[mattbrewsbytes]

The reason a lot of things appear to be re-invented is that its Resume Driven Development but applied to auto head lights. Or blame product people for needing to come up with something even though the product is probably “done” from a consumer standpoint of fulfilling the needs. Smart refrigerators come to mind.

I keep watching stuff on youtube where people find really old cars, like 50-60 years old, and they walk thru what needs fixing to get it running. Sometimes they add some gas to a 50yo engine in a barn find and replace spark plugs and it fires up, its really amazing.

Man I sound like my grandfather lamenting about “they don’t build them like they used to”.

[jcgrillo]

It's very true, though. There's something to be said about technology you can build without a huge capital investment. With maybe $50k worth of tools and materials you could probably build a vehicle from ~1980. You can't manufacture them at scale, and if you factor in your time it won't pay out, but you could in principle get it done with accurate drawings.

Proprietary software, though, is a huge moat. And the complexity that comes with it. There's no reason we shouldn't be able to build more modern cars as one-offs, except that the systems are so locked down