Very cool. But is this allowed to drive on public roads in Sweden? I would have assumed that swedish laws are very restrictive to these kinds of DIY modifications. Amazing if it is allowed!
Definitely not allowed. The route they are taking requies the car to be road legal. These modifications make it definitely illegal on public roads on Sweden and Finland. It's often not enough to pass MOT (which this car wouldn't in the Netherlands, where it seems to be registered at), you need to get type approval to make it road legal. Dutch government has a nice English page about it: https://www.government.nl/topics/general-periodic-inspection...
I only understand this topic a bit because I write software for authorities that do vehicle registrations and in some cases individual approvals (type approvals are done by others) in an EU country. And my takeaway from contact with them is that they have a huge leeway in individual approvals, so I would put the blame squarely on them, and the solution would be to legislate that away (ban those ind. approvals that are obviously circumventing the usual road vehicle restrictions incl. size, noise, pedestrian safety etc).
About no way this is legal. The throttle set up looks dangerous - any issue with the servo and it won't fail-safe to closed throttle like any drive by wire throttle body.
That's great until the self-steering mechanism drives into a pedestrian or gets the driver into the hospital. Insurance sure isn't going to pay out and even if it does, no amount of money can undo injuries.
These rules aren't in place to annoy people who have fun with cars, they're a public safety issue. Until OpenPilot is confirmed to be safe enough to be road legal in Europe (I doubt it ever will be).
Having a 1366kg vehicle under complete control of a system with the disclaimer
> THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR COMPLYING WITH LOCAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS. NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
with hardware that was cobbled together in a garage somewhere, taking this thing out on the road is pure insanity.
It’s on a cross-country rally through sparsely populated countyside in the dead of winter. The risks seem negligible to me. The assistance may actually make this safer than without it on such a grueling 1000km/day distance, much of it spent driving in the dark.
> It’s on a cross-country rally through sparsely populated countyside in the dead of winter
The people who live in that sparsely populated countryside wouldn't agree with you that the risk seems negligible. To drive on ice (which some of the roads turn into if it rains/wet-snow then gets cold), with experimental technology on country roads sounds like a recipe for the car to end up in someones living-room.
Im sure you’d change your mind if it killed or maimed a relative of yours and you were suing the vehicle operator. It’s irresponsible at the very least.
The worry isn't the crappy car, it's that you can't get 3rd party insurance for it(or if you do, it won't pay out as your car isn't road legal). So yeah if you crash into a tree that's no big deal, but if you hit a Ferrari that's a problem as your insurance pays out nothing.
You are correct that it probably won't be allowed. But your assumption that Sweden is restrictive isn't. I see that you live in Stockholm, so maybe you already know this, or you haven't spent much time outside the city in recent years. Almost every medium and small city in Sweden now features 16 to 17-year-olds driving old cars electronically or mechanically converted to only run at 30 kph (~20mph) without requiring a proper driver's license, adequate noise reduction, exhaust system and until recently not even winter tires or seatbelt. Making roads slow and dangerous, and the local environment much worse for everyone else.
Now I don't expect this to be well-received because of "cool hack" but it is truly a major issue. Other issues like the high housing costs, bad healthcare, lacking infrastructure, mediocre education and a short-sighted population are all hard to solve. But this issue is clearly a priority. Swedish voters and politicians are prioritizing this over providing a good quality of life at a decent cost to enable education, research and knowledge based businesses.
The result as a whole is that almost anyone who can is moving from these cities to bigger cities that don't have these problems, but are also so expensive that engaging in activates with high growth potential isn't viable. With grassroot hacking, small- and medium-sized business and major growth startup ending up being a fraction of what they have been and even more so should have been now.
As I understand it some of the cars are newer cars electrically modified (usually the previous family car, often a station wagon). Those are mostly wasteful by driving at slow speed with only two seats and no storage (which are also rules to be able to convert them). These can be converted back to a normal car when the driver turns 18 and gets a proper driver's license. But it is also possible to disable the electronic limits. Other cars are pemanantly converted much older cars and sold as such. These are the ones that are also bad cars without the regulation affecting a normal car.
Edit: Someone infamously converted and registered a heavy truck this way. Legal to drive as a 15-year-old with a moped license.
There are constant debates about them in Sweden. Especially after fatal accidents or incidents involving teens driving at speeds above 100 kph. [1][2]
The original law considered tractors and other farm equipment, AIUI. You can drive these so called A-traktor with only a moped or tractor license when you're 15.
The political issues are all somewhat valid, but like most political issues rather more complicated (and also more debated) than described.
I’m not sure whether the commenter speaks Swedish or not, their username seems to suggest they do (sv_SE is the language code for the Swedish [country] dialect of Swedish [lang]) but their comment reflects a phenomenon I’ve both experienced and witnessed:
Swedes are more likely to discuss policy issues in Swedish (and all of these issues are debated back and forth with varying degrees of success). Our grasp of English is mostly contextual since it’s a secondary and utilitarian language for us. I think it’s easy and natural for an English-speaker to mistake hitting language barriers as ignorance. That can extend into the ESL-speaker [English as a Secondary Language] feeling belittled, and eventually you get this effect of people just avoiding English because you associate it with feeling stupid. We get the French-waiter-that-clearly-speaks-English-but-refuses-to trope.
On the other side of that fence we have ESLs butting in on domestic affairs in English-speaking countries because we happen to speak the language. That makes us appear elitist and judgmental, too.
Apologies for deviating further from the topic.
Going back to the legality of the car: It’s complicated. The police claims it’s illegal to use autopilot on their website, but there’s a blurry line between adaptive cruise control/lane assist and autopilot. The competition requires cars to be insured, hopefully that insurance company is aware of the modifications and can advise the owners on what they can and cannot do.
https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/ost/2024/mars/autopilot/ [swedish]
More practically, if they use country roads and drive somewhat near the speed limits, they’re not likely to run afoul of the law unless they’re in an accident.
If the author is here, I’d urge them to remember that a moose is practically designed to bypass a car’s safety features and kill you. There are a quarter of a million of them in Sweden. Invest in good tires and headlights, drive carefully, and avoid hitting wildlife or reindeer.
Car regulation is relevant to the topic, and so is car regulation of modified cars in Sweden which they are planning to drive through and a statement was made on. I have thought about this. It is something that is discussed a lot in Sweden. But not available outside it as those discussions are in Swedish, and also not held by everyone.
I'm interested in quality of life because I spend a lot of time working, organizing thing and doing projects. This is also on topic. But as such I don't have that much time. Or at least not enough to end up getting stuck here instead of doing something more important. I've found that the best to manage that is not to hold a regular account. My first account is however many years older than yours.
Sometimes I do have some time or find the motivation to post, because sharing information about something you know about to others who might not know about it but have thought about something I haven't is something that is harder to do anywhere else than on the Internet. In this case how the freedom to tinker with a car can affect the long time viability of creating bigger things.
Unfortunately your comment doesn't seems out of place. It's very much part of why I'm not around a lot. It simply isn't worth posting anything when I have something better to do. (Which isn't really now since I'm on a train to Stockholm with little else to do considering the holidays).
Disregarding just being teenagers (using their phones, doing burnouts), not having a proper driver's license (usually a 20+ lesson affair in Sweden) and driving old cars without safety systems; driving at less than half the speed of regular traffic in a smaller city or a more rural area means a lot of dangerous overtaking as the standard road is one lane in each direction (especially where the terrain doesn't allow for much more) and these cars are not allowed on highways. Since you are allowed to choose high school in Sweden, some choose one further away and driving. Making such roads congested.
It's normal cars regulated as tractors, because at some point it was considered useful to use cars as tractors. But as you can now convert them electronically, they are used at scale for convenience. So it like driving behind a tractor, but there are many tractors going back and forth to school, the supermarket and friends in rush hour and on weekend. All day, every day. And the drivers are very overrepresented in not behaving well on the road.
They tend to lead to more unsafe overtakings since getting stuck behind one is stressful, they’re driven by young people who have a license to drive a moped and haven’t gone through the ice-driving classes a regular Swedish driver’s license includes, and the cars are often older inherently unsafer car models lacking proper maintenance.
And a chunk of people driving them violate the framework and drive extra passengers, bypass the speed limiter, and drink and drive.
Adults that hate kids tend to do dangerous overtakings because they just can't chill for a bit at 30 km/h and so on. It's not the kids and their tractors making the roads more dangerous.
As someone who has spent a lot of time in a literal tractor at comparable speeds I dislike drivers like you more than I dislike drives like them because once a few of you stack up behind me the situation becomes far less straight forward for drivers who want to pass and doing so becomes far more dangerous for them, which endangers me.
Just pass the damn tractor. You're not doing anybody any favors by being "patient".
I'm not going to risk my life or that of my kids, I'll wait until I can do a safe overtaking.
I've grew up in the countryside and worked on a farm as an adult and don't agree with you despite many hours in tractors, with and without trailers, on public roads.
>I'm not going to risk my life or that of my kids, I'll wait until I can do a safe overtaking.
What I hear when you say that is:
"I will follow you for several miles ignoring whaat other people would consider fine passing opportunities (and me waving my arm out the window at you trying to get you to go around) until a bunch of pissed off traffic stacks up until some guy with a Dodge Charger (or whatever, you get the stereotype) comes along and decides to pass us all at once in a sketchy way, to everyone's detriment"
And from there it goes one of two ways. Either you get the message and pass me at the next decent (to the average person, not you) opportunity or you squander that opportunity and the second guy in line passes you both of us at a reasonable time and that repeats.
Now, obviously when someone who gives off those sorts of vibes shows up I'll pull over at the first available opportunity to force them to pass but when you're talking a 2-lane with no shoulder and ditches and a combination too long to use a driveway as a pull off it could be awhile.
Listen, I get it, not everyone can pass, some people have higher standards than others for . There's people towing trailers, there's heavy trucks, student drivers, old people, shitboxes running on three cylinders, etc, etc. But that doesn't make the situation safer and for a normal person in a normal car in normal conditions to subject themselves to that is just, ugh.... misguided
The kind of people who won't pass (where reasonable, as defined by the average person) a tractor or moped or whatever in the name of safety are not creating a net increase in safety. They are creating a cluster fuck, which comes with a decrease in safety.
In practice it is legal until the yearly inspection or a police man says otherwise. If there is an accident I guess there might be negligence liability.
Most countries in the EU are pretty fascist concerning vehicle modifications. So it probably falls on the Pulp fiction end of the spectrum "It's legal but it ain't 100% legal."
Hotrods are dissappearing quickly. They cost too much. They are a pain to insure and have very low resale potential. As the culture changes, cars are moving from personal expressions to comodified fashion statements. It is rare now to even see a repaint driving on the road, let alone major engine mods. Hotrods are now just expensive weekend toys alongside boats. The market for RV mods probably now double the north american market for car mods.
Not sure where you’re getting your information.
There is a huge market for classic cars. Ever heard of Concours? Most of that crowd like to keep them stock, but there are tons of sub-genres like drift kids and Stance nation to name a few weird ones. Hotrodding is alive and well.
There are car shows in most major us cities featuring hundreds of tricked out, restored and modified cars.
The classic car market regularly appreciates. Just try to find an Alpha for a good price, or graph the price of a 1970 911 over the past 30 years.
Also you can insure a classic for cheap since they see less road time, are garaged and generally well cared for. (see Hagerty)
As for getting hotrods and restored classics on the road.
California has half a dozen classic car rallies where roadworthy classics get out on the road for a couple days.
Correct. It has moved from a home hobby to an elite show. The number of young (ie poor) people doing tuning up their own cars is practically zero. The average young driver cannot change a tire, and I'd bet that half those under 30 have never even popped their hood let alone modded anything. Hotrodding is now all rich people "getting stuff done" by shops, always on their second or third car. The closest we see on the street is the occasional muffler mod, usually only installed as the cheaper option after the stock pipe has worn out.
There are many young people (myself included, though not nearly as skilled as most) that are modifying their cars in pretty substantial ways. Just in my own friend group there are multiple under 30 with their primary car being a heavily modified sports car. I myself own 2 relatively old sports cars (90s Acura, and 00's Audi), both obviously in manual, both of which have had significant work done in my driveway. The way that I would frame it instead is that the concentration of interest has increased. Nowadays with social media, etc, there are infinite ways to learn about, do, and compare various modifications to cars. People who do not care about cars are now in a position where essentially zero knowledge is required to use them as a method to get from A-B. However, those who are interested in it for process of building itself still exist, and the resources are better than ever. For the time that I've been around, I've been seeing increasing, not decreasing, interest in older car platforms primarily for the reason that they are easier to work on compared to new cars.
Vintage hotrods might be dropping off but off-roading culture has exploded where I live and you’ll see heavily modified Trucks, Jeeps, 4runners, and Broncos on a daily basis.
I think car culture just takes different forms (In the 70s and 80s it was American hot rods, the 90s and 00s JDM and Euro, 2010s and 20s it’s all about trucks and diesels).
FWIW I haven't heard the word "hot rod" in a long time, so that could be some indicator.
It's not to say that "nice cars" are disappearing though. When I was a literal child in rural Appalachia, the standard fare Dream Car was a Dodge Viper or a Corvette and I did indeed admire those cars. But tastes certainly change as you get older and while I still have a "nice car", it's of a different breed than the All-American Dream Car.
I'd dare say that demographic died off and hasn't been replaced due to cultural and economic shifts. Also, the whirl of a turbo is a more appealing sound than the roar of a supercharged V8, to me anyways.
Edit: and yeah those types of guys just drive a lifted diesel truck with giant wheels now. At least they can do work with them.
There has also been a disheartening shift with supercars that, imho, has damaged the industry. In the 90s, if you won the lottery you could buy a Lambo or a Ferrari and have one of the best cars on the planet. Become a top lawyer/doctor and and you could buy one too. Today, the elite cars require one to win the lottery multiple times. The market for cars worth 10m+ and even 20m+ has exploded since the 90s. Something like a Zonda now cost more than the flyaway price of a Learjet. Kids don't dream about great cars anymore because, short of marrying a world leader, there really is no possibility of attaining such things. They instead dream of tictok fame and one day owning their own house in the burbs.
There is freedom to run it in a track where the only person you can kill is yourself lol, definitely not on public roads where you can kill and maim other people (not to mention pollution, noise, etc).
If feel rules about cars are such an obvious example of "your freedom to punch ends where my nose begins" that I'm not sure if the comment I'm replying to is satire x)
