[LINK] Open Source PC Design

stephen at melbpc.org.au stephen at melbpc.org.au
Fri May 30 11:53:08 AEST 2008


>
> > "The idea of open source manufacture is taking shape, and we're going
> > to see more .. 'open source' hardware .."
> > open source engineering .. a few peak designs, and made everywhere.
> > Open source car designs may transcend commercial car design idiocy.

Speaking of car design idiocy, yesterday's The Age motoring section tells
us that Ford have released their latest model Territory F6X .. a new seven 
seater, four-wheel-drive, that's very often mum's urban-battle-wagon-taxi.

At $76,000 & 2.2 tonnes, few of these huge 4WDs will venture far off-road. 

What an idiotic vehicle! The Age reports it costs $110 to fill with petrol,
and that will get you just 300k, at between 20-25litres/100klm. Maybe these
days we should pass a law that passenger vehicles should get 12 litres/100k
or half that fuel consumption and outlaw such American SUV white elephants.

This new Ford Territory is not even a V8, but a high revving turbo six, so
it should be fairly pitifull at towing anything. Besides supposedly keeping
mum and the kids safe around the city, primarily just through bulk which is
a considerable danger to any normal car they run into, they're just tragic.

Simply an *idiotic* vehicle design, for greedy big-spenders. Piss 'em off!!

> You're not serious are you?  ;-)

Well, mostly sort of serious anyway, Steve :-)
 
> But who would manufacture open source cars?  

Any company or person that wanted to. Any open source car design would be
free to use, and I can well imagine many small manufacturing concerns will
be very happy to produce such small car components for the world market.

> How would the designs and outputs be homologated (approved by regulatory
> authorities)?  How would one-off home-made cars be registered? 

Same as they are now, an engineers certificate is all you need to register
any car you, or anyone else, has built. The current system now works well.

> Also, I don't think you can create a car these days without tens of
> thousands of dollars worth of CAD/CAM software.. Cheers, Steve Wilson
> www.lockstep.com.au. 

It's easy these days to design and build a car. Six or so engineers could
design a fine, small and very greenish car. So, imagine a UN "Sustainable 
Living Committee" were to comission a car design, then put this design on
the web somewhere for interested professionals to review, and revise. I'd
bet the world would have a sparkling open source car design very quickly.

And if anybody at all could make components, and sell them, for just such 
an open-source-design world-car, I'd bet lots of companies would. Exactly
like they do for the defacto-open-source, Ford Model A hot-rod fraternity
worldwide right now. And using the same free-design, the build quality is
the main purchase-criteria, rather than fashion / cult design differences.

So, an open source world-car design would be bought assembled complete, or
as components ready to be assembled according to an owners requirements. It
seems a much better way for your normal, say, Mr Chinese Joe Blow, to enjoy
car ownership, and at a price, and greenness, way better than current cars.

It seems a no-brainer to me and one in the eye for those idiot SUV designs.

Cheers Steve
Stephen Loosley
Victoria, Australia



More information about the Link mailing list