Talk:Open Source Car

The pusher trailer concept is good, and exactly what I was thinking regarding making bicycles generally useful for virtually all around town travel during favorable weather. Good examples of what a bike trailer can carry are shown at http://www.bikesatwork.com/ -- but note the heavier items are only practical on flat land, not any hill or mountain country. Therefore, a little electric assist setup on the trailer, with regenerative braking ability, would be ideal to extend this utility to everywhere, and works with virtually all existing bikes, (although my recumbent BikeE would need a custom hitch). Ability to charge on the go with a solar panel or fuel cell could be a bonus for longer trips. --Jeb

There are at least 17 open-source car projects out there. See the list at p2pfoundation. Some of the more promising ones for Open Source Ecology: As you will notice, most of these are interested in hydrogen or battery energy, not biofuels. If we want a biofuel-powered car (which would fit better with the other GVCS tools), we can still use the designs for the body and other parts from the above projects.
 * 1) Trev - lithium-ion batteries, two seats, very light. The car has been built and tested and the team are in the process of open-sourcing the designs here
 * 2) c,mm,n (pronounced "common") - a Dutch open-source car project, one of the more active ones. It uses hydrogen fuel cells for storage and ultracapacitors to transfer energy to in-wheel motors.
 * 3) Riversimple Hyrban - Carbon fiber monocoque. Like c,mm,n, it stores energy as hydrogen and uses ultracapacitors to transfer it to in-wheel motors.
 * 4) EDAG - Basalt fibers are used to make the body. Lithium-ion battery powers the car.
 * 5) OSCar

Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion car. Expired patent (i.e. public domain design) and the pictures to go with it. Extremely aerodynamic. Extremely manoeuvrable because of a single wheel at the back that steers and two wheels at the front that drive. Very economic use of materials, allowing an excellent strength-to-weight ratio.

RiverSimple's HyrBan seems ideal. It is a planned hydrogen fuel cell car. It features a carbon fiber monocoque, in-wheel motors and 240 mile range. It is powered by ultracapacitors (for fast power) and hydrogen fuel cells (for energy storage). Prototypes have already been made. CAD files of the body are available here. I think it's still being tweaked, but should be in production quite soon.

Creating hydrogen requires a LOT of electrical energy. I think it might be better to go with batteries instead of fuel cell, though the batteries are heavier. Less energy is lost in the process. However, if uses could be found for the oxygen also produced in hydrolysis, then the overall process would be more efficient.

Personal Rapid Transit (PRT)
Have you guys seen this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit

It would be great to see an open source PRT system someday.

Elifarley 02:41, 26 December 2009 (UTC)


 * PRT would be lovely, but it's a large-scale infrastructural project, not a grassroots one like the ones here. It does seem like about the best form of transport ever. There's a planned city in Qatar or one of those Gulf states that uses PRT.--Conor 03:58, 8 November 2010 (UTC)