Local Motors Olli History

Unveiled in 2016, the Olli was a low-speed autonomous electric shuttle whose body was largely 3D-printed. The design originated from a community competition entry by Edgar Sarmiento. Olli integrated IBM Watson's artificial intelligence to enable natural-language interaction with passengers, answering questions about routes, nearby points of interest, and transit connections.

Olli 2.0 arrived in 2019 with significant upgrades: approximately 80 percent of the vehicle's body was 3D-printed, it could travel up to 100 miles on a single charge, and its top speed of 25 mph was appropriate for the campus, hospital, and transit-hub corridors it was designed to serve. Local Motors operated Olli pilots in the United States, Germany (in partnership with Deutsche Bahn), and other international markets.

The Olli program represented Local Motors' most commercially deployed product and attracted $15 million in investment for the parent company. Despite demonstrated deployments across multiple continents, the company was unable to secure sufficient follow-on funding to scale the Olli business and closed permanently on January 14, 2022.