DIY Hybrid Car Kit

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."

Comments

"Zero dollars in manufacture"

[Mononoke]

It'll cost you $25,000 for the bits, plus zero dollars in manufacture, I hope.

Only if your time is worth zero dollars.

Re:"Zero dollars in manufacture"

[Qzukk]

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:"Zero dollars in manufacture"

[Beardo the Bearded]

It'll cost you $25,000 for the bits, plus zero dollars in manufacture, I hope.

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:"Zero dollars in manufacture"

[Rei]

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:"Zero dollars in manufacture"

[Shotgun]

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.

Motorcycle, not a car

[MightyYar]

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?

Safety

[HalAtWork]

So has this thing been crash tested? Do you have to get the car certified after you build it, so that you can drive it on the road? Are you any more liable if anything happens to a passenger, motorist, or pedestrian, in such a car?

Re:uh, no, that's not the reason

[thered2001]

I agree completely. The first part of this article makes an assumption which doesn't seem too solid: that automotive machinery pollutes. If this is a reference to the byproducts of the power generated to run the machines, then I fail to see how running smaller machines in your home will improve the situation. Plus, power (and pollution?) is still needed to make the parts for a car no matter who puts it together. Sounds like someone is just trying to appear 'green' and cash in on the hybrid craze with kit 'car' (actually a motorcycle as an astute reader notes above).

Re:Lifetime of Beetle parts...

[zmollusc]

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).

Spare time

[phorm]

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

[uberdilligaff]

AMEN. I had a 79 diesel Volkswagen Jetta (52 whole HP!) It got 45-48 mpg all the time, with my foot to the floor most of the time, but it couldn't maintain 50 mph when driving on the hilly Interstates in West Virginia and Tennessee. Just move to the far right and hope not to get run over.

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

[roc97007]

> 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.