eCars Foundation is an initiative to renew the car inside out. To halt the global warming, waiting for the big car companies to produce electric vehicles comes too late. Even if all the car companies today started to make only electric vehicles, it wouldn't be enough. We still have the 850 million oil-consuming, CO2-producing polluting internal combustion vehicles.
The answer then is to convert gasoline cars into electric ones. This has been done, but never in a mass scale. The history of both battery development and car industry tells clearly that vicious patent wars have been fought over the key technologies. The result has too often been that the best machines haven't made it to the limelight and the society at large has been the loser.
With open source approach, the eCars - Now! global community is adding a new beat to vehicle innovation. Open source principles combined with modular design and distributed mass production is the key to level up the car industry's change. It will become the single biggest economic shift in the recorded history.
The eCars Foundation operates as a supporting and coordinating body for the non-hierarchical and open eCars - Now! community. The foundation focuses into ten key areas:
- Grants new car conversion projects that embody the eCars - Now! principles of open source, modularity and mass-productability.
- Funds development project of eComponents, the building blocks that make the open source EV's hum.
- Coordinates the functioning of national eCars - Now! groups on one hand and non-local special development operations on the other (like the eComponents).
- Supports the development of open source tools that help to simplify, uniform and speed up new conversion prototypes.
- Builds a global conversion library, where new conversion models are uniformally documented and rated based on peer-to-peer evaluation.
- Constructs an user-driven database of human resource so different eCars projects can easily find the human resources needed.
- Works alongside with business to create an easy-to-use marketplace for buying electric vehicle conversion kits and services, (with the option of a net-based joint purchases of kits with "under-the-hood" automatic optimizing of joint purchases of components used across several kits).
- Handles the IPR and other legal issues over the open source licenses and the right to use eCars - Now! name and logo.
- Gathers practical data on electric vehicles' possibilities and carries it out to larger audience in an easy-to-follow message.
- Gets the message of electric car conversion to policymakers, industry, NGO's, academia and media. Gives a societal voice of electric car possibilities globally from a neutral ground.
- Organizes the Zprize competition to spur up the technology from new fields and to get the media curious what the whole thing is about.
To begin its task as soon as possible, the upcoming foundation is looking for opening funding of 200 000 - 2 000 000 euros. It's not a big money to give the car industry a creative boost - and our planet a deep breath. In the USA the foundation will have the 501(c) tax exempt status.
If you feel you would be able to help us to bring the foundation about, please feel free to contact us at moc.liamg|woNsraCe#moc.liamg|woNsraCe.
(also, if you have good suggestion of potent donators, don't hesitate to give us a tip! ;-)
Additional Notice: To fasten the process the foundation has started the first automotive Zprize competition even before founding the foundation with the "nanofundnano".
