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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."
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.
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Heck yes! I'm actually building an EV S-10 right now.. I'm coming in at around $7K total build costs after selling the ICE and other ICE related objects I don't need. However, my range is going to be around 150 miles.
Well, I only paid $200 for the truck.
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. .
> 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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It happens all the time in the UK. There's a healthy market for kit cars (well, car kits) and some people design and build the entire thing themselves. You build it, the man from the VOSA comes round, makes sure the brakes work and so on, gives you your SVA (Single Vehicle Approval) certificate and you're good to go. The requirements are lower than for production cars (eg. no crash testing, for obvious reasons), but as long as the brakes and steering work and the wheels won't fall off it won't be a danger to other road users - the safety of the driver/builder is their own problem.
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