cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/40677034
cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/24122615
A team of students from the Eindhoven University of Technology has built a prototype electric car with a built-in toolbox and components that can be easily repaired or replaced without specialist knowledge.
The university’s TU/ecomotive group, which focuses on developing concepts for future sustainable vehicles, describes its ARIA concept as “a modular electric city car that you can repair yourself”.
ARIA, which stands for Anyone Repairs It Anywhere, is constructed using standardised components including a battery, body panels and internal electronic elements that can be easily removed and replaced if a fault occurs.
With assistance from an instruction manual and a diagnostics app that provides detailed information about the car’s status, users should be able to carry out their own maintenance using only the tools in the car’s built-in toolbox, the TU/ecomotive team claimed.
And why can’t the automotive industry with its virtually unlimited resources achieve what a handful of students with very limited resources did?
Oh right, I forgot about the loss of profits from missing out on excessively expensive overly complex repairs that have to be done at a licensed workshop.
But… this isn’t a car. I’m going to be extremely negative here, but
It’s a go-kart with big wheels and a metal car shell on top. It’s so weird that they’re claiming this is some kind of environmental achievement as a car when it isn’t one. It’s a really fun hobby project, to be sure though.
Things this “car” doesn’t have:
- headlights (it has soft-glow x-mas lamps glued on)
- Indicators
- Seatbelts
- Seats that have more than 2cm of padding
- Door locks
- Door handles
- Insulation and/or heating
- Windows (the door and rear have plastic screens). That’s why don’t need any mechanisms to lift the doors, they’re just single-sheet metal and plastic.
- A properly secured front windscreen (seriously, it’s got 2 clamps with 4 screws no wonder they barely used any glue, stuff is barely attached)
- Windshield wipers
- Literally any required safety feature.
- Power steering, power braking. Obviously you don’t need that for a go-kart, but you would if this were a real car.
- Wheel arches (you can literally look through past the wheels, have fun scraping dirt out of that toolbox)
- Literally any material at all between you and the frunk.
- Any material between the wiring and the asphalt
- Anything to prevent someone from quick-releasing those body panels and walking off with them.
- Actually standardized body panels. Come on, there’s no place you can get these things, especially not with the quick-release holes drilled in.
- Come to think of it, it only seems to have one single quick-release bodypanel, on the front-left, the rest looks pretty firmly welded in place.
Add all those things, and you’ll quickly discover your 650kg “car” has turned into a 1000 kg car sans batteries, and your 13kWh batteries are basically useless. You’re going to need to swap those batteries pretty frequently anyway, since making them hand-swappable probably makes them impossible to climate-control and exposes them to wild temperature swings.
So yeah, this is a super fun hobby project, but it’s on par with pretending my dad’s old vespa is the future of motorcycles because you can maintain it at home.
It’s a university built concept vehicle. Schools are unbound by things like
auto regulations
marketability
shareholder value
The point is to build something that looks like the auto of the future. You missed the message entirely.
And if they said “Look at how pretty this mockup is” that would be fine. But instead they’re saying thing “Look how eco-friendly it is, and how light, and how little glue was used so you can swap bits out”. But those are all qualities that rely on this vehicle not actually being a car. If you apply any of this to a car, it stops being true.
The point is to build something that looks like the auto of the future
And all but one of my observations are about it NOT looking like a car, let alone a car of the future. I don’t have any special insights, I just looked at the pictures.
The point is actually to do a really cool design project and score some free ECTS credits by having fun.
Pretty great concept but my immediate concern is how feasible it is to get this type of car street legal. Like, is safety being compromised to fit a modular design? A single central body is pretty important for surviving highway speed accidents.
That is not the students’ task I guess. That should and will be done by the industry. The concept could possibly be adapted to an existing electric car platform (chassis, frame,…).
My guess is that some company will buy them out and bury the plans.
Great question. I’d love to read more about the whole concept.
There’s some more info here: https://www.tuecomotive.nl/our-family/aria/
and the followup project: https://www.tuecomotive.nl/our-family/phoenix/
note that these are very much student-learning projects, not actually anything anyone will ever use since they would be deathtraps.
I was imagining that the chassis is one piece, but everything else is diy: battery, motor, etc. Most cars these days are technically diy, because any mechanic can fix them without asking the manufacturer, but manufacturers don’t seem to like it.
It’s very much a concept car build rather than something that’s production ready.
The photo into the trunk area with the toolbox shows that it’s just one-off welded square tubing. It also doesn’t even have any inner wheel well liners or real headlights.
It’s a good concept though and sustainable, right to repair is where the world needs to move to now but us all in waste and financial ruin.
AccidentsCall then “wrecks” or “collisions”, don’t perpetuate the patronizing exceptionalism, please. 🥲Literally are accidents.
Woodworkers loosing a finger is an accident too. A lot of expectable things are accidents.
Damn, Netherlands! They made that crazy cool looking Zenvo supercar, and now this crazy cool looking electric, with a literal toolbox built right in! Named the ARIA, meaning Anyone Repairs It Anywhere, I’d definitely want one. I hope it works out for them!
E: Oops, Netherlands, not Denmark. My apologies!
As a Swede I’ll join in damning the Danish but just FYI it’s made in the Netherlands.
😁🇸🇪💕🇩🇰
I love how you Scandinavians are rivaling each other in a fun way. I remember we were at a little winery in Denmark and the owner was making fun of how their upper neighbors walk and talk. It was so silly, I was laughing hard!
Oops! Thanks for the correction!
This is from the Netherlands though.
Yeah, I was just made aware of my mistake. Sorry about that! 😅
And it doesn’t look like a fucking toaster but more like a golf 4. Huge plus for me. It’s actually car shaped
Give them money!!
That actually looks really good too!
Not on the inside it doesn’t…
The doors are ooky for me, but it looks really great with 'em closed, for sure.
I wish more vehicles had scissor doors. Here in America the giant trucks always wind up parking way too fucking close.
I can see them having benefits in tight parking spaces. On the other hand, they require additional parts in comparison to normally opening doors (some sort of spring to hold them open), adding complexity and parts that can break.
