DIY Hybrid Car Kit 309
Hybride And The Groom writes "Building hybrids uses machinery that pollutes the environment. The solution? Ship the parts of a hybrid individually and get your customers to put the car together themselves. That's exactly what Robert Q Riley Enterprises is doing, according to a story on CNet today, with its XR-3 hybrid. It'll cost you $25,000 for the bits, plus zero dollars in manufacture, I hope. Better yet, cough up $200 for the blueprints and schematics and even build the parts yourself. It's no secret that many hybrid drivers are smug enough as it is. Allow them to brag about having built the damn cars themselves and we might be entering obscenely smug territory."
Neat idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
At least that one looks cool but, really, who has the time to do this? If they have the time then do they have the interest or the money?
"Zero dollars in manufacture" (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if your time is worth zero dollars.
Motorcycle, not a car (Score:5, Insightful)
Like so many of these things, it's a motorcycle - not a car. It only has 3 wheels so that they don't have to meet safety standards.
Who knew you could lighten up a car if you stripped out all of the safety equipment?
Buying a Prius is cheaper (Score:1, Insightful)
At $25000 for the parts alone, what idiot is going to buy this separately? Its cheaper to buy a pre-built vehicle like Prius or a Honda hybrid.
Safety (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:uh, no, that's not the reason (Score:4, Insightful)
And this changes...what? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see how this eliminates the carbon footprint of building the car. It only moves it. Unless all of your tools are alternative energy powered, and the vehicles used to deliver the parts to you are likewise alternative energy powered, nothing has been accomplished here except moving where the carbon has been emitted. I fail to see how this helps the planet.
Re:"Zero dollars in manufacture" (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if your time is worth zero dollars.
Or the entertainment you receive from putting together your own toys is greater than the cost of your time, in which case you might even "profit".
Re:Lifetime of Beetle parts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Crimeny, having had a VW Beetle I would estimate that you would have to factor in the cost of a barn to keep enough spare exhausts, wings, sills, filler, primer, welding rods etc to keep 10 of the damn things operative (at least in the UK).
Re:Safety (Score:1, Insightful)
This vehicle is classified as a motorcycle, hence no crash test is required. Most of the high fuel economy vehicles of the future will we tricycles, because they are not required to meet the safety standards for cars. Isn't it wonderful how government regulation warps the appropriate use of technology?
Re:"Zero dollars in manufacture" (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if your time is worth zero dollars.
So just like Open Source Software, then.
It should go over very well here.
For the record, if my car wasn't under a very comprehensive warranty for the next five years, I'd order the parts and do the conversion just so I could say that I'd done it.
Re:uh, no, that's not the reason (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason they sell it as a kit is to avoid all the federal vehicle rules. By passing on assembly to the end-user, it becomes THEIR problem to get the car licensed.
Good point. But to be accurate, the licensing becomes a non-issue. You start with a car complete with license. Then you mod it. Once you have a license, you can do pretty much anything you want with a vehicle, so long as you leave the safety and emission equipment needed for inspections intact.
The other advantage is that federal regs mandating manufacturer warranties don't apply. This is what killed GM's EV1. The requirement to provide spare parts for a few thousand cars would have cost GM millions (think batteries).
Underwhelmed (Score:3, Insightful)
Great idea, too bad it's fugly, more expensive than Honda's new hybrid at $25k, and basically just a motorcycle.
Call me when they make a Prius kit, or a drop in electric engine replacement for the Civic. ;)
Spare time (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, if you enjoy tinkering with stuff and would otherwise have the time free anyhow, then it might even be that the time is of a negative cost.
That is to say, if you spend $25k for the unit, but spend 200 hours being rather entertained by putting it together, then you've just spend $25k on the parts and saved $x on whatever else you might have spend that money on (movies, video games, trips, etc).
I do a lot of the additions/repairs around the house. If might cost *more* than a plumber/carpenter/etc if you count what my day job's hourly rate is, but for me the cost of supplies is paying for both the renos and the entertainment of doing them.
One man's burden is another man's leisure, I'd rather be working on neat projects around the house than baking under a hot sun swinging a stick at a dimpled white ball.
Re:I disagree with what's written on the main page (Score:3, Insightful)
So new hybrids must have enough battery storage capacity to get over those hills, more than just to get going after a stop light.
Re:oh well (Score:4, Insightful)
> At least that way repair shops won't have to be all confused about fixing the new technology [...]
Yeah, they can be all confused trying to figure out what the user has done to the thing.
Let's take an example we can relate to. A company advertises that they can send you the parts to a PC and directions on putting it together. Many of the unwashed public take advantage of this. Local nerdshops are inundated with half-assed assembly jobs, and the natives get really unfriendly when they're told that the best thing to do is junk it as a bad investment and buy an assembled car, er, PC off the lot, er shelf.
One could argue that this deal is for people who know what they're doing. I submit that this is not exactly true -- it's for people with $25,000 who *think* they know what they're doing.
Re:"Zero dollars in manufacture" (Score:4, Insightful)
Not exactly. Exercise increases the rate of burning calories (that's why people who want to lose weight do it). The human body is inefficient about turning food calories into kinetic energy, and plants are inefficient at turning sunlight into calories (photosynthesis is fairly efficient, but most of the energy doesn't end up stored in a way we can recover through digestion -- usually somewhere between a fraction of one percent and a few percent is). And there's all of the energy involved in growing, harvesting, processing, and transporting that food, which is often greater than the energy contained in the food.
Lastly, there's a value to time. The person could instead, for example, be building wind turbines or installing solar arrays. The biggest reason why this is a kit car is almost certainly because the maker didn't want to have to work out a cost-effective mass production system, not because it's somehow better for the environment that way.
Re:Motorcycle, not a car; Agreed, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The way I understand it a motorcycle really has one and only one safety feature, maneuverability. You don't ever want to get hit and if you're careful you can often avoid getting hit when a car wouldn't be able to. A car on the other hand has size, crumple zones, mass, multiple airbags, decently strong building materials and so on which let it it take a hit without killing the occupants. This thing seems to fail under both criteria.
Re:I disagree with what's written on the main page (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. You need to have a kilowatt hour or two of reserve charge to "average out" the hills. Optimally, your motor should be sized to haul you up an interstate at 5-6% grade (6% = legal max) at what you consider a reasonable speed, while your engine should be sized to manage a 1-2% grade (you generally won't surpass that as a running average of slopes on an interstate). Smaller mountain roads may be steeper and have higher average grades, but you won't be climbing them at nearly as high of a speed, either.
Re:Neat idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey if your local mechanic already owns a yacht, he may as well build himself a prius :)
But other than that, I agree. Who has the time and money? Upper management, and they don't have the interest. Who has the time and interest? Me, but I don't have the money!
Re:"Zero dollars in manufacture" (Score:5, Insightful)
Having nearly completed building a one-off airplane, I can attest to the fact that a one-off greatly increases the amount of 'stuff' going into the waste stream. It seems that each part made for the airplane requires a mold, jig or custom clamp to hold it in place. Buy the time I finish, I will have built the equivalent of 2.5 airplanes, and none of those molds, jigs or clamps will be useful to anyone else.
Let there be no doubt. Massive manufacturing operations really do decrease the waste-stream volume on a per unit basis.
Re:oh well (Score:3, Insightful)
I would assume that part of the problem would be the inherent safety problems with assembly by the untrained. Not safety with the actual assembly, though I'm sure there could be a fair share of collapses, or miss use of tools, but the safety of the vehicle on the road. What happens if as soon as the car gets up to 50 mph, the axle comes loose?
Re:Spare time (Score:3, Insightful)
I do a lot of the additions/repairs around the house. If might cost *more* than a plumber/carpenter/etc if you count what my day job's hourly rate is, but for me the cost of supplies is paying for both the renos and the entertainment of doing them.
Especially since the comparison between your hourly wage and the time you spent doing the plumbing, carpentry, whatever is probably specious.
I mean, I might be able to make say $40/hr as a freelance contract programmer, but I'd be lucky to get paid at all to do plumbing or carpentry or automobile assembly/modification. Hell, I'd be lucky not to end up negative if I was doing work on someone else's stuff after they got done suing me for the damage I did. So how can I say that doing any of those things in my spare time is "costing" me $40/hr?
So to Mr. "Only if your time has zero value" OP, well yeah it probably does have zero value! How much do you get paid to sit on your ass and watch TV? Just don't spend so much time working on your kit-car that it cuts into your paid work hours, and yes it really has cost you nothing. And, like phrom here says, if you actually enjoy doing this kind of thing, you may end up being ahead of the game by some metrics.
Re:oh well (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up. This is likely the main reason why this project will never see the light of the day. I can't imagine a DIY vehicle getting approved over road safety.
Re:Hard Numbers (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing is, hard numbers are easy, drawing conclusions isn't.
What data should you examine to compare the "TCO" of the Prius over 5 years versus a same model-year vehicle? Which vehicle would you compare it to-- a mid-size Matrix or Mazda3, since the Prius is classified as a mid-size liftback, or a Corolla-- a compact sedan-- to push cost and efficiency numbers in the ICE model's favor*? Would you take different financing plans into account in your analysis? Would you include maintenance (if any) of the electric component of the hybrid drivetrain?
Some of the "analysis" I've seen in Slashdot comments were either armchair analysis (with no references or actual logic), or oversimplified cherry-picks of data that factored in things like battery replacement after 11 years, most with the general aim of encouraging people to continue to buy small cars because they're cheaper now. It's the same mentality, IMO, that fuels the credit and financial industries-- don't worry about a few years down the road when you're effectively paying an arm and a leg more for a glorified limited rental today.
* I'd love to see why you would want a Prius/Corolla comparison if it's not for this reason.