Oklahoma receives first "Made in Oklahoma" EV | Hacker News Reader

Oklahoma receives first "Made in Oklahoma" EV

oklahoma.gov

93 pointsmillzlane69 comments

Context for another way to meet "Made In" requirements:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knock-down_kit

> "A common form of knock-down is a complete knock-down (CKD), which is a kit of entirely unassembled parts of a product. It is also a method of supplying parts to a market, particularly in shipping to foreign nations, and serves as a way of counting or pricing.[1] CKD is a common practice in the automotive, bus, heavy truck, and rail vehicle industries, as well as electronics, furniture and other products. Businesses sell knocked-down kits to their foreign affiliates or licensees for various reasons, including the avoidance of import taxes, to receive tax preferences for providing local manufacturing jobs, or even to be considered as a bidder at all (for example, in public transport projects with "buy national" rules).

A semi-knocked-down kit (SKD) or incompletely disassembled kit (although it has never been assembled) is a kit of the partially assembled parts of a product. Both types of KDs, complete and incomplete, are collectively referred to within the auto industry as knocked-down export (KDX), and cars assembled in the country of origin and exported whole to the destination market are known as built-up export (BUX)."

Seems like a win-win: the real manufacturers already have a way to circumvent these kinds of stupid protectionist laws, and the lawmakers can still count it as a win as long as they fulfill their fundamental nature and remain lazy and incurious as to the actual implementation of their laws.

The only loser here is the democratic process as the voters are further insulated from reality.

Protectionist laws aren't always stupid. They're especially applicable when another company or country is subsidising their local industry to out compete others to gain advantage.

Every country and company is trying to find some way to get ahead of everyone else. There are a myriad of approaches, tariffs/protectionism is just another tool.

So they put together a prebuilt Lego set.

Yes, every 'Lego set' gets build and taken apart, shipped, and built again.

It seems very very silly, but it turns out to be the easiest way to do it.

Some clues:

Individual Lego pieces can be dropped in a bin with other Lego pieces without sustaining damage.

Lego pieces can be shipped in a cardboard box without sustaining damage.

Vehicle assembly plants are very complicated.

Vehicles have a lot of parts.

Some vehicle parts are large.

The assembly plant is the only location to which all those parts are shipped, and may be found in proximity.

An assembly plant has multiple systems for logistics to ensure that parts come together at the right time and place.

They design their own vehicles, and most of the steel body and chassis is built locally. This is like saying Lego is 'just melting plastic' into special shapes. There are many problems with Canoo and it will likely go under soon, but that's not one of them.

Nothing would make me happier than if something were built in America but I don’t want to give that designation to Chinese mass produced trash.

Oklahoma is actually doing some really interesting stuff.

They've greenlit and are building a new refinery that will be powered entirely by renewable energy [1].

Now, you might be tempted to say "how can a refinery be 'green'?". After all, it's still producing refined petroleum products. Thing is, we're already producing those and new refineries are much greener than old refineries [2]. Limited refining capacity is a big contributor to, for example, high gas prices in the last few years. The US hasn't built a significant refinery in decades and we're losing capacity as existing refineries are repuprosed or shuttered completely.

We still need refined petroleum products and will do for some time to come.

Anyway, other comments seem to complain the cars aren't really made in Oklahoma. But there's a factory in Pryor, OK. Car parts for any car factory are sourced from all over the place. "Made in X" is a fairly nebulous concept with global commodities and manufacturing.

[1]: https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2023/05/24/5-6-billion-...

[2]: https://www.wri.org/insights/technologies-decarbonize-petrol...

There should be rules on what can be called “Made in Oklahoma” just like the Maglite controversy over how “Made in Ontario California” could’t be used because of part sourcing not being 100% domestic.

> “Canoo is proud to bring motor vehicle manufacturing back to Oklahoma and create high-paying jobs,” said Tony Aquila, investor, chairman and CEO of Canoo. “Our innovative LDV 130 delivery vehicles will work for Oklahomans and help state agencies improve fleet efficiency. Our vehicles are perfect for how the state uses vehicles today, and our advanced telematics and lower overall cost of ownership will continue to pay dividends down the road.”

Canoo isn't claiming it's "made in Oklahoma". The article and state is saying it, which is not the same thing at all.

> Canoo is proud to bring motor vehicle manufacturing back to Oklahoma

That sounds like they are "making"/"manufacturing" it in Oklahoma though?

Manufacturing is a start.

If the plant/product proves successful, eventually suppliers will start moving closer as well. (Source: Family member works at a supplier for most major car makers doing exactly this. In the case of long relationships with supplier and manufacturer, the building of plants can be very closely aligned on start/ready dates.)

This got me curios in general about "Made in..." labels, and I found this interesting document on what is required for "Made in USA" labels from the Federal Trade Commission [1].

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/bu...

Nothing more complicated than corn would be made anywhere by this definition.

I don't know if it is reflective of the confusion but I've noticed some manufactures on their website will talk about how their product is made in the USA and have added information. Things like "hey look here's our factory in the US and this where we make every product".

I assume those companies actually "made in the USA" are pretty sensitive to that label being watered down and they want to assure people that they're legit.

"Final assembly in..."

Where "finally assembly" means screwing on a door handle after the rest of the car was shipped from China.

> Where "finally assembly" means screwing on a door handle after the rest of the car was shipped from China.

Do you know that for sure? According to Wikipedia:

- Canoo's research & development team is based in Michigan, in the Detroit region (Auburn Hills, Livonia), but production operations are in Justin, Texas.

- On June 17, 2021, the company announced they would build a new factory in Pryor, Oklahoma (just outside Tulsa) to manufacture all of their future vehicles.

- On November 15, 2021, the company announced it would move its headquarters to Bentonville, Arkansas and establish a manufacturing plant there.[37] As of December 2022 the company still lists Torrance, California as its headquarters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canoo

I understand why, but people are jumping the gun to cynicism here. Obviously, a "factory" could mean anything, and maybe we need more details to know, but at first real inspection, it seems like they're making them in Oklahoma.

For better or worse, several of the recent tax laws have heavily incentivized domestic manufacturing, especially in high-tech spaces like batteries, EVs, and semiconductors. There will indeed be a lot of actual manufacturing in the states in the next few years. Just look at the construction investment charts, there's legitimate industrial policy for the first time in generations. Compare the manufacturing facility spending today vs. the "other" category which included the housing boom in 2007;

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/unpacking-the-boo...

https://econbrowser.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/constr_in...

(From here: https://econbrowser.com/archives/2023/07/the-manufacturing-c...)

Canoo also builds EVs for NASA:

https://www.canoo.com/nasa/

Hopefully they have a battery maintenance program in place. Nobody wants to be the one to admit that the first Artemis launch was postponed because the crew transport vehicles' batteries were flat.

You should call them up. They might have forgotten again.

Guys it was a joke. Because the Artemis program is always never launching. So these cars are going to stand around doing nothing for years. It's not EV hate.

Yeah, or run out of gas. That would be equally likely.

Another example of the stupidity of the governance in the state where I live. Governor Stitt (that's right Stitt) has done nothing but fight with the Native Americans, is trying to kill collection of state income tax (half of the state budget! I wonder where that money will be made up from?) and is allowing the public school system to be destroyed.

When he was elected, he bragged he was going to make OK a top ten state. Apparently he meant from the bottom ten states. Now he brags we are making cars again when we clearly aren't.

>he bragged he was going to make OK a top ten state

He never said top ten at what.

These Scooby Do Mystery Wagon shape van EVs seem to be all the rage. There's a company here is SE Canada making a small EV van that looks similar to the Canoo. If there ever was a vehicle called a Canoo it should have been Canadian. Maybe we call make a Moose, Beaver, or Canada goose EV next?

Canadian EV site https://www.potentialmotors.com/

> Lifestyle Delivery Vehicles (LDVs)

What the hell is that meant to mean? Do delivery men live in them?

Funny :D

The "Lifestyle" part is the body, and the "delivery" part is the configuration (seating, roof rack, etc)

https://www.canoo.com/canoo/

I feel like this term should be repurposed to refer to lifted trucks that never leave pavement

This vehicle looks like a pedestrian killing machine. The high front ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶c̶k̶ ̶p̶i̶l̶l̶a̶r̶ (edit, it is a tinted piece of glass). I hope it has pedestrian detection and automatic braking.

https://www.iihs.org/topics/bibliography/ref/2293

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE8X7D4svyw

From Youtube videos, the visibility inside these actually seems pretty great, including that front bottom panel having a transparent section that's not obvious from the outside. See at about 3 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfHP9A07XYY

Link to a shot with the timestamp directly: https://youtu.be/YfHP9A07XYY?t=49

Agree with crooked-v here - the visibility is actually pretty great. That said, the research paper showed that it wasn't just a visibility issue for high hooded cars, it's the geometry during impact that throws pedestrians.

Visibility might reduce the number of impacts, but it is mostly the shape of the vehicle that dictates pedestrian survival rates. Read the link in my post.

Which pillar are you thinking is thick? In the rightmost vehicle of the header image it looks thick, but that's just glare.

The front section is also a window, which makes for very good forward visibility: https://media.canoo.com/images/dotcom/hotspots/cabin.webp

It looked like a pillar from the outside, but it is a tinted piece of glass.

Still the high blunt shape of the vehicle is going to rocket pedestrians to their death in an impact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE8X7D4svyw

Is there any delivery van with a hood height low enough to lift pedestrians, though? Others have more of a curve, but it starts high enough not to matter. For example, the bend on a Sprinter is around 46", above almost anyone's center of gravity.

(See https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...)

Any worse than the 6' tall mid-size pickups that are all over the place?

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F6...

What I think you are interpreting as a thick pillar is actually a window. It looks like a pillar in the vehicles on the sides, but is transparent in the middle vehicle.

We have had, for some time, the necessary technology: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=cow+catcher&iax=images&ia=i...

Was feeling critical of your comment until I looked at the photo.

That's a literal wall driving down the street.

That's one underestimated value of a hood.

Gives the pedestrian an option besides going under the vehicle.

With something like this, pedestrian contact survivability drops to absolute zero.

The hood needs to be pretty low for a pedestrian to go above it, lower than you'd see on the delivery vehicles (ex: current Sprinter platform) this is competing with.

> With something like this, pedestrian contact survivability drops to absolute zero.

Which is to say, not much. Auto vs. Pedestrian is going to be a bad day for the pedestrian no matter what.

That is not an engineering attitude to take. Cars can absolutely be designed to increase pedestrian survivability. There is a large body of research around this.

Pedestrians can increase their survivability by not stepping in front of a moving car, but that's not an attitude to take either apparently.

But this it looks like even at low speeds of pedestrian is out of luck.

Dear lord it is steer by wire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=93&v=KgAghyLo4os...

Remember, a programmer about as competent as you programmed the ECU!

Yeah but the ECU isn't written in React and has an actual specification to follow. Think nanoservice, with a corresponding level of complexity, ie low, and not modern web app written in a new framework that's a couple of months old. Even you could do a good job writing code the problem space is tiny.

Airplanes have been steer-by-wire since the 70's. Strangely air travel isn't this horrible death trap of an ordeal because of this.

Ye I know. I have worked with ECU programming. Airplanes got way better redundancy than automotive and hopefully better programming practices.

There are two scary things the ECUs can do. Block the brakes with the ABS valves. Steer full left, if you got some steering assist. This adds so many malfunctions with bad fail states for no good reason. The steering column would easily fit there. It's empty by their feet.

There is just no way I would trust steer-by-wire for cars.

Yeah but it’s probably embedded systems programming with assembly/binary. It’s not some piece of shit framework with 16 levels of abstraction where it’s impossible to make anything robust.

Great for them, I guess. But those vehicles look terribly ugly to me.

They do look a bit goofy, but I think that's part of their charm; kind of like a delivery van version of the Fiat 500e.

Personally, I'd say it looks much nicer than almost every SUV and/or pickup truck on the market (I know it's not even the same category, though the same frame is also used for their pickup truck).

It just saddens me to see the distance from bumper to front seat (for visibility reasons), though that could just be due to me not being American.

Apparently the visibility problem has an interesting solution: a window in the middle of the bumper.

https://insideevs.com/news/657023/this-is-the-view-you-get-r...

OMG, it is steer by wire. No thanks!

Funny, I was just thinking that they're refreshing different looking. Almost everything on the road today looks the same to me, I often have to look at the badge on a vehicle to know the manufacturer.

Its a commercial vehicle. They are utilitarian. They look better than all of the other 20 varieties of box van that are ubiquitous.

Thankfully your opinions and beauty standards mean nothing on the internet. I for one think they look fantastic.

> Thankfully your opinions and beauty standards mean nothing on the internet.

But mine do...

Giving me cyberpunk/robocop vibes kinda dig it actually. Not gorgeous by any means but unique for sure.

It's a Johnny Cab from Total Recall

The fare is 18 credits, please.

They don't look very aerodynamic. But that snubby front end could give them excellent visibility, if done correctly.

If those are the Canoo vehicles that I'm thinking of, then the front visibly is excellent, but maybe also not how you expected:

https://insideevs.com/news/657023/this-is-the-view-you-get-r...

It's not a screen, just a tinted window.

The diagonal visibility actually looks quite poor. You could easily hide a dog, or a small child, standing close to the vehicle in the direction it's turning towards.

I would buy the ugliest EV in the world if it was cheap and had great range. Sadly that vehicle doesn't exist yet.

The purpose isn't to use them as a status symbol like most personal cars. They look perfectly fine as transit vans, or for a hundred other government or commercial use cases.

Terribly Ugly might be the lifestyle that those Lifestyle Delivery Vehicles are delivering.

Seriously, I would be happy to see those quirky things on the road.

I would buy one, if it were available in a "private car" config for a reasonable price. I would love to be able to see the road directly in front of the car through the lower window.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com