Geekman's World: Open Source Cars

I think there's definitely a fast-growing perception by the general public that our dependance on oil for a broad range of energy needs has got to go... NOW.

It used to be that such pointed opinions were limited to "hippies": left-wingers like myself and my family. For everyone else, driving an internal combustion car was convenient. They go fast, they were relatively cheap to operate, and the fact that internal combustion is hurting our environment and is dependent on finite resources seemed a distant and intangible concern.

But our awareness of how much we're harming our own environment is increasing. Gas prices are increasing. And America's populace is growing weary of fighting wars and buying oil from the very nations that like them least. Gasoline is long overdue for retirement. Why are we still using it? I've long suspected collusion between major automotive and fossil fuel industries, and this movie is likely to firmly reinforce that view.

The fact is, we depend on the automotive industries to provide us with alternatives such as electric, biodiesel, and various type of fuel cells. But there's no incentive profit-wise for them to do so, and so they will not. Switching to other "fuel platforms" requires high design costs, production of non-standard (and thus more expensive) components, and potentially compromising the lucrative oil and gas industry. We can not rely on automotive companies to change society's ways: they will quite clearly destroy their own country and environment if it means making one last quarter of profit.

So I point us all towards that ideology which will save mankind: open source projects.

Form a non-profit organization. Using engineers and designers from around the world, make designs and specifications for an electric car. It doesn't have to go faster than 120 KPH. Design it so that as many standard components as possible can be used. Build prototypes. Then, sell licenses to manufacturers to build the cars and sell them. For the first four years, licensees will be required to release any improvements, fixes, or innovations they make in the design back to the open-source project. Anyone can build the car and sell it, as long as they buy a license to support the open source project itself. Then the designs are released into the public domain. When all this is done, you have established a platform of vehicles with standard components that can be built by anyone without the need to reverse engineer the car design, since the designs are open.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the open-source car. Don't knock it until somebody tries it.

I like it! It's a great idea... but I'll say this, and back me up if you know my father, have you been talking to him Jesse? This sounds like a page right out of his conspiracy theory head on how to bring down big oil and automotive. Either way, I think we should get started right away, I'll bring the crayons and paper, you bring the engineers and stuff k?

First and foremost, it does need to go faster than 120KPH. Why? because we like going faster than 120KPH despite the fact that it is illegal and unsafe. We like it, we want it, and we can already do it in gasoline cars. For the electric car to be succesful, not only does it have to get from A to B using less fuel than a conventional automobile, it also has to be faster than gas and ideally smell nicer too.

Secondly, concerning the open-source market, there's far too much money to be made by the Big 3 for them to allow functional designs to be owned by the public domain. Let's be honest, as much as I'd love to see the infrastructure in place for an SFU student to build me an electric car on a mass scale, when our chrome tipped knight in shining white dent-resistant polymer panels rides in to save the day, it'll have been built by the same companies that are making our cars today. The CEOs of those companies will all be on the cover of TIME Magazine and will be heralded as heroes for saving the environment from utter destruction - desipite the fact that the technology has been around for decades with nothing being done to move away from a stable economic marketplace - and to make it all worse, the whole project will have been funded by the continued sale of today's conventional gasoline cars.

Anyone else remember why the electric car hasn't been a buzzword in over a decade? "why, they're unreliable!" "you have to charge them up every night!" "what if the battery dies?" Somewhere along the way we were all told that a vehicle that doesn't rely on fuel doesn't work. We were lied to. The buzzword that has snuck in to replace the elecric car is called "hydrogen fuel cell" and it goes something like this:

Drive your Fuel Cell powered car to the "gas" station for a fillup. Hydrogen (H) is pumped in the car's tank. A chemical reaction ensues which is translated into kinetic energy and thus propulsion. The car runs. The by-product of this chemical reaction is simple, drinkable water (H2O). The catch?

why, the gas companies of course! Think the price of gas sucks now? Tired of hearing your parents saying "I still remember when a gallon of gas only cost one 12-billionth of a cent!" Just you wait! we are about to become our parent's and grandparent's generations in regards to gas. My advice: watch this very carefully. LEARN TO WHINE NOW SO YOU WILL BE PREPARED WHEN THE TIME COMES!!!

alright, sorry about the long post, but you've hit open nerve at about 120KPH. I told you we needed to go faster!

I think I can safely speak for myself and a lot of others when I say I don't care if my car maxes out at 120. My old Sidekick maxed at 140, and I don't think I EVER went that fast, even on the open stretches of the Coquihala. Not ONCE. I think there's plenty big enough market for a car with a maximum speed of 120 to justify that statement. If you still want the power of internal combustion, nobody's going to hold you down and rape you with an electric car. You're quite free to continue presenting yourself to the oil industry instead.

Next: yes, the fuel cell is a buzzword, and a layman's term. If you go and read the Wikipedia fuel cell article which I so carefully linked for you all, you'd find that there are a variety of different fuel cells which run on materials other than Hydrogen.

Furthermore, I second that young businessman I heard ranting to his colleagues in the Cactus Club the other day: Biodiesel will save us all. Learn about it if you need your precious speed.

And who ends up with the credit in the end doesn't matter. The important thing is that we save our environment and society from imminent collapse.

A decade ago, if you had told execs at Microsoft that a free, community-developed operating system would not only be the most popular and secure OS available for server applications, but also that it would threaten Windows' ironclad grip on the desktop market, they would have laughed and you and had security beat you up in the alley. Today, no other operating system has higher server deployment than Linux. If you read an MS annual report, they list Linux competition as one of the main risks of doing business. The open-source model works, and that's why it should AT LEAST be tested on society's most problematic zones, where the commercial model has failed to serve people.

Ok, I agree with JZ, cars are going to need to go faster than 120 KPH if they're going to successfully compete with internal combustion engine, and that's simply because most of the drivers on our roads are not like you Jesse, myself included. 120 KPH is not fast enough for freeway driving, also in some cases it's not even fast enough for highway driving in the city.

On the flip side though, I have to disagree with you that open source vehicular design won't work because the cars will be manufactured by the same companies that are doing it now. Here's why, who better to manufacture the vehilcles than the companies who are already established, have the capital, the know how, and the materials to do so. Mass producing these things will only be possible IF the big car makers get involved. Whether you like them or not, the big guns in the auto industry may end up being the biggest supporters you could get on board with this idea. The reasong nothing has been done in decades to change the way we do things is because we, the consumers, haven't wanted it. That's the key, we need to get more involved, the market needs to change so that it BECOMES proffitable to manufacture enviro-safe cars.

GM's EV1 (the vehicle referred to in "Who Killed the Electric Car") had a maximum, computer-limited speed of 130 kph. That was ten years ago technology. I made my speed assessment arbitrarily assuming that less performance would be cheaper for the consumer. So it's a really a moot point how fast this imaginary vehicle can go.

I disagree that big auto has to be involved in order for this idea to work. There are also a lot of smaller auto manufacturers, especially in Europe (which might very well be the best place to get a project off the ground).

I'm not saying it would be easy, just that it's possible. Business goes where profit goes. But right now, consumer demand isn't enough to shift auto-industries' focus from gasoline. Additional pressure must be applied, somehow.