I think a big part of the reason this doesn’t work ultimately comes down to safety. With a modular system, how do you crash-test your configuration? How do you know a certain combination of parts doesn’t have a fatal flaw? And I’m sure a lot of people would think “Well that’s my risk” but it’s not. That becomes the risk for everyone else on the road. And yes, I’m aware of all the risk giant trucks present, and these are issues present even with regulation. Imagine how much worse it would be if everyone could build their own from scratch. I’m not worried about myself or my own car on the road, but I’m absolutely worried about others. It would be so much worse if I had to vet the quality of everyone’s ‘unique’ builds on top of this. Safety should always be standardized.
Fuck Cars
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
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Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
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But these are light-weight vehicles, made of composite plastic - perhaps, this could be improved by making the material hollow? They're not like the Cybertruck. They're not going to squash pedestrians like bugs. What's even better, we could probably regulate the speed limit too? What's even more amazing is that we are not just modularizing cars, we also get the ability to have swappable batteries, compatible between different vehicles?
The issue with your outlook (I think) is that you see my idea as a solution for where all cars get to be modular - totally not. I'm talking about an ideal world where policies have been put to action where cars will be on a decline, buses and trains are being turned into mainstream transportation, and perhaps there may be a few areas which are not viable for public transport, where vehicles will definitely be needed. Or you know what, people just want to rent a camper for a picnic, or a truck to move their stuff? That sort of future.
The existing auto industry would squash this as quickly and effectively as possible, we'd absolutely need a command economy to put something like this through.
I think once you get down to the size of vehicles like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2oD1ZHNMFE then they become naturally modular/replaceable. At least in the same way that bikes are. I don't think people really create "modular" bikes they are just naturally swappable. Of course standards are helpful, and I think there is a total lack of standards for golfcart sized enclosed vehicles.