LocostUSA.com

http://www.reynardracingcars.com/

The OS7.0 is ANDRE’s latest project, available to pre-order from £35k inclusive of all engineering drawings, 3D models and a bill of materials, will be the first sportscar to be designed, tested, released and then using an open source approach, community developed, locally manufactured and sold. OS7.0 is a “seven” style sportscar, but it will feature a carbon fibre monocoque, with a stressed engine mounted at the front, and a stressed gearbox mounted at the rear, putting it at the very top of the seven tree in terms of technology, materials and performance. Details on the OS7.0 project are here http://andrecars.wordpress.com/cars-2/os7-0/

Oh goody. Yet another first open source sportscar. Open Source sure means a lot of different things to different people. In this case, it means you get the source information if you buy a car, and you are prohibited from sharing this information for 12 months.

> ...putting it at the very top of the seven tree in terms of technology, materials and performance.

I think the folks aiming at the top of the seven tree are missing the point of the Lotus Seven (and yes, I'm including Caterham in that generalization). The competition for who can make the most exotic, sophisticated, and expensive car that looks like it was designed 50 years ago over dessert and manufactured in a shed...pretty strange to me.

> ...it will feature a carbon fibre monocoque

Not my fave material for open source hardware.

Pardon my cynicism, but I've been dealing a lot lately with folks (Open Source Ecology in specific, and numerous folks at the Maker Faire in general) who describe their products as "open source" because in this day and age, the phrase "open source" has powerful marketing virtues...but what their splash page giveth, their fine print taketh away. if you want to see ANDRE's open source documentation, it'll cost you 55 grand and you'll have to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Very cool car, however, and it's being developed by a guy who is well qualified to pull it off.

What has been seen, cannot be unseen.

This looks more like a solid modeling class project than a high dollar sports car.

It's a step past the Caterham. Like the Inverter it will be a VERY well engineered car. Not Locost by any stretch but it's not the point. The open source rules are typical intellectual property stuff. A vast leap forward, sort of LMP car meets the Seven.

Yes it's a little FRANKENSTEIN

Hi Guys
new to the board, but thought I'd say hello.
I'm Andre, the chap designing the car in this thread...
just wanted to clarify that this project has nothing to do with reynard, though it will build on the experience I gained in designing, testing, racing and road registering the inverter.
also, I feel I should explain why I am offering the cars for sale with plans initially, then fully open source later. I have seen too many open source car designs fail due to a design by committee approach. I think that the best car designs have always historically been created from the mind of one engineer, they have then been developed by a community of enthusiasts. The Lotus seven is the perfect example of this.
By offering a completed design for sale with plans for people to evolve it further, I am able to ensure a safe, functional car is actually completed as release 7.0. I would hate to engage an army of volunteer designers to start a ground up design and build a dream project, only for them not to be able to agree on a direction, wasting everyone's time and goodwill.
I think that an open source car is a lot more complex than an open source electronics hardware project, and I feel that it needs to be defined first to a certain resolution. Arduino is an open source electronics board, created initially by one or two people, and then extended in functionality by thousands...
Regarding specification, there are already many engineering plans out there as open source for a spaceframe &/or donor car built seven/locost etc. I wanted to extend the idea of lightweight design and changing the layout of the car to have independent suspension, and stressed engine and gearbox is a modern interpretation. Trying to make a spaceframe chassis is difficult because you to need to jig it appropriately, not the ideal thing for an open source project, hence the move to a self jigging folded flat panel design. it is easy to hand rout this to a drawing stuck on a pre-fab sandwich panel sheet, in carbon or ally. One of the main reasons for choosing a seven style car is that it has minimal bodywork, so again, the requirement on the open source builder to invest heavily in bodywork tooling (and chassis tooling) is removed.
I suppose I really expect this car to be built and assembled primarily by professional shops who use their existing supply chains to make parts for the car locally, although I am sure that some individuals will do so too. Design is another matter, and once the plans are open source, anyone will be able to design development parts for it.
hope this helps explain my thinking!
Andre

Yes, well that goes without saying because no "famous" brand has ever made an overpriced POS (relative) have they ......

Oh and it's ugly.

Golly.. Didn't know we would have such strong opinions from the get go. I think its nice to see cars at both end sof the tech spectrum. Not to say a cheaper car won't do just as well on a track. May or may not.
This car is more a FSAE approach, not using many off the shelf cheap parts. It's a different concept from what we do here. I'm a cheap [Fatherless Child] at heart, but no need to slam someone since they are going out of the usual seven box.

Ya gotta admit, the diff/reverse package is a nice touch despite tooling costs.

In a way it's almost Henry Ford meets Colin Chapman, a sports car in every garage.
For the non gearhead (mechano-nerd?), high disposable income type that is. .. rather like Factory Five Racing.
Sure, sure it's not handcrafted in a tiny garage behind a rowhouse (or in a SHIPPING CONTAINER ), it reminds me more of a knock down kit.
Definitely not locost but neither is using an entire Corvette as a donor

Hi Andre, thanks for jumping in. As I'm sure you've noted, we can be a tough crowd.

I think a couple of introductions are in order. cheapracer, who immediately trashed you for your fame and your aesthetics, is developing an inexpensive Atomish kit car in China, so don't take his "overpriced" and "POS" and "ugly" comments as typical of the LocostUSA membership. And then there's me, and I make and sell Locost components and am attempting to document my Locost-based 100 mpg car as open source, so I've got my own ideas of what Open Source should be. But only a small number of us have business interests in the DIY sports car industry (stiggy, KB58) and the rest have no financial axe to grind.

That was unclear in the OP's link...and it's unclear in the thread title too...but that's not your fault. I'll edit my first post immediately, from "Very cool car, however, and it's being built by folks well qualified to pull it off" to "Very cool car, however, and it's being built by a guy who is well qualified to pull it off." Or maybe I'll use "developed" instead of "built."

On to my Open Source gripe. Primarily it was a knee-jerk (or maybe even just "jerk") response to "ANDRE cars are race winning, road legal, innovative and Open Source" which are the first words on your web site. The OS Hardware license you link to says...

>You may distribute products you make to third parties, if you either include the documentation on
>which the product is based, or make it available without charge for at least three years to anyone
>who requests it.

...and yet the "...inverter is currently only built to order", so I jumped to the conclusion that it wasn't open source. I'll drop you a line requesting documentation, and if it arrives I'll apologize for my assumption.

I wish there was some simple way of saying something is being developed for eventual release as Open Source, but I don't think businesses should say something <is> open source before the documentation is available. If you google <open source car> you'll find pages of outfits claiming opensourciness, when the reality is often the opposite--sometimes open source is declared as an eventual goal (but there's no timeline) and sometimes it's just bullbleep, but sometimes inquiries for source information are rejected as attempts to rip off trade secrets. Huh? Which one is it, open source or proprietary? Can't be both.

Andre, your reasons for not OS'ing the OS7.0 yet are excellent, and I'm in full agreement. Open sourcing isn't crowd sourcing. Nevertheless, calling yourself The First when you haven't done it yet is presumptuous, though if you qualify it sufficiently ("the first sportscar to be designed, tested, released and then using an open source approach, community developed, locally manufactured and sold") you're probably going to be right.

Oops, I missed Andre's post. I'd like to step in too with some comments.

Andre fundamentally mis-undertands the open source development model. Open source is about allowing and encouraging collaborative development, among other things. Comments about committee design and crowd sourcing are irrelevant. When you create an open source project you are entitled to follow your vision. Other people may or may not desire to follow your vision and in fact can simply take your work and go another direction with it.

It's considered very bad behaviour to do your work in isolation and then just pop it out. Release early and release often is a valued motto in the open source community.

In my project, Car9, the development is happening in plain view. I produce models in SketchUp for rendering and in Grape for FEA, these models have always been available to the public from essentially the start. People can contribute or they can take the material and do whatever they like.



Really? Arduino is such a trivial thing it doesn't really make any point at all. It would be like open sourcing the design of a nut or washer.



Imagine the complexity of the open source software systems on which so much of the internet depends...



If you have stressed engine and gearbox, then by implication you have less material on the outside of the car or less bracing which can provide protection for the driver and passenger? You can't isolate any vibration for street use? If it's for track use how repairable is it? How do people maintain their composite panels or examine for delamination?

I don't follow the reasoning on "jigging and open source projects", perhaps you just mean home built? At this price point self jigging steel tube frames complete with assembly directions written on the tube with a laser sound straight forward.

I think Andre is looking more at the open source distribution model than the open source development model. I do a bit of a hodge podge myself. Again, Open Source means different things to different people. Here's Wikipedia's current take on the definition:

> In production and development, open source is a philosophy, or pragmatic methodology, that promotes free redistribution
> and access to an end product's design and implementation details.

For all practical purposes, the Locost is open source. I wasn't familiar with the term "open source" when I started adding my own tricks to the Locost mix, but I know I wouldn't have been comfortable putting my suspension drawings as open source before building a set and static testing them and putting them on a car and driving for a while. Once I had an end product that met my standards (such as they are--good enough for me doesn't necessarily mean something is good enough for you), I promoted free redistribution and access to that end product's design and implementation details.

"Release early and often" seems better suited for software than for cars, but it's something I'll think about.

Open source. ....
Means so many different things depending on who you talk to. Ain't we lucky ?

Here's the link to a group I worked with for a few years. GPL meets Megatron if you will. http://www.theoscarproject.org/

I've honestly never heard of an open-source car design ever reaching completion.

First, I think I sounded like I got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning, I shouldn't have.



There is a difference here between software and hardware. When you buy the hardware it is it's own documentation - a person can simply measure it and copy it. ( Patents aside ). With software, you can sell it with out ever giving it away, almost anyway. This was a big frustration for software folks when this movement started maybe 30 years ago.

So far as I know there is nothing illegal about copying a mechanical thing. At worst you can change the thing in minute detail and claim it is different. Software has copyright though and that is rather strict. You can not even include a piece of it in another thing. This seems like a very grey area. I think you can find legal cases on either side for the copying of mechanical things. Even patents can be useless, they are basically just a license to sue. They are sold for this now.



Well this is true. It's a very high level staement, usually I am more down in the trenches. It also reflects other differences between software and hardware. In software you can build enormously complex things like time sharing systems that support building of people or airline reservation systems and network protocol stacks that the internet becomes founded on - and then someone takes all that and builds a Tivo with it! It's remarkable and even mind boggling at some level.

When you build a car that's pretty much what you land up with though

I am pretty buried in the development level of stuff though and don't really have good understanding about the real world. For instance, Jack - you drive around in a car you make and at some point women just drape themselves over it?



When you do open source development, it does not mean design by committee. In fact somewhat the reverse is often true. Andre is correct when he says a single persons vision is important. That is unrelated to whether it is open source or not. A good open source project can have a benevolent dictator.

The fact that the design is open motivates both the project creator and the contributors. It means the contributors. or anyone else for that matter, can take the material and send it a different direction. That's called "forking" the project, like a fork in the road. It's a sword of Damacles hanging over the creator's head and the contributors. Sometimes this happens and sometimes things get better and sometimes they don't. It's highly discouraged though. The nuclear option, as it where.

So "release early, release often" is one of the most important things to keep in mind when you want people to row with you in the boat. No one wants to slave all hours of the day for weeks or months and then be told "Oh I decided to do it this nifty new way and just piss your work away". That can be heart breaking.

It doesn't mean if you want to redesign your front suspension that you have to give a completely blow by blow description. But a heads up would be good and saying you'll post more details after you make a rig to test it would be good. Perhaps someone says I want to test my rear. what are you going to do for a test rig? Or I would say, I'm redoing a frame are you moving the pickup points much?

Jack, I do like the way you show your suspension test rigs and your tube notcher on your web site. I think that's great open source spirit.

This post is long so I'll make another post about what I think "Open Source Development" will do for my project.