Re: [ox-en] Opensourcing the automobile world?
- From: "Franz Nahrada" <f.nahrada reflex.at>
- Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 19:18:58 +0200
sandor writes:
This model does nothing to eliminate the per-person ecological cost so
I'm not too impressed with it.
I agree. But I could imagine this as an entry door to promote open source
solutions which do better. Would be interesting to confront red herrings
with such ideas.
At the Viennese Oekonux Conference, on the very first evening in a german
round there was a discussion if opensourcing, or- more "politically
correct" -, "applying the concepts and modes of free software production"
;-) would lead to similar or different products than we have now with all
their flaws and nonsense. I think that is a very crucial and important
question!
There was a group of interested people around the magazine "Streifzuege"
who warned us that opensourcing might not be enough.
I disagreed, saying that this would be a very decisive step. I quoted a
tiny and seemingly insignificant example. When German Open Source Car
project maintainer Marcus Merz was still on track with his project (he
seems way off now) we had several phone conversations. "Guess what", he
told me. "I had just a call from a woman from Frankfurt or so. She told me
she had read about us designing an open source car".
"Do you take also the inputs from pedestrians?" she asked. Yes we do,
Marcus replied. So she said: "I wonder if you could think of putting stop
lights not only in the rear of the car, but also in front. You know its
very good for a driver to know the car in front of him stops. But
pedestrians approached by a car never know exactly."
I think that gives a hint. Opensourcing transportation will not end with
carsharing. Its a pool that includes better use of existing resources but
also ends up changing the products and eventually much more. It ends up
changing our social relations.
We are talking heavily about the issue in the moment here in Vienna.
Eurosolar people are very interested in Open Source concepts, but they
also came up with an interesting challenge. They said: we will seriously
discuss opensource concepts when you place a plug for an electric vehicle
outside your house or at a publicly accesible place. It does not cóst you
a fortune when you help them to load up batteries for free, but you help
cocreating infrastructure. We want a dense network of places where
electric cars can load up so their limited action radius is not a problem
any more.
The more I think about this request, the more logical it is. Maybe
opensourcing the automomile world would take a lot of such small steps?
Franz
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