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Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

electrek.co

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Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#31

Post by freakynit »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #19
freakynit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few days back, the breaks of my car suddenly stopped working. By stopped-working I mean they just got jammed. No matter how much I press, they just wouldn't budge. The reason: my car had abruptly turned-off by itself, jamming the breaks with it. HOW TF are breaks NOT connected directly to the tyres? Why the tf they have to be software controlled? This is the "critical" path, and SHOULD be 100% under driver's contro…

That's ridiculous. What year make and model car do you have?

It's a 10+ year old Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire from India. See my reply to previous comment.. it doesn't seem like software fault (at least not fully).

Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#32

Post by dmix »

pabs3 wrote: post #14
purpleidea wrote: post #5

I'd buy any Tesla, even the big truck, if it came with open source software! I don't want a car that's spyware like a phone. Let me be in control of it, let me mod it, let me own it. Who's going to sell me one?

Tesla is full of open source software, including the Linux kernel. They probably are GPL violators though. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/may/18/tesla-incomplete-... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/30/calling-all-tesla... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/21/tesla-no-source-c... See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive c…

> I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software

Aggressive regulations for emissions control software + industry deterrence for car modifications via insurance and warranties

Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#33

Post by freakynit »

freakynit wrote: post #29
foobarbecue wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What model? Is it possible that you accidentally had the car in a power-on mode, but without the engine started? I've done that by accident in my Mitsubishi Outlander Sport. The symptoms are similar to what you describe. Actually, it was at a car wash -- attendant left the car power on and I thought the engine was running so tried to drive away. Got the car to move a bit (happened to be downhill) but it was super sca…

Yep yep yep.. that explains it. Not the software fault as I original suspected (at least in the break-jamming case). What I "felt" like jammed was probably just that vacuum system not helping, but since it happened for the first time (with me), and so abruptly, it felt like the brakes were jammed. But, the worrying, and a lot more scarier part is that this was not me accidentally leaving the car in accessory/power-on…

So I researched a bit more on that break thingy... and just learned that this assist provides anywhere form 4x to 10x the assist. And without it, you would literally have to stand on the breaks with full body weight to have a similar effect. Wow!!

Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#34

Post by pstuart »

MostlyStable wrote: post #9

Fisker may have been especially vulnerable to this (my understanding from some very brief searching is that core vehicle functionality required cloud check ins without fallback), but nothing about this is inherent to EVs (this is response to Weisenthal's tweet early in the article). An ICE vehicle could (and many manufacturers are increasingly pushing in this direction) have the exact same problems. This is a much bi…

That so much could be done in an open source context is encouraging -- if Fisker could have made that a core of the offering maybe that could have made it more viable? They can still sell hardware, parts, services and support but owners would have DIY options too. Everybody wins.

Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#35

Post by qdotme »

aleksejs wrote: post #8
tadfisher wrote: post #2

So a leasing company bought the source code for $2.5 million and then cut off owners after they refused an additional deal. What was the point, then? Is there anything rational about this market interaction?

The leasing company leases these cars to Uber drivers in NYC, who presumably did not get cut off.

That explains the over-representation of Oceans in NYC’s supercharging network, and one of the worst side-effects of opening that network to non-Tesla operators.

Overall I think it’s a good thing, but it’s the closest to Eternal September I ever experienced in my life, the sudden change inclusion of cultural strangers in a shared space with its customs etc.

Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#37

Post by bestham »

dmix wrote: post #32
pabs3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is full of open source software, including the Linux kernel. They probably are GPL violators though. https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/may/18/tesla-incomplete-... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/30/calling-all-tesla... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/21/tesla-no-source-c... See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive c…

> I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software Aggressive regulations for emissions control software + industry deterrence for car modifications via insurance and warranties

Good then that there is very little need for emissions control in EV. No barrier for giving the owner of the vehicle more access to its innards.

Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#38

Post by ksenzee »

dylan604 wrote: post #30
nubg wrote: post #11

> No more over-the-air updates. No more connected services. No more warranty. LLM slop. Why does the author believe he is entitled to our attention if he cannot even bother to use his own words?

Well now I'm nervous I'm going to be susceptible to AI slop as that's a set of sentences I would absolutely have written my self. That kind of cadence is something that I remember being taught especially since it's comes as a group of three.

There's a reason AI uses things like em dashes and parallel structure and groups of three (catch me doing it here too). It's good writing. (Also varied sentence length.) AI trained on good writing uses the outward structure of good writing.

Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#39

Post by rozap »

purpleidea wrote: post #5

I'd buy any Tesla, even the big truck, if it came with open source software! I don't want a car that's spyware like a phone. Let me be in control of it, let me mod it, let me own it. Who's going to sell me one?

There are plenty of FOSS engine management projects around. There is a big community of people doing incredible mods. But cars are complicated and to do it well requires a lot of time, effort, knowledge, money. I've blown up plenty of engines along the way, and it's fun and I'm learning a lot, but it's not something that's easy to just dabble in.

Re: Fisker went bankrupt and owners built an open source car company from the ashes

#40

Post by Barbing »

foobarbecue wrote: post #23
rafram wrote: post #22

> We had reviewed the Ocean in late 2023 and found the hardware genuinely attractive — but the software was simply not ready for prime time. The irony of that headline — “Coming soon, in a future software update” — now reads like an epitaph. Those future updates never came from Fisker. They came from the owners themselves. It’s sad to see a good site put out bad AI writing like this.

"the irony reads" isn't even grammatically correct.

Should be OK (besides the lack of irony!). Easier for me to show with another noun, comedy:

"You HAVE to buy her novel ASAP! Sure, the comedy reads a bit acerbically at first, but chapter two through to the end is literary perfection."

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