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