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Self-Drive Delivery Van Can Be 'Built in Four Hours' (bbc.com)
A self-drive electric delivery van, that could be on UK streets next year, has been unveiled at the Wired 2016 conference in London. From a report on BBC:The vehicle's stripped-back design and lightweight materials mean it can be assembled by one person in four hours, the firm behind it claims. The vehicles will be "autonomous-ready", for when self-drive legislation is in place, the firm said. The government wants to see self-drive cars on the roads by 2020. "We find trucks today totally unacceptable. Loud, polluting and unfriendly," said Denis Sverdlov, chief executive of Charge, the automotive technology firm behind the truck. "We are making trucks the way they should be - affordable, elegant, quiet, clean and safe."
What year is this? 2012?
Fat chance. I've bought a dozen things at Ikea, not once has it taken less than 8.
If it's made by Ikea, that should read 'The vehicle's stripped-back design and lightweight materials mean it can be assembled by one person in "four hours". It took my wife and I 16 hours, got half way through and had to go back a bunch of steps, we lost some parts and no we're seeking marriage counselling.'
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I'm always a little skeptical of any of these articles that don't even include the picture of a prototype vehicle, only computer renderings. Anyone can talk like this and show a computer rendering. Getting from there to a working vehicle actually driving around and being mass produced is a rather large challenge.
We see so many press releases like this, wake me up when at least a prototype is driving around.
2 shifts, 10 people (Brits at that) each, 10,000 trucks/year.
Self driving software, done in house, _ready_ to be uploaded as soon as it's legal.
No prototype, only CGI of poorly thought out 'trucks'. which will cost the same as gasoline/diesel cars, they promise.
Self righteous ass in charge: "We find trucks today totally unacceptable. Loud, polluting and unfriendly,"
So much bullshit. A British /.er should go by their mail drop/fake office and kick the lead grifter square in the nuts.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
and crash in 3
Table-ized A.I.
I used to assemble industrial sized) printers and I got pretty good at it after a couple of years. Even still, I could barely finish 8 in a day if I really (and I mean REALLY) hustled and all of the parts were in spec and ready to go.
4 hours seems kind of optimistic to me for a car. I would think that just the wiring alone would take at least that long.
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up to 100 Miles range? may work for some deliverys but if say the hub is 20-15 miles out side of the city core that may be to small of a range.
Go to the actual article and you see not a prototype, not a mockup, but concept art.
Could a single trained technician with the proper tools (hoist, lift, etc.) assemble a truck from modular, prefabricated parts in four hours? Maybe, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Especially when a typical kit car requires 80-100 hours to build yourself.
This is pie-in-the-sky fluff to pimp to investors.
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You won't see commercially available self driving cars on public roads for another 20 years at least. The technology isn't there, despite the VC hype.
I read this and it actually scared me quite a bit. This has to be a big concern going forward, even if it took a group of people 4 hours to put it together...
affordable, elegant, quiet, clean and safe
Nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope. They'll break down all the time (because they're made as cheap as possible), they'll be an ugly blight, they might be quiet -- until they break down, crash into something (or someone), or flat-out explode, they'll leave a mess after the inevitable accidents (parts, fluids, blood, shit, etc), and they'll cause accidents, kill people, destroy property, and generally become a gigantic nuisance. Guaranteed.
..assembled in 4 hours
LOL no, that's laughable. Regardless of how long, it'll likely be with unskilled, non-english-speaking, cheap-as-possible labor, there'll be only the most minimal inspections, and the main focus will be 'get as many out the door as possible in the shortest amount of time possible, get paid as soon as possible, and move the funds to offshore accounts immediately, and always keep the go-bags ready and on hand for when the whole scam starts going south on us'. Wecome to 2016/2017, everyone! So-called 'self driving' vehicles are the new Snake Oil.
When are you people going to learn? So-called 'autonomous' vehicles are going to be the biggest bullshit scam ever, and accidents will go UP, not DOWN because of them, and no one will be held accountable, it'll all get dodged by platoons or lawyers because no one was at the goddamned wheel. Better keep your driving license up-to-date, you're going to need it for a long, long time to come.
I have not found, anywhere in any literature or on any web site, a single example of a car being handed to an independent tester for autonomous driving on roads of their choosing.
This seems to be one of the biggest pieces of vaporware in technological history.
And it's always due sometime next year.
Bullshit.
and the death of brick and mortar. That's what these sorts of cheap, short range electric cars are for.
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Of course it will. Everything will improve after the Brexit.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
If the vehicle is sufficiently simplified, then it should be possible to "build" a vehicle in four hours. We're talking about an EV, right? It's just modules, you bolt them down and plug them together and you're done. If it has MacPherson suspension at all four corners (or something even simpler, like a torsion bar rear) then the total number of connections which must be torqued down is small enough to where it's feasible. If all the switch gear and instrumentation is packaged in modules that are just slapped in, and you don't count the time to bundle the modules, then sure. It's quite possible.
If you count the total man-hours provided by third-party suppliers, you will come up with a whole lot more than four. But you could reasonably get it down to four hours of labor to assemble all the modules after unpacking them if your interior were made up of eight or ten pieces total (which is feasible) and so on.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So his solution is to replace a truck with 28 of these vans which is what it would take to carry the same load as a single articulated lorry. I'm sure that is way better.
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It would work to drop off items to small shops from a nearby distribution centre twice a day.
More likely I expect the use case would be taking items from a fulfillment centre or warehouse, containing a variety of items, to a pickup centre local to those people that have ordered things. I'd anticipate that ultimately each end would also be automated.
Hm, the british food (as in restaurants, unless they serve french or indian) is claimed to be beyond improvement.
Anyway: thumbs up!
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