Mazda recently surprised customers by requiring them to sign up for a subscription in order to keep certain services. Now, notable right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossmann is calling out the brand.
It’s important to clarify that there are two very different types of remote start we’re talking about here. The first type is the one many people are familiar with where you use the key fob to start the vehicle. The second method involves using another device like a smartphone to start the car. In the latter, connected services do the heavy lifting.
Transition to paid services
What is wild is that Mazda used to offer the first option on the fob. Now, it only offers the second kind, where one starts the car via phone through its connected services for a $10 monthly subscription, which comes to $120 a year. Rossmann points out that one individual, Brandon Rorthweiler, developed a workaround in 2023 to enable remote start without Mazda’s subscription fees.
However, according to Ars Technica, Mazda filed a DMCA takedown notice to kill that open-source project. The company claimed it contained code that violated “[Mazda’s] copyright ownership” and used “certain Mazda information, including proprietary API information.”
So…who is making the open source car?
Someone very rich who doesn’t feel the need to get arbitrarily richer.
So no one.
An ethical billionaire?
Yea, no one is right.
I’d be cool with starting a car company for as little as $1M salary; I don’t even need equity, just a couple hundred mil to get it started
I don’t think 2mil is enough to make a factory capable of making cars that can compete economically with mass-produced cars. More of a hobby project, I imagine. But if you can do it, even on a small scale - go ahead! That’d be great! Make the world a better place one bit at a time.
Also to some of us (myself included) 1M salary and 2M equity is already through-the-roof rich!
There are definitely open source-ish options. Google locost 7
I don’t think “ish” is a thing. Either the sources are provided openly under a libre license, or they are not.
What license does the locost 7 release their designs under?
Locost 7 is a generic name for replica Lotus/Caterham 7 type cars that are built by people in garages, there’s no centralised body beyond “The Book” the original design came from. As far as I’m aware the book’s author has defended the design in court as being too generic to be protectable (which presumably precludes their design being used as a basis to prosecute anyone building something similar).
Most of the cars are built custom to the donor vehicle, taking the original design as a basis, there’s 100s of variations online with drawings - none of them are going to be protectable and no-one’s really tried in the 30 odd years since the book came out. No-one’s published anything with a libre license, I’m not sure if there’d be any point.
If the author licenses the book under a creative commons or other libre license, its open source. If not, its not open source hardware.
If the author would just announce that the book is licensed openly, then it would liberate lots of other orgs to be able to include his work in their work. Otherwise this is a dead end for other open hardware manufacturers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_car
https://gearjunkie.com/motors/best-kit-cars
https://www.slashgear.com/1066686/kit-cars-that-wont-break-the-bank/
Are any of those open source?
It comes in parts and you can replicate them, isn’t that open source?
Nope. What makes if open source is that the designs are published and licensed using an open source license, such as CC BY-SA
Edit: not sure why I’m being down voted. That’s literally the definition of open-source hardware, per OSHWA https://www.oshwa.org/definition/
https://github.com/speeduino/speeduino
That doesn’t look like a car to me. I don’t even think they have a FOSS ICE afaict?
Edison Motors would be my bet.
That guy is doing some seriously cool open source shit on a HUGE scale (electric logging trucks). I’m sure once they perfect the process they will move into the car and truck market.
His media channels and shorts are always great, even if you have no knowledge or interest in the logging industry.
Can you link to the build instructions and CAD repo for the electric logging truck?
Did you bother to look into it at all? What you are asking doesn’t even make sense from a design standpoint.
Nobody asked for a car you can print.
The way they are building their electric truck is the smartest way. Using available, off-the-shelf parts that have proven reliability. Nobody is going to be using CAD to create custom parts. Reinventing the wheel is precisely the problem and Edison Motors is working to avoid those mistakes.
Also, they are taking design input/feedback at the consumer level right now, BEFORE they have a ‘completed’ product to purchase. This is as close to open source as you can get in my opinion.
You could literally buy the same parts out of a warehouse and build a logging truck yourself if you wanted to.
Or you can sit on the internet and complain without having any idea what you’re talking about.
If they’re using off the shelf parts and they include them in their open-source licensed CAD files, thats fine.
But, yes, CAD files are required, by definition, for open hardware projects. I said nothing about printing. CAD is needed for all types of manufacturing, even when using off the shelf standard parts like M3 bolts.
If they didn’t release CAD files and license them openly, this is not an open source project and its not worth contributing to.
I build open source hardware for a living btw, and ive built open hardware industrial machines. Don’t assume everyone you’re talking to on the Internet is sitting in an armchair without rolling up their sleeves in the shop. I’m legitimately looking for an open hardware car. Best ive found is OpenMotors Tabby. They’ve released their CAD files (which are licensed under CC BY-SA), but their documentation is terrible.
Here’s a link to help others https://openmotors.co/download