Until Mozilla removes their AI ambitions , you can add yourself to the list. I mean, you don't make cars. But still.
Buses. They're called buses.
buses are technically very proprietary like cars, and rented to you by a sort of subscription. and service works on their terms (usually badly)
unless you live in one of the three and a half places in planet earth with free bus fares and good service.
You must live in Europe. I’d rather walk the 3 miles from my house to the gym than wait for our bus in the US.
this is a doomed idea, youd be better off doing open source ebikes and emotos
What about those of us who live in colder climates?
Lipo and silicon carbon lithium batteries are a thing, you can also just wrap some wool around the base of the bike. I use one in 4 foot snow all the time
I'm more thinking about myself, not the bike. Riding around in freezing temperatures is not my idea of a good time.
oh, ive been able to do it just wearing a wool dress in -20c. built different i guess 🤷♀️
my tip is to wear good waterproof (and thus windproof) boots and mittens (not gloves)
I mean, if I had no other choice I could, but like nah fam, I'm good
I just think it's interesting people are so against bikes in winter when they also love skiing
I mean, call me crazy but don't want to go skiing every morning before work, and then go skiing again in the afternoon after I've worked a full shift either. Also, never said I was against bikes in the winter, its just not super practical as a primary means of transportation for most people.
try it before you knock it, i personally love it and find it makes commutes way shorter and more convenient. im also like, a tiny woman and can easily do this
I'm a thirty minute drive from work unfortunately, so its not a viable option for me at this point. More power to you tho.
yeah if its not in a city its probably not worth it
I would definitely pay a premium for an open source car.
the premium you pay is for the space to build it and the tools. the (kit) car itself is a hell of a lot cheaper.
That feels like something we could crowd-source. I don't need the space and tools to build two open source cars, but if we had ten people in the community that wanted them, it would make sense to rent the space and buy the tools.
"Hey so the auto assist locked the wheel and the brakes, swerved into another lane, shifted to reverse and blew the transmission, then..."
Hahahaha what a funny story consumer, anyways how's your sex life?
“Hey so the auto assist locked the wheel and the brakes, swerved into another lane, shifted to reverse and blew the transmission, then…” And what was tesla's response?
Woudnt it be a better idea just to offer standard EV kits to turn combustion engine cars into EVs?
It's unattainable for a low budget player to create and certify a car, and support it with parts for 20 years.
Just create a kit to turn your 10 year old VW into an EV, and let VW support the parts outside of EV domain
Years ago i was looking for EV kits and found several people out there selling them. Idk what the current availability is, how much tech they have, or how open they are. The ones I saw were pretty low tech (lacking regen braking and such). Think accelerator pedal controls motor speed and a battery pack is about all they were. Again this was a while ago when I was looking (like 2010ish).
You could offer kits for older vehicles, but considering the cost of the kid and installation cost/effort, does it make sense to start with an older car that may have other issues coming soon?
So what's the alternative? Start with a new car and throw out the ICE? Sure, but a bit wasteful and even more expensive than an older car or you could find an existing manufacturer (idk like Lotus) who will basically provide you the car without the ICE related components (aka a glider). ;)
parts for 20 years
i think the good thing about an open source car is that we could crowdsource, or even make some parts ourselves, no?
daily driving conversions and heavily modified vehicles can get annoying, but something that has it in it's design...
Just a reminder that "kit cars" exist. Their existence makes the idea of "open source" cars seem more reasonable to me in that one does not need to make a large company, it is possible (though likely not profitable or cheap) to be a small car company.
do they make kit cars that are hybrids or electrics or have fancy safety features?
because i was looking at a real fancy lotus for like six grand a few years ago, but it was just an ice manual. i've built those before, those are easy. i do not know all these fancy new cars with regenerative braking and shit.
There are "electric truck" conversion books from the 1970s. (Only trucks as they used lead acid batteries, which are still extremely heavy for useful amounts of stored energy.) This indicates it is not extremely complex, though possibly still very complex. (My reason for this assessment is from reading a few of them, but never implementing any of it.)
As for a detailed answer on the rest: I have no idea.
regenerative braking is literally just a power supply to get the spinning energy of the wheel back to the battery. in concept, electric cars are way simpler than ice, the gizmos they put in modern cars make them look more complex.
Only thinking about getting a TÜV certification or a permit to drive on public streets (Straßenzulassung) for an Open Source car in Germany produces nightmares about bureaucratic waves bigger then tsunamis.
A browser. Just make a browser. A FUCKING BROWSER. Don't bloviate on other topics. Don't bake AI into it. Just do ONE THING well ... make a FUCKING BROWSER.
I generally get your point and support it but want to point out that the Mozilla Foundation is a different entity than the Mozilla Corporation.
There can be a couple big things done. A browser being one of them. The open source community is always growing and not everybody has to work on a browser.
Why you so mad about the prospect of open source vehicles?
I love this idea
Eventually, electric cars will become the norm. For an open source OS it just needs enough commercial interest. That's largely what lets down alot of open source projects by the looks of it.
I saw there is a new open source printer out there now. I'm excited about that and interested to see how it goes.
Most of the public don't see the value in open source or the barriers to entry are not worth it for them.
I'm not a dev so I'm certainly not casting shade on all the wonderful projects out there, more just an observation that you usually need to learn abit about computers to be able to access these projects. I've enjoyed the learning experiences
Additional Comment:
It seems like the trend of open source is expanding not just more broadly in regions: Europe adopting it. But also in natural expansions: open source hardware.
Would be interesting if we can get a couple more opensource communities up and running and get more people interested in open source in various ways.
opensourcevehicles/opensourcetransit seems like the next logical step. (I would like to help with this)
Extra Side Notes:
Another area that can be good is opensourcebusiness (Everything related to starting, running, etc a business to make it more accessible for people. Would help more open source companies be made as well overtime)
opensourceanimation/anime (grow that part of the community to collaborate with for visual presentations of open source projects. Animated Tux would be amazing. An anime Krita mascot intro. We can get really creative), opensourcevalues (teaching values and ethics: hope, empathy, strength, we the people, gratitude, humble, etc) and opensourceuxui (grow that part of the community too to collaborate with. UX/UI community struggles with at times) to expand on main opensource software/hardware communities themselves
Personal Note:
2 more being opensourcehealth (To give a baseline of health resources people can make use of), open source housing, opensourcefood, open source water, and opensourcefinances (Baseline of finance resources). All that is more of a personal want but don't know if there is much want in the open source community for those 5.
Growing up my grandfather always had those big thick JCWhitney catalogs. They had nearly ever replacement part of a jeep. So I always wanted to buy one of the fiberglass replacement tubs (body) and make an aluminum frame under it and a bunch of batteries and a couple motors.
Good luck with that in the EU. Try to bypass eCall and your car won't score 5 stars on the Euro NCAP scale.
I'm retired. I'll show up and turn bolts all day for free coffee and a couple of laughs.
You kinda could before tesla even existed. I have a car in the garage still from the brief time when the cad/usd rate was decent but it got fucked right before I pulled the trigger on the batteries and motor. Was going to be a sick electric 80s honda civic station wagon but now its just a dusty old car.
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