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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Likely a distinct lack of crossover between HN readers and the Land Rover Defender crowd that Bollinger looks like they are targeting. The main use case is for a ranch or large farm property. Probably great for the Caribbean as well. Would buy a Bollinger over a defender in a minute because it's a 30 year+ farm vehicle. Was really excited to read about them.

Could see people balking at the $125k price tag, but at that price point there is already a mass market for dated german sedans and artifacts of imagined british nostalgia supported by a hackneyed movie franchise. Something useful and durable would be a relief.

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why would you buy this over a 4runner or tacoma for a large farm property? (or the new defender)

i am curious and kind of skeptical that electric vehicles will ever get the longevity of combustion engine toyotas and such, given the nascent battery technology. am i wrong? will a Model S outlast a Subaru?

Figure you will be able to swap in new battery tech in 10 years. The price point is mainly about aesthetics and ideas, so the practical argument is mainly self justification for me.

Personally, I'd imagine powering a Bollinger from a power wall and generator connected to a biogas digester that runs off the muck pile of a small horse or dairy farm.

> Personally, I'd imagine powering a Bollinger from a power wall and generator connected to a biogas digester that runs off the muck pile of a small horse or dairy farm.

If you control the timing of the supply of energy via the burning of the biodigested muck, why go through the Powerwall? The Bollinger's battery is 10x the capacity of the Powerwall. If you charge it directly from your generator, you don't have to pay the round trip charging losses of the Powerwall.

The only reason to use the Powerwall is to exploit solar power by charging the Powerwall during the day, and then drawing upon it at night to charge the truck.

Also note that according to this article [1] from Penn State University, all the reclaimable energy from dairy cow waste in Pennsylvania would only provide for 20% of energy used on Pennsylvania dairy farms. So it's not like there is going to be a surplus of electricity to charge your car. It would make more sense to use the biogas directly for the dairy operation, because you can potentially use both the electricity and heat from burning biogas to, for example, heat and power the cow sheds in winter, vs using that electricity to power a truck. The truck could get its electricity directly from solar, or from the grid.

1. https://extension.psu.edu/biogas-from-manure

Excellent paper. Given how much muck a 5-10 horse barn generates (which self heats with animal body heat) and the daily periodic loading of the digester would enable continuous low level of electricity generation, which makes the problem electricity storage, not generation.

(assuming passive solar and geothermal + modern wood stove heated house, with option for propane backup)

It's a question of what we're optimizing for. To me the priorities would be, animal waste/muck reuse, power outage risk, then with normal conditions handled by a grid hookup, which is mandatory for code in many jurisdictions anyway.

I figured a powerwall would operate as an electricity storage scheme to use for either household or Bollinger truck use. The cutover from powering one to the other is nothing an Arduino and some relays and other cots equipment couldn't handle. Fun to solution this. If you have the liquid capital to build a new passive solar and geothermal house on land, $125k for a vehicle is about par for the course anyway.

> which makes the problem electricity storage

In that case, compressing the biogas I to tanks might be a cheaper and higher capacity energy storage solution than a Powerwall.

Electric motors are robust and can last decades. The battery will fade but can be replaced.

The real issue is the software and electronics which all modern cars are suffering from. It's becoming increasingly difficult to own them out of warranty when they're all digital and need complex and proprietary software to keep running.

Sounds like a use case for multiple distribution venues, like an added hard media option.

That is: the vehicle interface needn’t change but for a software upgrade that allows complete firmware upgrades through that interface from an “injection”, so to speak when the vehicle becomes... “outdated” or “obsolete”.

I understand the first problem with this is all kinds of ugly hacks (breaking existing traffic regulations) a malicious attack vector... but it seems like if you had the option to fix a problem by buying an existing patch for a used vehicle that never had it applied before you bought it [and after the vehicle had been discontinued] then you’d have something of a continuance model at least.

I’m sure there are other holes in that thought, but I think it should be workable technologically—my concern would be the business end that decides it’s detrimental to profit margins and whatever exponential growth may have been promised. (Ie: “they should just buy a new car”)

Your comment is the first time I’ve ever heard this very real problem. I’m sure it’s been promoted before and I’m curious to know how you came to it, and how it differs from other modern vehicles that also use systems-critical software.

It's not unique to Tesla. All modern cars have connectors which over-the-air updates just ride on top of. The issue is manufacturers not creating updates and limiting access with proprietary equipment for delivering those updates. This is all done to force consumers to buy new or only go to the manufacturer for repairs (for as long as they're offered). They won't even sell parts, tools or schematics for you to even attempt it on your own and are starting to cut out independent shops too.

This issue is widespread in other industries from farm equipment to consumer electronics. Mechanical components are easily reverse engineered and have tons of aftermarket and independent shops, but this is magnitudes harder with digital devices and software, especially without access to any of the original equipment and diagrams. It's like trying to rebuild a computer chip by looking at nothing but the motherboard it's placed on. Practically impossible.

Consumers want a "right to repair" (which is the name for a lot of the legal bills pushing for access) but it's unfortunately not getting much political support due to lobbying. For more info, check out Rich Rebuilds [1] who repairs salvaged Tesla's and is starting his own independent shop. There's also Louis Rossman [2] who repairs Apple devices and has updates on the recent legislation for personal devices.

1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfV0_wbjG8KJADuZT2ct4SA

2. https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup

Looking on dashboard, this thing looks like it doesn't need tons of software besides motor control. We now have open-source controllers with over 100kW power, in 15 years probably someone will make bigger version for this truck and fix it if it's broken.

Why wouldn't they outlast? I'm not sure if hold up Subarus as the paragon of reliability given the headgasket issues that plagued certain years.

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