Build an Open-Source Electric Car In About One Hour 188
First time accepted submitter joe5 writes "Like what Elon Musk has done and want to go all Etsy and build your own electric car? That's apparently now possible now thanks to the OSVehicle Tabby — dubbed the first "Open source vehicle" (memo: it may be cool, but it ain't the first). The OSV guys are taking pre-orders for the Tabby starter kit, with both the two-seater or four-seater configurations going for €500. Then you click to add options. (Note: seats is an "option" so that's the level of luxury you are dealing with here.) When the transaction's complete, OSV sends the parts to your home and you can download the plans and start building. Since the Tabby is open source, OSVehicle will also look to a community of owners and tinkerers for suggestions and recommendations."
Slashdot Beta --- Now optimized for Windows 8.1 (Score:5, Informative)
It still looks like ass though. It blends well with Metro UI at least............
Time for a slashdotting. (Score:5, Informative)
Spread the word by mentioning this in every article's comments.
Here is Dice's "Contact Us" page. [diceholdingsinc.com] Everybody be sure to call them tomorrow using whatever numbers from that page you can get to ring. Tell every darn receptionist in every darn one of Dice's holdings, along with anyone you can get them to connect you to, that the Slashdot beta is terrible and you won't shut up until it goes away. Fax them a well-illustrated complaint or two or three. Send them a choice letter via snail mail, along with whatever memorabilia you wish.
They keep soliciting our feedback, they can get our feedback, right where it counts.
The most obvious contact points are:
Dice Holdings Inc.
1040 Avenue of the Americas, 8th Floor
New York, NY 10018
T: 212-725-6550
F: 212-725-6559
Slashdot
594 Howard St Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: +1-877-433-5638
www.slashdot.com
Re:I think (Score:5, Informative)
Buying Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
So on an earlier thread I mentioned starting a kickstarter to buy Slashdot off of Dice. Many of us love the community here and would hate to see it killed off due the the incompetence of some Dice MBAs. I have no idea what a good number to start such a kickstarter at would be so I started by looking at the latest Dice quarterly report. I still haven't found numbers that are particularly helpful but I did come across a few interesting things that might help explain their seemingly inexplicable actions.
From the Operating Segment Results section:
"Corporate & Other segment revenues decreased 9% year-over-year to $4.3 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2013 from the comparable 2012 period, due primarily to the financial results at Slashdot Media."
From the recent Recent Developments section:
"Slashdot Media was acquired to provide content and services that are important to technology professionals in their everyday work lives and to leverage that reach into the global technology community benefiting user engagement on the Dice.com site. The expected benefits have started to be realized at Dice.com. However, advertising revenue has declined over the past year and there is no improvement expected in the future financial performance of Slashdot Media's underlying advertising business. Therefore, $7.2 million of intangible assets and $6.3 million of goodwill related to Slashdot Media were reduced to zero."
It seems they valued the goodwill of us Slashdot users at $13.5 million USD! Unfortunately it looks like they've already written that off?
Also, for Slashdotters who like to Slashdot things:
Investor & Media Contact:
Jennifer Bewley
Vice-President, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications
Dice Holdings, Inc.
212-448-4181
IR@dice.com
Oh, and a couple of their bigwigs will be at a conference in San Francisco in a couple of days:
On Monday, February 10, 2014, Mr. Durney and Mr. Roberts will participate at the Stifel Technology, Internet & Media Conference 2014 to be held in San Francisco. The fireside chat will be held at 2:45 PM Pacific time/5:45 PM Eastern time and will be webcast live from the Company's website.
Maybe a few of us would like to participate in that fireside chat, eh?
Cheers,
Greg
confirmed: beta is garbage (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. It sucks.
Why reinvent the sand rail? (Score:5, Informative)
This looks like a reinvented sand rail, except not as safe, and not road legal.
I've seen sand rails on the road in some states. Check with your DMV to see about registering "experimental", "homemade" or "homebuilt" vehicles.
You can get a rolling sand rail chassis pretty cheap, and put in your choice of engine, transmission, seat(s), lights, etc. Just like the vehicle in the article, you could assemble one in a few hours.
In my state, besides the obvious (engine/motor, steering wheel, etc), they require: headlights (2), turn signals (4), brakes (2), bumpers (2), fenders (all wheels), horn (1), seat, seat belt (if not a motorcycle), tires (2 or 3 for motorcycle, 4+ for cars). All lighting must be DOT approved, which is easy enough to get from auto parts stores. Lighting and bumpers have to be within a certain height from the ground. I think that was all the requirements. That's from memory.
Pretty much, you just build it. You then go to the DMV and fill out a "Statement of Builder".
http://www.flhsmv.gov/dmv/form... [flhsmv.gov]
You can then drive it (or trailer it) to the DMV for a safety inspection.
They get a lot of homebuilt motorcycles, since you can buy every part without a donor vehicle.
Homebuilt cars are usually custom cars built on existing chassis. If you're building on a sandrail chassis (like this almost appears), you just can't provide the source chassis VIN. If you're proficient with welding, you can build your own chassis, but that takes some skill.
I've put a few homebuilt trailers on the road legally. Pretty much those just required me to go in with a weight and length, and sign off on some papers. It was up to me to affirm that I complied with the safety (lighting, hitch, etc) requirements.