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16438

SO as you all defintely know. Especailly @MCVET lol. Ive preordered an aptera. Ive been in their engineering email list.

Ive seen some awesome stuff. They seem extremely committed to right to repair. I mean they constantly talk about how they are going to achieve it on a piece by piece basis in emails. Ive also seen something else. An extremely strong commitment to western friendly/western only supply and manufacturing chains. No china literally.

Their batteries are made by EVE who have committed to using only Chile, Australian and American Lithium mines. Their 21700 battery cell is cobalt free and uses only western supply chains and is manufactured in San Diego. Which is awesome. Right in @SgtAwesomesauce’s back yard

They have a partnership with a company in MCVETs backyard… a slovenian company named Elpahe who has committed to European and US labor, design and sourcing of all its components and electronics in its In wheel motor. Which is epic. Even the base metals, wiring, coiling and rotor/stator design as well as its supply is done in the EU and western friendly countries. No part of its supply chain relies on china, Russia or anyone friendly with such. IDK how I can describe how important that is because fuck those two countries and anything they make tbch. Even if it costs aptera more. I would rather pay more to exclude china and russia altogether so mad props to that slovenian company

Yazakhi is their subcontractor for their subcomponents and automotive connectors, wiring harnesses, instruments, components etc and while based in Japan the aptera stuff is produced at their plants in the EU and North America with not one bit of their electronic supply chain dependent on china or Chinese design. IDK how they achieved this but the Japanese hate china so I am not surprised.

So maxeon who has almost all of LG’s patents now on solar panels is the supplier for the curved panels. While they are global, they once again have committed to not having china in the supply chain of any of their solar panels, technology or design. This makes sense as china is seeking to steal this particular tech but that’s a story for another day. Its awesome because they have a production plant for these particularly panels right here in the US of A. They are also a huge company with a massive production capability so there should be no shortage here. their headquarters is in singapore but I can find almost nothing about china in their portfolio. At least not yet

What I am seeing here is fucking solid. It is a commitment to not use volatile supply chains and solid design choices overall. I am really excited for this especially their push for right to repair and super repair friendly and upgradeable EVs. Many have promised to do that in the past but none have followed through and from all the right to repair information they put in their emails about components and where to find them … from what I can tell they are super committed to it. They have also promised a detailed repair/shop manual for their vehicles being available day zero of ownership. If they follow through on this I absolutely will be impressed.

If they keep on being committed to Western supply chain, manufacturing and design. If they keep being committed to right to repair and they actually are successful at it, I hope it sets a really good track record because it’s needed. I’m tired of just about every smoh company relying on China for electronics for everything else for all the components and just basically giving out our design to another country because that’s what they’re going to do. They’re going to take those designs to manufacture them. They’re going to give it to their company and try to reverse engineer them because they don’t care about international law. They’ll just steal it right then and there. Think about it The moment you’re design needs to be manufactured in China. What the fuck is China going to do when someone comes and says Oh you stole my technology. They’re not going to do anything about it. They’re going to say continue to produce it. Continue to make it up at low cost rates the manufacturer cannot support nor offer and put them out of business bitches. That’s what we do. And they do it exceedingly well. Tired of watching everyone’s IP stolen all the time because of some MBA CFO wants to save some money

@Zszywany mentioned there are good and bad things to the MBA. The last paragraph is the most exemplifying and disastrous consequence of having lots of MBA knowledge and very little technical and legal knowledge. If it’s all about finances you are part of the problem not the solution

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16439

They are so far the only EV maker that I’d consider purchasing from in the future. They’re actually making a vehicle that is maintainable long term unlike every other EV manufacturer; Even if I wasn’t going to keep a vehicle for 15-20 years I want to know that I could and that it isn’t going to be scrapped because of DRM or an unrepairable battery pack.

16440

Exactly and you know what’s cool. I received an email today from them talking about their software and they said they’re going to make it completely open source and that the only thing that’s going to cost money is active support on it. This includes like the median interface and all of that stuff. The only things that are going to stay closed source are the lane keeping and the autonomous systems which is fair and I think that’s fine. But the fact that for every other bit of the system that you interact with is a user is going to be open source. That’s fucking amazing

But what I’m really happy about overwhelmingly is the anti-China attitude they have. They have no problem supplying China with an EV technology in the future apparently, but they have no intent to involve them in the manufacturing process, design process, software process, etc

I hate China at this point. I hated so much that in my daily life I have boycotted the average store. I try to shop at mom and pop stores. I try to buy American products even if it cost me more. I definitely do not shop at Walmart at all. Walmart is boycotted. I do not spend a cent at Walmart. On Amazon there can be wiring kits and electronics and stuff that I want. But I will pay five to $10 more and I will even wait for non-prime shipping if it comes from the US or the EU or Australia. That’s how much I believe in what I’m saying right now

It is unacceptable that in the United States we have gotten to the point where we don’t care about our intellectual property. We don’t care about supportability in maintainability. We just care about getting the absolute cheapest price possible from China and throwing it away into a landfill

It boils my blood and I try not to get political because this forum has an aversion to politics, but I think it’s incredibly relevant. Anyways, sorry for the /rant

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16441

one of my buddies started working for a self driving startup and I told him it was a bad idea… they are going to start dropping like flies once the hype dies down or more people realize its probably not a good idea under most circumstances.

There are all those negatives to china… the big negative I don’t see enough people talking about is that when conflict breaks out, trade is going to be turned off like a light switch; it’s going to make port congestion look like a walk in the park.

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16442

So here’s why I severely doubt this statement. Scores of people like you and I at one point (our previous generations) said this about airplanes in relation to autopilot on aircraft. It happened and developed over time despite many crashes and problems and those who came up with the typical excuse of oh well airplanes are far away from each other cars are not were completely wrong because they forgot scale and velocity here. Yes the sky is large but so are planes. They are flying at 500+ mph and at a separation of sometimes less than a 1000 ft depending on regulations and flight levels and common paths/airspaces They are often at times blind in the clouds and after the turbulent beginning of automated the automated systems improved. There were deaths, problems, massive amounts of doubters but it happened because technology inevitably does one thing it always moves forward. So your friends decision may not be as bad as you think.

Absolutely agreeing. You know what’s the pathetic part on the part of the West? We are not prepared for it. China is literally more prepared for it. China could handle our trade dropping off because they have so many developmental projects within their country that they need to do and so much stolen technology that can help them do it that they would be able to sustain their markets, their people, their industries based on their own domestic production and domestic demand

The west would be at a standstill and everyone would be screaming and burning down the cities because God Forbid there are cheap prices vaporized overnight and their products all went away and nobody was prepared for it. It’s a reality that could very much happen. It’s very scary to think about. It’s why there’s an entire subsection of people called preppers, for example

Now I think we’re better than this and we can get over it and we can work towards it and we can denormalize our trade and we can work towards American products. I mean that’s the whole point of the freaking American garage right? Come on

16443

I’m not saying there won’t be some good automation features in cars that enhance driving, radar braking, lane keeping assist, but a car doing all or even 90% of the driving by itself isn’t going to happen and be safe/useful, at least on “normal” roads.
Airplanes have attentive pilot(s) in them while under autopilot ready to jump if something goes wrong, cars won’t because the lowest common denominator of people driving is… lacking… and will only get worse if people aren’t engaged enough to pay attention.
Also planes don’t have to deal with obstacle avoidance like cars do.
Also the more autonomous planes get insane sensors and instrumentation to support pilotless flight, super high end RLGs and MEMs devices in INSs that cost ten times what a car costs and DGPS stations for “intricate” stuff.

I really wish we would be preparing more too. I think china is going to get destroyed on the energy front though if trade gets inhibited.

I always hear people bring up how screwed we are on the magnets front because we don’t have any of the rare earth refining or sintering equipment/know how in america anymore.

16444

On that one you can replace just the insert.

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16445


XD what did they expect
https://nitter.net/ZavalaA/status/1578541331340673024#m

16446

California: imposes insane regulations on critical infrastructure

Also California: Why is fuel so expensive?

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16447

The biggest thing is custom blend requirements and no outsourcing. I am surprised anyone even bother doing business in the state. Guess all the players are people who had stuff there before.

16449

Yep. It’s basically impossible to roll out more manufacturing.

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16455

Well, close to $800 later my C4 has passed smog…

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16456

Once this month is over I’m finally going to get to my coilovers and other suspension needs.

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16457

What all did you need to do?

16458

EGR valve replacement, a decent amount of vacuum lines and timing.

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16459

So here’s a thing…
I replaced the wiper blades on the front windshield. Turns out they were Bosh anyways, so I removed one and popped up the other. No problem.
The rear one tho… The one that actually needed replacing… Its some weird clip connector that doesn’t fit the Bosh blade I bought for it.
I will try and remove the rubber itself and put it on the old arm, so I can put it back on the car…

PS: OK, the surgery was a sux ass, I mean success… So now I have two and a half new windshield wipers…
Yey me…

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16460

Good job! :+1:

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16461

Thank you…
Now I am confusion…
I had something like a shell over the entire wiper. Just the one, the driver side. It was just on the underside of the wiper.
I mean if it was on the top I can guess it protects from snow or maybe the sun so the rubber doesn’t burn, but what daphoque does it do on the underside?

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166540555148416496985799641631731920×1440 279 KB

16462

I actually have no idea why that would be. :slight_smile:

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16463

While unrelated to your hurting of industry in Cali do y’all realize it’s still not that expensive if you really think above it

There are two things added to gas that no longer work.

After sitting and chatting with law makers here I found out something interesting. Our gas tax covers less than 3% of the road costs. Add registration and now you got 5. Add taxes raised and collected for it and now you got 20% maximum. They are talking about making a more fair system in this state and making people pay the true cost of the roads

As controversial as it is. I actually agree with it. If money collected can actually be used for the roads which in my state it will be. Because they have this complicated appropriations fund. Fund sources must match fund uses by state law here. I’d be completely content with a European esque road task that is applied flat regardless of fuel type and the removal of the fuel tax. Also most of law makers here are a huge proponent of removing the massive federal subsidies for oil. Id be content with this as well. It’s an established technology it does not need help. People don’t realize we massively subsidize oil in this country and it’s why our prices are as low as they are.

What I see as fundamentally misunderstood. We are quick to get ass mad at subsidizing alternate industries but without multi-billion dollar subsidies of oil. we would all be paying roughly 12-13 dollars a gallons. It’s very interesting. I suggest you look into just how much we subsidize gasoline and how much we pull back out via gasoline tax to cover the roads. It’s surprisingly high. If we stopped subsidizing tomorrow do you know what kind of hellscape panic would insue as prices went to true market cost? None of us not even me would be prepared for it. We generally take for granted how much we subsidize industries as a powerful country to reduce the apparent cost on the individual

That said big industry subsidies while having a bad side they have a good one. For example, production subsidies increase the profitability of extracting and transporting fuels, usually by offering tax breaks, production credits, or accelerated depreciation for capital investment. It keeps supply hopefully above demand but with a non renewable industry it faces this lifecycle problem alot more than others it needs the subsidies vs say let’s take Tesla the electric car maker Tesla might have survived without the government loan, but “it would have been difficult,” notes Musk’s cofounder, and “would likely have diluted Elon’s share of the company.” it could survive but subsidies made it better

So I guess my point is pick your poison. Government intervention or none? With none you might get EVs but not too many, your power production costs balloon, your fuel costs balloon but you get no intervention. And vice versa. You’d be surprised how much the government does that we do take for granted

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