Photo: Vimeo screenshot
The idea of open-source isn't something you come across very often in the car industry. In most cases (make that "in every case"), if one company comes up with something it had spent a lot of time and money on, it will guard it as best it can against the competition.
That's how things work in a competitive environment. It's not how they necessarily should, and we have been given a few glimpses of a different approach lately when Tesla made available a few of its patents, but for the most part, this is a highly secretive business.
OSVehicle looks to change all that, and it has now come back with a new, improved platform to do it. Earlier this year, the startup with roots in both Italy and Silicon Valley presented an open-source EV platform it called TABBY.
The idea behind it was that it would spare companies of the lengthy and costly R&D process and provide them with a ready-made platform on which to build their vehicles anyway they see fit. It sounds great, but would you really see a brand like, say, Mercedes-Benz make use of OSVechile's services?
TABBY was aimed at a lot smaller industry fish or even those who are still in the egg phase at this moment. With a price tag of just $12,000 and a claimed assembly time of one hour, the TABBY made sense for anyone with a large-enough 3D printer and a sense of adventure.
Now, though, OSVehicle has revealed it has been working "in stealth mode" on a new project whose product is the EDIT, a similar platform to TUBBY but with the added benefit of autonomous driving features.
The company isn't very explicit on what exactly it is that EDIT offers at this stage, nor how it has gained access to this kind of technology or how it plans to do it in the future. All we have at the moment is the video below, and this sentence as the answer to the "how are you doing all this?" question: "We went back to Europe, talking to our friends and partners who are working for the biggest auto OEM for decades, thinking how to make a future-proof car from your precious feedbacks."
Regardless of how sketchy it all sounds at the moment, OSVehicle's initiative should get all the support it can because, as we all know, sharing is caring. And as we've already said, the automotive world hasn't been the most caring environment so far.
OSVehicle looks to change all that, and it has now come back with a new, improved platform to do it. Earlier this year, the startup with roots in both Italy and Silicon Valley presented an open-source EV platform it called TABBY.
The idea behind it was that it would spare companies of the lengthy and costly R&D process and provide them with a ready-made platform on which to build their vehicles anyway they see fit. It sounds great, but would you really see a brand like, say, Mercedes-Benz make use of OSVechile's services?
TABBY was aimed at a lot smaller industry fish or even those who are still in the egg phase at this moment. With a price tag of just $12,000 and a claimed assembly time of one hour, the TABBY made sense for anyone with a large-enough 3D printer and a sense of adventure.
Now, though, OSVehicle has revealed it has been working "in stealth mode" on a new project whose product is the EDIT, a similar platform to TUBBY but with the added benefit of autonomous driving features.
The company isn't very explicit on what exactly it is that EDIT offers at this stage, nor how it has gained access to this kind of technology or how it plans to do it in the future. All we have at the moment is the video below, and this sentence as the answer to the "how are you doing all this?" question: "We went back to Europe, talking to our friends and partners who are working for the biggest auto OEM for decades, thinking how to make a future-proof car from your precious feedbacks."
Regardless of how sketchy it all sounds at the moment, OSVehicle's initiative should get all the support it can because, as we all know, sharing is caring. And as we've already said, the automotive world hasn't been the most caring environment so far.
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