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."
I disagree with what's written on the main page, (Score:3, Interesting)
By providing prints and the ability to build parts/put the damned thing together to begin with it's not to give smug yuppies something to be conceded about. It's to give hotrodders the ability to make supped up hybrid! Seriously, I would love to get most of one of these kits, put two kits into a car if possible for the extra kick, throw in a powerful V6 instead of a four (or even three) banger, then put it all in the body of a Dodge Charger.
The electric part could actually take it off the line better than a gas engine, the gas engine would add the power, something like that should kick ass on the quarter mile then do a relatively slow victory lap without using any gas.
Re:Neat idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
Or, one could buy 10 or more easy-to-DIY-fix old VW beetles with enough spare parts and earth-frendliness to last a lifetime.
and good luck... (Score:3, Interesting)
...getting it insured. Just ask anyone who's ever built one of those DIY motorcycle kits or a custom shop (like OCC).
Re:"Zero dollars in manufacture" (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I disagree with what's written on the main page (Score:3, Interesting)
"The electric part could actually take it off the line better than a gas engine,"
THIS.
The best part about that is you wouldn't need a bank of batteries to do the job. A large capacitor bank (or super-capacitors once they're available) would work great. Just enough juice to break the inertia of the car and lug it off the line is all you really need.
We need to stop manufacturing uneccessary cars. (Score:4, Interesting)
most hybrids (GM) at least basically have a motor wedged between the engine and transmission. The engine and drive line are exactly the same as the non hybrid versions.
This being said I recently purchased a trusty 92 Corolla which after a little tweaking and cleaning up gives me over 40 mpg. how hard would it be to mfg a adapter kit between the transmission and engine similar to what GM does.
a big part of the problem is we keep building unnecessary crap. I know in our economy this is not beneficial but why not take cars we already have and update them.
Hard Numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
It's probably slow... (Score:4, Interesting)
I also looked for a price on this engine. The first I saw was about $2800 for a remanufactured unit, with a $700 core charge. It's used in bobcats and similar. If you're building this "car," you won't have a core, so it's going to cost you $3500.
Genious! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this guy is pure genius.
Instead of creating his own auto factory and taking years of research, development, marketing, and infrastructure, he just sells out the blueprints so you can build it yourself.
He doesn't have to worry about competing with other auto manufacturers, pressure from Oil companies or ambulance chasers suing him because of some manufacturing flaw.
How long until somebody else takes his design and builds something much better? I would love to see the mythbusters guys building one of these.
Re:Neat idea... (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is not a hybrid, but a standard gasoline engine (albeit a 1.0L gasoline engine)
Re:I disagree with what's written on the main page (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the real reason for selling kits is to avoid safety and pollution controls. A manufacturer has to deal with those, but a kit maker doesn't, at least to some degree. I don't know all the ins and outs of it. Maybe kit makers avoid those problems only if the kit modifies an existing car. But I bet this guy avoids them too since he is not selling a car. Maybe the catch is that the builder (the kit buyer) will have to deal with safety and pollution controls, and probably not be able to register it.
Green Gimmicks (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
And shipping stuff doesn't pollute the environment? You ship a bunch of parts to somebody, and it's going to go by diesel truck, diesel-powered ship, and jet airplane, all notorious polluters. Plus all the boxes and packing materials are going to go into the trash bin and/or recycling bin, where they will be hauled away by still more diesel trucks.
I'm getting a little tired of these green gimmicks. People think they can spend a little money or put up with a little inconvenience and Save the Planet. They're fooling themselves — and supplying material to those Nuke the Whales assholes who think the solution to all environmental issues is to poke fun at environmentalists.
If you really want to StP, agitate for real measures. Unfortunately, real measures hurt: taxes on non-renewable resources, taxes on pollution, putting up with slow and inconvenient public transit instead of convenient private vehicles, using less convenient forms of distribution that don't rely on monumental use of packaging.
As any athlete will tell you, change hurts. People who want to be green without making real sacrifices are as much in denial as any global warming "skeptic".
Re:Why stop there? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not design the car yourself - using bits and pieces found at your local junkyard? Better yet - smelt the metal in your garage and take up blacksmithing to make all the bits. Sort of like building your own computer from discrete transistors.
If you haven't built a small computer from discrete components, I'd say that you may have some gaps in your understanding.
It's a real pain, but there is a certain satisfaction of manually triggering the cycles and watching it read and write.
Re:buy an old S10 and convert it to electric (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:buy an old S10 and convert it to electric (Score:4, Interesting)
To get costs at that $7K number I completely rebuilt the ICE motor with some performance goodies that I had kicking around the garage and sold it for a pretty penny to someone who didn't know any better, sold the entire interior, box, ECU and wiring harness, etc. To get the weight down and make the truck get the range I'm shooting for I chopped a lot of the body away, tubbed and tubed with a full FIA approved safety cage the truck, replaced the dash with a lightweight aluminum dash, fiberglass race seats, and hand fabbed a lot of the new body from fiberglass. Basically the kind of prep work that goes into a race car to make it really light is the kind of stuff I've done. Two guys can lift the rolling chassis up with ease.
Of course, having all the tools, knowhow and patience to do everything myself DRASTICALLY brings the cost down. .
Re:oh well (Score:4, Interesting)
You built it yourself. Why would you be taking it to a repair shop?
And what is with the can't do attitude? A constant theme on /. is the "anti-science" or "anti-intelligence" attitude in the US. Why is an "anti-ability to bolt a few parts together" attitude any better?
Re:buy an old S10 and convert it to electric (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
> You built it yourself. Why would you be taking it to a repair shop?
Because... it doesn't work? Because you've botched the ignition or torqued the steering improperly or pinched a wire somewhere?
> And what is with the can't do attitude? A constant theme on /. is the "anti-science" or "anti-intelligence" attitude in the US. Why is an "anti-ability to bolt a few parts together" attitude any better?
Oh, there's obviously going to be many successes. Lots of people have successfully built kit cars -- the AC Cobra replicas, Lotus Seven, etc. I'm not disputing that people who put together kit cars couldn't do this. I'm wondering aloud if this is a way to solve the carbon footprint of construction. I'm having a difficult time believing that the kind of person who wants to build a car to reduce their carbon footprint is the same kind of person who builds a Pagano in his garage.
Re:Not your fault, but vapor cars aren't useful. (Score:4, Interesting)
Right, only two are available today. But the rest are coming out in the next couple years. Even if some (or even a large chunk of them) were cancelled or delayed, that'd still be a huge number of vehicles. And while perhaps a third of them are luxury or performance machines well beyond an ordinary person's price range, most are not. More expensive than a gasoline car, sure, but nothing that you can't make up in reduced operations costs.
Re:oh well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Neat idea... (Score:4, Interesting)
I hear you.
I have friends and acquaintances who own hybrids, I live in an area where they seem to be fairly common, and I have never, ever encountered anyone being smug about it. I have, however, gotten seriously tired of self-righteous people complaining about these supposed hordes of smug hybrid drivers.
It seems to have become a requirement: "Any mention of hybrid vehicles must by law be accompanied by a reference to their smug owners."
Want smug? Try talking to a Hummer owner.
Re:Neat idea... (Score:3, Interesting)
And you could probably cut that price further by getting a used motor of that class... I've got access to a bunch of Kubota D950 motors (slightly larger displacement, older, but same technology) that I could probably get for free.
Or, pay a little more, and get a different motor - I'm thinking a Yanmar 3TNV82A-BDSA. Yes, it's over 100 lbs heavier, but you get 10 more horsepower, and below 3000 RPM a significant increase in BSFC, due to it being direct injection.
(Alternately, you could probably put that engine's head and fuel injection system on a smaller Yanmar such as the 3TNV70-CSA.)
Re:Not your fault, but vapor cars aren't useful. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Toyota RAV4EVs with the same type of batteries still work fine.