Dymaxion Car | Hacker News Reader

Dymaxion Car

en.wikipedia.org

60 pointsKye34 comments

One of the things that this highlights is how seemingly trivial design decisions are motivated by very deep concerns. The rear-wheel steering, specifically, is noted as being very problematic in terms of making the car able to maneuver.

It is not obvious to me that this is the case, just as it was not obvious to Buckminster Fuller, and it shows how much trial and error went into the design of the modern automobile. Even simple things oft taken for granted represent a huge amount of attempts to get things right and to work through the implications of alternate designs.

Agreed, I think Fuller liked being an idea man, and wasn’t interested in the engineering iteration that is necessary to bring something truly new to market.

Maybe most people aren’t interested in that kind of work? It’s a long slog of working through the problems, and it can seem like a series of failures before you get close to a good product.

> Maybe most people aren’t interested in that kind of work? It’s a long slog of working through the problems,

My SO always says she could never be an engineer because she doesn’t like failure enough.

Which is exactly why Bucky's ideas are as widely adopted as they are today - which is basically zero. He had an amazing ability to identify future problems and design prototype solutions, but that's a very small percentage of the work it takes to bring something to reality and make an impact.

I honestly think Bucky was one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 20th century but his legacy will mainly be his thoughts (and designs and writings) alone. Even the best ideas fade into irrelevance unless acted upon. "Idea people" should take note.

For those interested, there is a matching Dymaxion House on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house

Fuller just named everything dymaxion. He had a strange idiolect full of self-made neologisms but a particular fixation on that one in particular. Called polyphasic sleep dymaxion sleep even.

I miss that style of design a bit. A bit mad, futuristic in that old fashioned way, but most importantly--optimistic about the future.

That's what I like about the Cybertruck, it's bold and outrageous in a new way that doesn't yet have the "asshole / mid-life crisis" connotation of "Hot-Wheels-like" sports cars (although it might be quickly gaining that connotation).

Is it beautiful? Is it well-built? This is orthogonal, I'm not making a judgement on that (although: no and no). But it's undeniable that it's fresh.

Is it optimistic? Well, it's clearly inspired by Cyberpunk, pessimism is a defining aspect of it. It has dystopian "prepper" airs to it with that ridiculous (and dangerous) armouring. It is definitely retrofuturistic. But it does have a certain positive energy of just having some fun with progress and boldly making cool new things happen.

It is a champion for demonstrating that electric can also be powerful, it challenges gas at its own game, and has self-driving ambitions.

It’s a publicity stunt. It shocks for shock‘s sake. It‘s going to look dated and stupid soon.

It‘ll never get to Europe or China. It might have a positive effect in the U.S. it might not.

It‘s the yoke.

It’s an idea to be played with - but then best to discarded and learned from.

It‘s not the Model S 2.0 they would have needed four years ago.

It’s the reason the Dymaxion Car never got built.

One nitpick - I don’t think it will look dated, looking dated comes from something becoming a common place design seen everywhere. The Delorean doesn’t look dated 40 years later. Cybertruck could end up a delorean.

The Delorean looks very clearly 80s though. Low-slung, boxy design, fastback, quad, square headlights... It would not fit in with a modern car lineup, so I'm gonna say it is dated looking.

Not that is is bad looking. I love how they look... but definitely not a modern look... Though it's all an opinion I suppose.

Conversely this is why i utterly loathe the Cybertruck. It's a basket of trivially avoidable engineering faceplants wrapped in hype and cult-of-personality bullshit. It's an on-brand echo of Fuller's work that fails utterly to meet expectations or goals. Oh and for the record I can think of few things that scream midlife crisis louder than a 7,000lb land barge with the cargo capacity of a courier sized pickup truck that costs more than a full sized pickup, 14' equipment trailer, skid steer, and mini excavator put together. It's like conspicuous consumption just got a new hood ornament.

The Cybertruck certainly follows in the footsteps of Dymaxion, but it has had the misfortune of actually being built and sold. We were shown a futuristic dream and then it got built and it's not great.

I love driving the cybertruck. The media hates it — but it looks awesome, drives amazingly well—it’s a great truck— and, overall, it creates an overall vibe of “the future is here.”

Large, heavy and blunt-shaped motor vehicles put everybody outside of them at risk, especially the most vulnerable: children, pedestrians and people riding bicycles.

It’s not like the Cybertruck is alone in that aspect.

I drive a Camaro and I feel like I’m surrounded by main battle tanks whenever I drive.

The visibility is so bad out of the modern Camaro, it's more like being inside a tank.

I hope you don't drive a crossover. People get all hatey and ragey about trucks, then go hop in their Rav4 or CR-V as though those aren't bigger, blunter versions of regular cars.

I don't drive. Never have.

I’m not going to buy a Cybertruck, but my Shadowrun characters are definitely going to get one. Finally, the vehicle we were promised for our corporate dystopia future back in the 1080s.

IIRC(very fuzzily), cybertruck origin was new larger presses (for stamping larger body parts, costing less assembly), creating an opportunity to bend thicker sheet, prompting an exploration of "Hmm, so how about a folded-sheet exoskeleton? Looks weird, but has intriguing manufacturing and structural properties."

Which would be "optimistic" and "new way" in a deep engineering sense, rather than merely a marketing sense. Like an earlier era's attempt to use the new aluminum aircraft manufacturing tech to make light-weight trains. Didn't work out IIRC, but had a similar "certain positive energy of just having some fun with progress and boldly making cool new things happen".

Noticing interesting points in design space, and doing a startup-like attempt at market fit, seems a recurring theme with Musk. The Boring Company (mass production of tunnels), HyperLoop (IIRC, originally low-density high-Mach(?) air ram stuff?), and perhaps SpaceX (reuse economics, and hardware-rich development?).

Also recurring, is societal discussions around them being badly confused. Perhaps things could be explained better. But the recurring "Rocket blew up! SpaceX failed!" news stories around hardware-rich prototyping's "next rev built -> optional explosion -> junkyard or ocean", doesn't create optimism for the future. Are there any inspiring examples of society discussing some issue in a more engineering-like style, using awareness of deep issue structure and numbers, rather than by emoting and deceit and "that makes me think of" crude association?

I think that mad optimism reminds me of the https://aptera.us/ solar car as well, or some of the wackier Dyson products.

It's not about doing things differently for the sake of being different, but going back to first principles and building up from there.

Though in reality the contributions from these sorts of ground-up rethinks often end up being more about rediscovering that there was indeed a good rationale behind the conventions they discarded rather than actually producing a successful product.

Still, my hat is off to anyone who decides to spend their own money giving Chesterton's fence a good shake every now and again, just to be sure.

The word dynamic was popular in naming around that time - dynamic programming is another example (1950s).

Somehow just by internalizing the old meaning of the world “dynamic”, I feel I have a better idea of what the world felt like back then.

I learned to program in dynamically typed languages and all I got was an undefined t-shirt

T is a perfectly cromulent type.

Fuller hired a wordsmith, who hung around for a few days listening to the way he spoke and then invented the word Dymaxion for him.

It is no different than someone saying their product has "AI" nowadays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1yxFDvqALI

Video title: "Dan Neil: Dymaxion Car-Cool, How Does It Drive?"

Duration: 3:24

Description: "Buckminster Fuller's 1933 foray into automobiles gave us the Dymaxion Car, and enthusiast Jeff Lane has one of the only working replicas in the world. WSJ's Rumble Seat columnist Dan Neil takes the road zeppelin for a spin...or should we say wobble?"

“Turner was wearing a seatbelt but was killed when the canvas-covered roof framing collapsed.“

The person who invented safe car roofs is completely anonymous but i had to hear all my life what a genius Buckminster Fuller is. For doing what im not exactly sure but im supposed to admire him.

Fuller is probably one of the more overrated intellectuals of the 20th century. His greatest talent lay in self-promotion. He was not a competent engineer, architect or scientist. His one good idea wasn't really his (geodesic domes had been patented in Germany decades earlier) and he required the services of an actual architect to get anything done with them.

He provided one very important thing (at least to me): an optimistic view of the future and our ability to support ourselves.

Tucker is probably a pioneer in safe car design. It had a roll bar and reinforced sides. The windshield was designed to give way when struck from the inside, lessening the impact on the occupant in forward collisions.

Buckminster Fuller would be a great crypto/AI grifter today.

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