I just want a simple car. One without extraneous functions.
My old boss bought a brand new car that was in the shop for two of it's first four weeks. The issue? The capacitive touch sensor that operated the motorised glove box door was activating automatically because it was being confused by dust.
My shitty 15 year old VW's plastic glove box door has a metal latch and had never experienced this bug.
There certainly are places where technology and electronics can improve a car, but replacing one of the most basic, reliable mechanical functions such as a latch is arguably stupid. It's just adding numerous more failure points. It's form over function.
My shitty 15 year old VW's plastic glove box door has a metal latch and had never experienced this bug.
Heh, my 40 year old Deutz tractor has a metal latch on the glove box, and it will randomly flip open and hit me in the head while working in the field.
I would still prefer it over the motorized system you describe
I wonder what's the fastest you could go on tracks? Apparently a record was set in 1979 (121.9 km/h, 75 mph) and never broken since as far as i can tell, or at least Guiness doesn't seem to know anything about it.
Fellas, we need a tank, a couple V8 engines, and a case of beer
There actually exists an open source community for reverse-engineering EV motors, inverters, battery charging modules, BMS, and everything else necessary to build a DIY car from scrapyard components: https://openinverter.org/wiki/Main_Page
Yes. Because instead of letting this be about the person who actually developed this car, someone decided it should be made about OSS' big misogynistic transphobe daddy
I guess that depends heavily on what you consider cheap... And how fast it's supposed to go.
A friend of mine started scrounging up various battery packs from e-bikes and e-scooters. For some reason these battery packs "degrade" to the point where you have to replace it to continue to use your e-transport thingy, but all the cells inside are still perfectly healthy, so he built a battery backup for his house out of scrapped e-bikes batteries.
Apparently many bike shops have stacks of the out back that they basically give away for free as it saves them a trip to the recycling station.
The motor is probably not going to be terribly cheap, and the motors on e-bikes and such are likely not powerful enough...
You obviously also need a lot of knowhow about electronics and loads more materials to actually build a car.
There are however also people who take old gasoline cars and convert them to electric cars.
Man, people are living in places where they get free batteries and am here living in hell, half of me buried in the desert sand and the other dead and hopeless in a place where they would sell tetanus ridden rust if they could.
It's rather horrifying to grasp how much of a buy-and-throw-away society the wealthier parts of the world have become.
Perfectly good printers gets ink refills so expensively that it makes sense to throw away the whole printer, including the perfectly good stepper motors and and they get locked down in software to the point where they are practically broken. Making people just throw away the whole printer and buy a new one...
Bike batteries that are still perfectly good with maybe one dead lithium cell gets throw away in bulk because no one bothers to disassemble and see which cells are still good.
I recently bought an serger sewing machine second hand. Perfectly good machine, powerful motor, all the gears and levers are all in sturdy metal. But the knife and the overlooper was missing. Buying just a new replacement knife and overlooper (3 small pieces of metal that are less than 1cm by 3 cm, and only a couple of millimeters thick) costs more than buying the whole machine (including those parts) brand new.
It's atrocious that we don't repair our stuff better, or at the very least give it to countries that would actually care enough to either repair it or strip it down for parts.
give it to countries that would actually care enough to either repair it or strip it down for parts.
I remember watching a documentary about how many European countries that act like they care about e-waste management just ship their electric garbage to third world African countries to be buried underground.
My brother has knack for fixing stuff and it would be dream to be given all these broken quality stuff to repair. Here too, it's more of a throw it if it broke but since it's mostly cheap Chinese stuff so it's hard to salvage anything of them and yet he still manage to do it.
Buying just a new replacement knife and overlooper (3 small pieces of metal that are less than 1cm by 3 cm, and only a couple of millimeters thick) costs more than buying the whole machine (including those parts) brand new.
Yeah, this is why most people throw their stuff. If the required pieces to fix it costs so much without even adding the cost of the labour then it goes in the dump. I mean, that limit is generally 1/5 to 1/3 the price of buying it new, so if it cost more than the thing just forget about it.
I was looking at a diy electric motorcycle and worked it out roughly to six grand canadian not including the frame, it was planned up be able to get up to a hundred kilometers an hour with a range of eighty kilometers I think but that would still leave room to upgrade them later
Where were you sourcing batteries in Canada? I have a cute little electric car from the 70s that I bought for very little, and installed a heavy, expensive, low capacity lead acid pack like it was originally designed for. Unfortunately this means the range is about 15 miles. I use it as a farm runabout but it can't make it to town and back.
It would be a great car if I could source some used Tesla modules or similar but they are very hard to find here at the prices you see in the USA! Nominal pack voltage is 72v, i.e. 6s 12v lead acid.
Economies of scale are huge for vehicles. A single prototype vehicle like a model y or mach e often costs several million dollars. A custom car might not be that much, but it'd still be a ton.
Ask a local engineering university if they want to get rid of their old electric baja. I don't know how much they cost the university, and they're probably not street legal, but if they're making a new one each year you might be able to get the old one for cheap.
Let's just say the quality of education in our universities are below subpar. I don't think they ever made anything. All that is taught is theories.
Also, for some reason car went x3+ their prices since 2015 and still going up.
Yeah, i meant something with a body made of tubes of aluminum , a seat and a motor with some batteries that can go to 50km/h (30miles/h?) for doing some rides in the desert.
Not a solar one like the thing pictured, LOL. There simply isn't enough W/m^2^ for solar panels to power anything less light and spartan than a World Solar Challenge car.
Aside from that, the cheapest way to build a custom [battery, not solar] electric car is probably to salvage parts off a wrecked commercially-built electric car.
I'm a fan of Aging Wheels and SuperfastMatt on Youtube, both of whom are building custom EVs from used Tesla parts.
If it were worth it, commercial electric cars would be festooned with solar panels. They aren't. (I think there might be one EV that has a solar panel embedded in its roof, but it's just a gimmick.)
In other words, no: the amount of range solar panels could add to a two-ton electric car with performance and comfort up to the standard expected of a modern car is basically negligible.
Frankly, if you really want solar, you should be thinking more in terms of an electric bicycle towing a trailer with a solar panel on it. And even then you're still probably talking about merely extending range, not being able to travel all day without having to pedal.
I would drive the shit out of that car
The good news is: It's free
The bad news is: You have to compile it yourself
Some assembly required
Those fights with the better half over building an IKEA bookshelf will seem like child play after that.
Welding is the
newold programming.Fortunately there's the GNU assembler.
man as
Those headlights look so easy to replace.
I just want a simple car. One without extraneous functions.
My old boss bought a brand new car that was in the shop for two of it's first four weeks. The issue? The capacitive touch sensor that operated the motorised glove box door was activating automatically because it was being confused by dust.
My shitty 15 year old VW's plastic glove box door has a metal latch and had never experienced this bug.
There certainly are places where technology and electronics can improve a car, but replacing one of the most basic, reliable mechanical functions such as a latch is arguably stupid. It's just adding numerous more failure points. It's form over function.
Radio/media and climate controls should not be on a f*ing touch screen either.
How tf are you meant to change the climate settings on a touch screen when not looking at it? Is this where the "touch" in "touch screen" comes in?
Yep, there are many legitimate use-cases for electronics in cars, but THIS is definitely not one of them!
Yeah I got my car 2012 right before you started to see everything in cars become computerized. It's a civic and still going strong.
Just sold my car to buy one with digital AC 🥲
F my brother
Heh, my 40 year old Deutz tractor has a metal latch on the glove box, and it will randomly flip open and hit me in the head while working in the field.
I would still prefer it over the motorized system you describe
“i upgraded the engine and one of the wheels stopped working”
Why are you using wheels anyway? Caterpillar tracks are a more modern solution and superior in every way.
I wonder what's the fastest you could go on tracks? Apparently a record was set in 1979 (121.9 km/h, 75 mph) and never broken since as far as i can tell, or at least Guiness doesn't seem to know anything about it.
Fellas, we need a tank, a couple V8 engines, and a case of beer
Your cardan.shaft is out of date, the interface for the wheels changed.
For those who, like me, wanted to know more about the real photo from which this was shopped: it's a 19-year-old Chinese student called Zhu Zhenlin driving his homemade solar car in 2012.
Sweet!
I don't know man. Looks like something I'd buy.
happily buy it before I gave elon musk's stupid ass a dollar.
Hell yeah!
There actually exists an open source community for reverse-engineering EV motors, inverters, battery charging modules, BMS, and everything else necessary to build a DIY car from scrapyard components: https://openinverter.org/wiki/Main_Page
That's really cool
I just want that front plate.
Well, where do we want to found gnuland?
is there a theme to make it look like a tesla though?
Ricing has come full circle.
In all seriousness, the day someone comes out with open source replacement firmware for my car, I'm installing it the second my warranty expires.
You joke but I don't want modern cars because of the proprietary software.
I'd drive the shit out of that around town
It's not legal.
Sometimes it can be
Governments be like : Terroists use these kinda vehicles so you can't thats rule
Terrorists use legs to walk. Legs bad
Aww man (proceeds to chop off legs)
Master shitposter
He is trolling that the indian government banned encrypted messaging apps because "Its used by terrorists"
You can register home-built cars, it'll need a windshield and wipers though.
Anyone wanna tell me why a car needs several things that motorcycles don't?
Like "Fine, you can ride the ridiculous death machines since you're so stupid, and stubborn."
Great car, the only one I'd consider driving! But would make my own fork with rearview mirrors first.
noooooooo... Stallman defines every Linux user! just like apple defines the Mac users.
Please post source code, i want one
well it certainly won't cost eighty fucking thousand dollars
I think Stallman would rather do GNU/Ebike and GNU/PublicTransit
GNU/Amsterdam
Freedom comes with a price.
That's a hefty fuckin' fee.
"+libre"
Rip lol
Still probably runs better than the stupid ass car I'm stuck with right now lol.
Who's the wizard in the driver's seat
Some say that's the image of God
I mean, depends on the lore you go off of. The bible certainly thinks God is lol.
Stallman
That name is bad juju for vehicle designers
...or, as I've recently taken to calling it, Richard plus Stallman
Zhu Zhenlin
Honestly, if it's cheap enough, I'd definitely buy it
This made me chuckle, thank you, I need it today.
Looks like a car from CDDA.
I'd download this!
"Not car. Actually, it's GNU/Car." What precedes this is the sound of thousands of glasses being adjusted.
Torvalds Motors
ngl, would rather drive that than a Tesla
I overclocked it and got an extra 4 FPS! Woot!
I wish I could improve my car for free
Lol is that Stallman in there?
Yes. Because instead of letting this be about the person who actually developed this car, someone decided it should be made about OSS' big misogynistic transphobe daddy
Can a cheaply made custom electric car be even made ? With good enough range like a 160km (100miles) or so.
I guess that depends heavily on what you consider cheap... And how fast it's supposed to go.
A friend of mine started scrounging up various battery packs from e-bikes and e-scooters. For some reason these battery packs "degrade" to the point where you have to replace it to continue to use your e-transport thingy, but all the cells inside are still perfectly healthy, so he built a battery backup for his house out of scrapped e-bikes batteries.
Apparently many bike shops have stacks of the out back that they basically give away for free as it saves them a trip to the recycling station.
The motor is probably not going to be terribly cheap, and the motors on e-bikes and such are likely not powerful enough...
You obviously also need a lot of knowhow about electronics and loads more materials to actually build a car.
There are however also people who take old gasoline cars and convert them to electric cars.
Man, people are living in places where they get free batteries and am here living in hell, half of me buried in the desert sand and the other dead and hopeless in a place where they would sell tetanus ridden rust if they could.
Yeah... The world is a pretty bleak place...
It's rather horrifying to grasp how much of a buy-and-throw-away society the wealthier parts of the world have become.
Perfectly good printers gets ink refills so expensively that it makes sense to throw away the whole printer, including the perfectly good stepper motors and and they get locked down in software to the point where they are practically broken. Making people just throw away the whole printer and buy a new one...
Bike batteries that are still perfectly good with maybe one dead lithium cell gets throw away in bulk because no one bothers to disassemble and see which cells are still good.
I recently bought an serger sewing machine second hand. Perfectly good machine, powerful motor, all the gears and levers are all in sturdy metal. But the knife and the overlooper was missing. Buying just a new replacement knife and overlooper (3 small pieces of metal that are less than 1cm by 3 cm, and only a couple of millimeters thick) costs more than buying the whole machine (including those parts) brand new.
It's atrocious that we don't repair our stuff better, or at the very least give it to countries that would actually care enough to either repair it or strip it down for parts.
I remember watching a documentary about how many European countries that act like they care about e-waste management just ship their electric garbage to third world African countries to be buried underground.
My brother has knack for fixing stuff and it would be dream to be given all these broken quality stuff to repair. Here too, it's more of a throw it if it broke but since it's mostly cheap Chinese stuff so it's hard to salvage anything of them and yet he still manage to do it.
Yeah, this is why most people throw their stuff. If the required pieces to fix it costs so much without even adding the cost of the labour then it goes in the dump. I mean, that limit is generally 1/5 to 1/3 the price of buying it new, so if it cost more than the thing just forget about it.
I was looking at a diy electric motorcycle and worked it out roughly to six grand canadian not including the frame, it was planned up be able to get up to a hundred kilometers an hour with a range of eighty kilometers I think but that would still leave room to upgrade them later
Where were you sourcing batteries in Canada? I have a cute little electric car from the 70s that I bought for very little, and installed a heavy, expensive, low capacity lead acid pack like it was originally designed for. Unfortunately this means the range is about 15 miles. I use it as a farm runabout but it can't make it to town and back.
It would be a great car if I could source some used Tesla modules or similar but they are very hard to find here at the prices you see in the USA! Nominal pack voltage is 72v, i.e. 6s 12v lead acid.
never got super far into the batteries beyond vague pricing out
Economies of scale are huge for vehicles. A single prototype vehicle like a model y or mach e often costs several million dollars. A custom car might not be that much, but it'd still be a ton.
I meant More like A buggy. Nothing fancy just bare necessities.
Ask a local engineering university if they want to get rid of their old electric baja. I don't know how much they cost the university, and they're probably not street legal, but if they're making a new one each year you might be able to get the old one for cheap.
Let's just say the quality of education in our universities are below subpar. I don't think they ever made anything. All that is taught is theories.
Also, for some reason car went x3+ their prices since 2015 and still going up.
Yeah, i meant something with a body made of tubes of aluminum , a seat and a motor with some batteries that can go to 50km/h (30miles/h?) for doing some rides in the desert.
Not a solar one like the thing pictured, LOL. There simply isn't enough W/m^2^ for solar panels to power anything less light and spartan than a World Solar Challenge car.
Aside from that, the cheapest way to build a custom [battery, not solar] electric car is probably to salvage parts off a wrecked commercially-built electric car.
I'm a fan of Aging Wheels and SuperfastMatt on Youtube, both of whom are building custom EVs from used Tesla parts.
I know they wouldn't run the can but don't they add a bit of range ?
If it were worth it, commercial electric cars would be festooned with solar panels. They aren't. (I think there might be one EV that has a solar panel embedded in its roof, but it's just a gimmick.)
In other words, no: the amount of range solar panels could add to a two-ton electric car with performance and comfort up to the standard expected of a modern car is basically negligible.
Frankly, if you really want solar, you should be thinking more in terms of an electric bicycle towing a trailer with a solar panel on it. And even then you're still probably talking about merely extending range, not being able to travel all day without having to pedal.
Thanks. In hindsight , It does make sense since 1m² at best can output 300w/h.
I want such a car so badly but i think the depoliticize in Germany wouldn't allow it
Idk what KISS philosophy means but I sure do want to follow it
It stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid"
There's an android launcher by that name and it's fantastic. Literally achieves this principle
+1, I've been using Kiss for ages and it's great.
It's an absolute nightmare to find anything on my wife's phone in comparison, pages and pages of app icons in no apparent order...
It revolves around rocking and rolling all night and partying every day.
This is not a car, this is a tribute...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_Tribute
Love it :)
Serious question now: why is snapd the best for this use case?
Free as in speech...
It seems you may of missed the point
Does Richard drive?
Only to his local grocery store whenever he runs out of stuff off his own foot to eat, and regular trips to the no-plants store.