OMG is that thing ugly.

I think the showroom lights are too hot. With global warming someone will need to work on a body material that doesn't melt.

There seems to be this overwhelmingly ascribed to school of thought that holds to the truth that great improvements in the world of automotive transportation must be realized within terribly offensive style and form. The first generation prius and the insight are prime examples, and this one (in so many ways) takes that truth even further. They should have just open sourced the civic.

Can someone comment to the problems with cars being open source (i.e. being modifiable to a significant extent down to the body and frame) and that effect on street and highway legality in the US? It's something I've been meaning to determine for a more basic kit-type car (e.g. plans from Riley) but with the specific purpose of having a commuter vehicle.

Sometimes I think they purposely make hybrids and well environmentally designed cars fugly on purpose.

kinda looks like a shoe... i wonder if its open source enough that you can change the shape of the body

@Laura: An "open source" car should be fine, in theory, but in order to sell it as a car in the US they'd have to be tested for highway safety first, and meet a bunch of national regulations.

As far as modifying it once you own it, each state has different requirements in order for a car to be considered "street legal", but as long as you meet them you're fine. Most of them are common sense, like having mirrors, headlights, seatbelts, but others relate more towards structural integrity or emissions.

In regards to your kit car, you might want to check with a local mechanic, or even the local DMV, and see if you can get information on the regulations in your state.

I was under the impression open source meant you could change what you wanted. I assume this falls under body too.

I would imagine there would be notes in the plans stating something to the effect that you can change anything you want but we suggest leaving x parts the same to keep street legality. Much like the TCI/IP stack in an open source OS, you could change it all you want but making certain changes will prevent if from communicating with other tcp/ip systems. So if you change anything that makes it street legal then you have to go get the leagality approved yourself. Though it actually doesn't take much to make a vehicle street legal, just things like lights and turn signals, seat belts. A lot of the things that are required by law such as air bags are required to be in mass produced vehicles and not one off's.

I think you guys are getting the wrong end of the stick regarding open source in this case. Generally it leads to clever, customised gear, but in truth it means that the technical details of your operating system, or DVR, or in this case car, are freely available for people to peruse, modify, and redistribute.

Just as someone customising Linux must do the necessary rewriting and recompiling himself, someone customising the c,mm,n (WORST NAME EVER) must redesign and build it himself. In practice I imagine most of us would prefer to buy the car equivalent of a pre-built Linux distro.

I can see that happeneing, several groups would modify it to make their own distro of the open source car and maybe have group get togethers every so often to build a few at a time, or small companies selling pre made sub assemblies.
They should have named it c0mm0n to fit the more h@cker crowd.

I'll be honest, I can see an "open source" car being successful in terms of the onboard computer and the types of applications it can run, but are there really enough people who know how to work with engines to that degree to make this more than a pet project for serious green auto geeks?

Well, to be fair, pretty much every open-source program ever is just a pet project for geeks. Even projects like Firefox, which have a relatively huge number of contributors, are only worked on by a small, incredibly geeky subsection of the user base.

Though this does seem more like a customizable kit taken a step further, the concept of an actual open-source car is pretty interesting. The hot-rodding culture is huge, and a big enough player in that market could probably come up with a project where a couple thousand hobbyists worked on creating a single model. Keep the designs on a wiki-like page for easy editing, and just let all the greasemonkeys out there go nuts.

It was not that long ago that this concept was a reality.

The early cars (Ford Model A and Model T) were essentially open source. Parts for the cars were readilly available at drug stores and supermarkets, and the average owner did not have any problems performing repairs, and installing upgrades.

Then cars became "complex" and the average driver decided that knowing where the local Jiffy Lube is located is enough car knowledge for them.

What't the difference between the c,mm,n and the model T? The c,mm,n has a computer for engine and emmisions control, the Model T didn't, the parts for the c,mm,n will most likely NOT be available at your local NAPA, etc... But, the information you need to repair and update the vehicle will be available, unlike other cars on the road today. (Frankly, I resent having to shell out almost $100 for the service manual just so that I can get a wiring diagram!)

Sure, it's butt-ugly, but doesn't "open source" mean anybody can copy it without paying royalties, so long as they don't charge someone else for it? Sounds like a great deal to me. I'll drive one that's free. Heck I'll even donate 10 bucks through Pay Pal!

Is it a GNUick? Maybe GNUssan? GNUgeot? Well, maybe I don't want it if it's a GNUgeot...

Neat idea, great headline.

Looks familiar