Hacker News Reader

Comment by sys_64738 | Hacker News Reader

We'll eventually need open source EV solutions for major auto manufacturers. This is just the start of being held hostage to these companies trying to create recurring revenue streams. For auto manufacturers, EVs are not about the environment but from ripping off customers until the very end.

Wonder if any open source EV projects have started.

View on HN

How would that work? Download the car's design (you wouldn't...) and have it manufactured by someone with the right machines?

I'd think about it as a "Linux" car, in the sense that you'd have an open source operating system for cars, the manufacturer would just supply drivers for the hardware (like graphic cards drivers).

Oh yay nvidia car. The firmware is locked down and it costs 150% more every generation.

https://docs.nvidia.com/drive/drive_os_5.1.6.1L/nvvib_docs/i...

For those wondering whether this is just a joke, it most certainly is not.

Its really just the control boards that are the problem. Swap them out and you are done. I guess with how much a car costs, there is incentive to reverse and engineer a solution.

There's a pretty awesome non-profit called Open Source Ecology which is doing this with the 40 "most important machines for civilizations".

Perhaps with some funding & technical assistance they could be convinced to do so for EV Vehicles.

https://www.opensourceecology.org/

"We’re developing open source industrial machines that can be made for a fraction of commercial costs, and sharing our designs online for free. The goal of Open Source Ecology is to create an open source economy – an efficient economy which increases innovation by open collaboration."

This is amazing, everything up to the 'Seed Eco-Home', given the amount of time we spend building out bespoke designs and then relearning all the intricacies of each design, for everything from a spoon to a house, I've often wondered why we don't just standardise on 1 thing then move on, at least have an MVP standard which can be built with the least amount of cost and fuss. I hope this project succeeds, if I lived in the USA I'd be there for sure.

That's why I'm so optimistic about our ability to solve climate change. Solving climate change is more more a way to be profitable.

It may be more significant to have open communication protocols and hardware abstraction layer. This would allow the “AI” bits be evaluated independently by safety orgs. An outcome would be to enable companies like comma.ai to replace/supplement OEM vehicle control.

This approach does not address the value model of a vehicle. I think subscriptions work well as a method of price differentiation—if you don’t want it, don’t subscribe, and if you change your mind down the road you can add it without fuss.

There is openpilot.

https://comma.ai/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com