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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

It would be cool if we saw the separation of drivetrain from body in the automobile market. This happens with heavy trucks, you can buy a "glider" which is a completely new, finished rolling chassis and you provide your own engine. Originally done (I think) to skirt emissions laws but it would be cool to be able to buy the body and the EV drivetrain (and maybe battery packs?) from different vendors, and for EV drivetrains to be more easily fittable to older chassis.

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This was very common in the early days of the automobile, at least for luxury cars. Bentley or Rolls-Royce would deliver a chassis with the entire drivetrain, and a coachbuilder like Mulliner would add a body to the customer's liking.

One cool thing about commercial vehicles is that the CAN bus is all open-spec and fully documented. This is because fleet operators expect to be able to put their own aftermarket components on the bus and manufacturers have to support that.

Take a look at Kia's 'PBV' concept, and the new PV5 van. It's a skateboard chassis with all the EV gubbins in, with a body and cabin that bolts on. Allows for extremely modular vehicle construction.

The team sat Electric Classic Cars are doing that, you can soon buy a skateboard chassis and drivetrain from them, and bolt whatever body you want to it.

Their recent videos showcase what they're doing in that area https://www.youtube.com/@ElectricClassicCars/videos

that's what Waymo is doing, in their implementation of this idea the "waymo driver" is software intended to be licensed out to vehicles or vehicle chassis with applicable hardware

so if you thought the waymo car rollout was fast and sudden, wait until companies no longer need their own training data, it'll be like a switch got flipped

Tesla has also offered their FSD to other companies, with no takers: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-fsd-licensin...

However, Tesla hasn't achieved anywhere near the autonomy of Waymo, so that may be the main sticking point.

I believe Ford had plans or interest in Tesla FSD but backed out and is going with Waymo.

nobody trusts non-lidar except tesla buyers

Not sure even they do. If I bought a Tesla it would be as an EV with usable range, not anything I would ever hope would be self-driving. That bridge was burned a while ago.

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