The StreetScooter is a new electric vehicle that is currently being tested for street use.  It can go about 25 miles per trip, with a top speed of 74 mph.  But the most interesting thing about this new vehicle is the manner by which it was designed and built.

The StreetScooter is being built in a very unusual way. Rather than being the product of one company, StreetScooter a cooperative venture of over 80 auto parts suppliers, engineering firms, and electronics companies. It does have a management team of sorts, but is designed around the Disruptive Network Approach to project management, which is meant to keep the project flexible and to provide ways to work around potential roadblocks. The companies involved are all subject matter experts, with each bringing their expertise and manufacturing capabilities to the project. By defining the car as a series of modules and requiring consistency only at the places where those modulars interface, the project is structured more along the lines of an open-source software project than a typical manufacturing process.

[Via Autoblog Green]