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A Rivian Fender Bender Cost $42,000. Its CEO Says That Should Never Happen (www.thedrive.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 74 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (48 children)

The market is ripe for the equivalent of a wileys jeep ev. Cheap to buy, repair and capable with no frills.

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  • [–] 38 points 3 months ago (14 children)

    Make the software foss too and i'm in

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (13 children)

    I would die for a FOSS car. The main barrier for that is airbags, people could just disable them, which wouldn't be good or fair to their passengers or future owners. I also worry about other dumb stuff people would do with a foss car. Of course, I still want one.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    You can already do that though. Basically any truck just has a control on the dash to disable the passenger side airbag in case you neet to put a car seat there. You can also just remove the airbags in any existing vehicle as is. It really isn't hard to do. People are just hesitant to do so because if you screw up then you can set the airbag off.

    More importantly though why would the software being foss effect the airbags? The airbags shouldn't be interacting with the vehicle software at all.

    People have been doing dumb things with their cars since the invention of cars. Making them harder to repair via locked down software isn't the fix for that.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Airbags are definitely a part of the can bus these days, they trigger based off of a number of inputs like the gyro, speed, acceleration, etc. I suppose they could just put in a seperate, secure system for the airbags that cannot be tampered with.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    If those sensors give the values thru a server port and the airbag reads them as a client there is no need for more interaction than what the 90s browsers had with the web servers.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Thankfully cars use more reliable things than http.

    But the point is that security related messages should be sent through another can bus, which is actually already the case. Except for earlier Tesla's, because of course their idiotic CEO thought he knew better than every single other car manufacturer in the past half century

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Not gonna happen for multiple obvious reasons, but here's one that would make you not want to buy one - it'd be a budget car for a price of a BMW.

    And you're not gonna want to buy it second-hand, because of the risk of unimaginable extent of software garbage the previous owners would leave you with.

    Tinker cars are for tinkering, good luck untinkering it.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    If it’s software, you could just reinstall it.

    Hardware would be a different story. But I’m not sure how that’s different than today. My friend has a RAV4 that he’s added several hardware hacks to. For example, there is a module you can add that will give you actual numbers for each tire’s pressure instead of the usual warning light that a tire is low with no indication of which one. It even shows up as an extra screen on the normal interface between the gauges.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago* (2 children)

    If it’s software, you could just reinstall it.

    Exactly, right!

    As a FOSS person you don't buy a used PC from someone, find it still has an OS installed and just start using it.

    No, you wipe that sucker clean and install your OS fresh.

    An open-source car would be exactly the same.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    Absolutely correct, however the thing about cars and electronics in general is that if you tinker too much, your software issues may become hardware issues - and usually much sooner than you may have anticipated.

    It's not fun when you burn your GPU, it's super not when you brick your car's AC and have to disassemble your entire dashboard

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Theoretically there are ways to deal with modifications in that scenario.

    Prusa for instance had a trace on the PCB of the mk3 that you had to cut to be able to flash a unsigned binary iirc. You voided the warranty or at least the parts that were affected by modifications.

    Imagine something like this for a car. Not a binary blob but something signed or otherwise secured through a chain of trust for components the law decides to regulate. Driving data recorder in case of crash and airbags and such. All the other non safety components can be changed and nobody but you controls your data and your ability to repair. And if you decide to change said components you loose some rights regarding insurance, not warranty for the car itself.

    Yes please.

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  • [–] 20 points 3 months ago (16 children)

    Slate.. though who knows if it will ever materialize in the real world.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (11 children)

    Isn't Slate a unibody design?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago (10 children)

    No idea, does it matter?

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    Yes, because unibody designs will all have this problem, where it's extremely expensive to repair damage to the frame.

    Body-on-frame is generally better for repairability because you don't have this problem - you can just remove the damaged panel and replace it.

    In both slate and rivian's case (I think), they seem to use a hybrid of both. So, it's probably around the same expense as repairing a Rivian in regard to labor (and possibly materials).

    The point is that Slate might not resolve this problem either.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (7 children)

    My understanding is the Slate is kind of body-around-frame.

    Not exactly a ladder chassis but I don't know if you can call it a unibody.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (5 children)

    I corrected my first comment in the comment you just replied to:

    In both slate and rivian's case (I think), they seem to use a hybrid of both

    Everywhere I've found calls it a hybrid or mix of both options. This is how Rivian does their bodies as well, which means Slate may not fully fix this "more expensive to repair than standard body-on-frame" problem. At least, Rivian calls it a "unique" body on frame.

    Here's an R1T, for example and to compare:

    I do see that the Slate's bed body is less of a unibody compared to the R1T, however it otherwise is very similar. I'm betting that the Slate will be cheaper to repair in the rear, from a labor and material sense, however I think it will suffer from similar problems elsewhere.

    Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a Slate regardless. R2 is a full unibody, which will almost definitely make repairs more costly, as well.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (4 children)

    Frame on rails doesnt save you any money in repairs if the frame is damaged. The real key is to hace rapairability as part of the design. The problem with the rivian isnt that its unibody, its that the exterior pannels are part of the unibody, so a small exterior dent is essentialy frame damage. That being siad, its likley cosmetic damage.

    EVs will never be frame on rails due to battery packaging. The most likley similar design would be body on "skateboard" as they call it. But the hybrid approach does make better cars. Frame on rails has issues with twisting and flex that unibody solves. This makes the cars drive softer and handle better.

    But either way, any design could have easy replacable exterior panels. Most unibody designs still have replacable bumpers, front quarter panels, mirrors, doors, trunks, etc. For some reason though they dont do usually do it on rear quarter panels, which is where the costs skyrocket. Just like in that r1t picturee above. The rear quarter panel could have been a replacable part. There may be a good reason for this, but i suspect its mostly production cost savings, with maybe a bit of weight savings.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

    I think on the Slate, the only part of the frame that is exposed as outer body are the A pillars. Everything else is a panel that bolts on.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    I can't wait to preorder mine! https://www.slate.auto/share/VYMIBC

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Dacia Spring (but that's probably not exported to the US which I guess you're from)

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    You are close to describing the Slate truck

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Closest to that is a base trim Bolt. Considering inflation since COVID, 29k is pretty decent for the US market.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Lemmy wants a new EV for $6500 to park in the garage of their $125,000 house.

    The fact that Bolt is not sold out indicates all these internet comments of "we just want an affordable EV" are bullshit.

    What people say in forums and what they actually buy are very different. Ford sells almost a million F150s every single year.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    The mecedes g wagon was developed with easy repair ability in mind. At least regarding the outer shell and maybe the frame. Straight and rectangular sections that can easily be welded. As all good ideas it went to shit of course.

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