3D Revolution

You get the feeling Jay Rogers is used to being the smartest guy in the room.

- Steven Cole Smith

You also get the feeling he typically is.

Remember Ken Jennings, the genius who won on “Jeopardy!” 74 straight times? Rogers makes you feel like one of those contestants Jennings torched before Nancy Zerg, a 48-year-old real estate agent, finally beat him.

Where is Zerg when you need her? Not that Rogers is an ass, because he isn’t. He just has a specific, “Wizard of Oz” agenda, and life is short, so there’s no point wasting time on talk about Munchkins.

John B. “Jay” Rogers is the president, CEO, co-founder, and heart and soul of Local Motors, which wants to sell you a car. Not today but “soon,” by Rogers’ reckoning. “Not in my lifetime,” by the reckoning of non-believers.

The scope of what Rogers plans is so ambitious that it’s difficult to get your head around it. In an entirely incomplete nutshell, here it is: One day, Local Motors will indeed be local motors, meaning there is a micro-factory not far from where you live. Picture factories in cities all over the U.S., all over the world. How big of a city? “Kansas City would have a factory,” Rogers says. “Topeka would not.”

Again, you get the feeling that if you asked, Rogers—without notes or teleprompter—would point out that Kansas City, Missouri, has a population of about 470,800, and combined with the approximately 149,600 people who live across the river in Kansas City, Kansas, that would give you an immediate market of 620,400 citizens, while poor Topeka (population 127,215) is just too damn small.