Maker
overhead. In time, one can imagine cottage industries rising to support the project with custom parts, assembly services, Manxter-style bodies, interiors in many configurations, and complete parts kits.
There are millions of Americans tinkering with hotrods, antique autos, and old clunkers every day in this country. There are hugely popular TV shows inspiring these people: Monster Garage, Orange County Choppers, American HotRod. Want to see innovation in the hybrid electric automobile market? There’s an R&D department composed of a million people in a million garages around the world. The digital tools for support are here: search Yahoo!
Groups for auto-tech chat groups;
The web is peppered with eBay is a junkyard of parts; and eMachineShop and McMaster-Carr will deliver parts to your door. how-to sites for converting A true people’s car is doable.
It just needs a Linus Torvalds (or your old car into an electric maybe 20) and a user community. But before we throw down our Linux vehicle, but why not develop boxes to save the world with a publicly built 100mpg tank, here’s SourceForge-style docu- the biggest catch: legislation and registration. Most kit cars fly under mentation for an open the radar because they are registered as the original vehicle of the source hybrid? chassis “donor.” A recent Californian bill allows for “Special Construction” vehicles, but it’s limited to 500 per year, and the demand already exceeds the allotment.
Unless a new, popular “donor” chassis is appropriated from industry, a group or organization would have to agree on a chassis/body and have it crash tested. This is an expensive process, BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE.
There are, however, 21 million VWs still out there…
personalize your desktop, why not your car? A few savvy players like Mini and Scion are now offering the illusion of large choice via online ordering systems with “personalization” of body panel colors, wheels, stereo, and upholstery.
But why not go a lot further? Drive-by-wire technology, better electric motors, better batteries, within-hub motors, and (of course) hybrid concepts are changing the modularity of cars. The dominant architecture is up for challenge. Now you can choose your own optimal combination of gasoline engine and electric motor to tailor your hybrid to your driving style and conditions. Electro Automo-
tive ( electroauto.com), founded in 1979 as a source for components to turn standard gasoline-burning cars into battery-powered electrics, will sell you a plugin (pun intended) electric conversion kit that, with minimal modifications, could bolt into the Manxter. (This could be the Red Hat of the bunch!) For $35,000 and minimal assembly, you’d be driving your own four-seat electric vehicle with a roll cage, 75mph-plus top speed, and 50-100mpg range. This might be the first electric vehicle you’d ever feel sexy in. Add one of the new, clean-burning, four-stroke engines found in snowmobiles and four-wheelers, and it’d be a long-range hybrid.
The web is peppered with how-to sites for converting your old car into an electric vehicle, but why not develop SourceForge-style documentation for an open source hybrid? Call the site opendesignhy- brid.org, and publish the code for motor controllers and the CAD files for transmission-conversion parts. Annotate the demand for parts so multiple users can lower their individual costs by sharing tooling
Saul Griffith thinks about open source hardware while working with the power-nerds at Squid Labs ( www.squid-labs.com).
Open Source Electric Vehicle Projects
A preliminary step toward an open source electric vehicle is the solar-powered Vee 9, with downloadable plans available at www.solarvehicles.org.
Open source plans for a solar tricycle are available here:
www.uprightsolar.com.
46 Make: Volume 01
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