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."

Comments

Ikea?

[martinX]

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.'

no pictures yet

[green1]

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.

Such bullshit.

[HornWumpus]

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.

Built in 4 hours

[Tablizer]

and crash in 3

Re:Built in 4 hours

[Mr D from 63]

That brings up a point about cargo only autonomous vehicles. They should not require all the safety features that passenger vehicles have to protect passengers. They don't need entertainment systems or comfy interiors, etc. That could significantly cut cost and reduce manufacturing time, but hard to think as much as the overly optimistic statement of the subject article.

Re:Built in 4 hours

[phantomfive]

It could basically be a tractor-trailer trailer with an engine, I guess.

Re:Built in 4 hours

[slashrio]

...not require all the safety features...

Yeah, and crash into a passenger van, killing 9 persons.

4 hours of assembly time? yeah....

[The-Ixian]

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.

Re:4 hours of assembly time? yeah....

[angel'o'sphere]

It is a question how the parts are already prepared.
If you can bolt ready made wheels on the axes it is obviously fater than if you have to put the tires on the wheels first, etc.

Re:4 hours of assembly time? yeah....

[HornWumpus]

For English 'workers'. Four hours if 'assembly' amounts to putting on the wheels (tires already mounted) and driving it to the done lot.

Re:4 hours of assembly time? yeah....

[angel'o'sphere]

Will that improve after the BREXIT?

up to 100 Miles range? may work for some delivery

[Joe_Dragon]

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.

Just ask his wife, Morgan Fairchild!

[Nova Express]

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.

Re:Just ask his wife, Morgan Fairchild!

[HornWumpus]

Not sure that's what they are claiming.

They claim that two shifts of 10 people each working a year will make 10,000 trucks. That's about 4 person hours/truck.

They are assuming majic automation in the factory. For a truck with no prototype, they likely also have a factory with no design, thought up by a person with no manufacturing experience, claiming production numbers that still smell of the dark place they came from.

Re: Just ask his wife, Morgan Fairchild!

[HornWumpus]

Two shifts.

Working your math backwards, I get 40.5 working weeks/year? A factory doesn't take vacation in England...not like France, Brits spread the vacation around the workforce and keep the factories running (such as they do). Holidays take a bite, but not 12 weeks.

Being manufactures they would lose another bite to regular retooling. But I'm sure this dweeb assumes they will have a perfect design, day 1, and retooling is just reprogramming the CNCs and 3d printers.

Won't work

[110010001000]

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.

Re:Won't work

[HornWumpus]

Highway only will happen. But they will have a driver in the cab for everything off divided highways. It will be the end of 'driving teams', one driver will keep it rolling 24x7.

Re:Won't work

[HornWumpus]

I know that has already happened. All that's required is DOT approval to log hours in automated mode (differently/as rest), which will take a decade+, easy.

Might end up with 'truck trains', only the first trucks driver is 'driving', the remainder 'resting'.

Highway driving is the simple problem, especially when you can just fallback to human driver when the conditions go to shit or the road is anything other than divided highway with sane traffic (e.g. not in Boston). Than you are just looking at the economics of losing anything past 8/12 hours manual drive/day when conditions are bad vs. not paying the second driver all year.

Think Amazon

[rsilvergun]

and the death of brick and mortar. That's what these sorts of cheap, short range electric cars are for.

Re:Assembled in four hours?

[slashrio]

Then maybe it's you? ;-)

Re: improves after the BREXIT?

[slashrio]

Of course it will. Everything will improve after the Brexit.

There's no good reason for it to not be possible.

[drinkypoo]

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.

I don't think they've thought about it.

[Computershack]

"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."

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.

Re: improves after the BREXIT?

[angel'o'sphere]

Hm, the british food (as in restaurants, unless they serve french or indian) is claimed to be beyond improvement.

Anyway: thumbs up!