I’ve heard they used two manufacturers: One was a Samsung division, the other an unnamed Chinese company. Well, presumably it has a name, but it wasn’t in the article I saw. They weren’t shady enough to be buying batteries off the back of a truck.
Or were they? 
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You beat me to it!
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If your intent was to make this unit a showcase of extreme design, you succeeded. However, that extreme design covers both ends of that range. On one end is that every point subject to stress breaks because it’s under-designed. On the other end is the one part that cannot move, but you guys decided to over-design it by about 500% by making sure it’s impossible to move, and if for some reason that part does have to be taken out of the unit, it requires a disassembly of the entire unit to do so.
That’s right up there with the engines that have to be taken out of the car in order to change the two spark plugs at the back.
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Having an installer stub (firefox, chrome, dropbox etc) is all fine and dandy, but for us folks with severely constrained bandwidth links it causes headaches as there is no option to limit the download rate.
And it’s a PITA trying to find the full installer package on some websites. Why not have a link embedded in the installer that takes the user to the full install package that can be downloaded via a throttled link with any supported download manager?
W00t, sounds like fun. Which car(s)?
My Festiva you had to take the engine out of to change the alternator or the water pump.
The 2000 Buick Regal had quick-release engine mounts in the back. You pulled a pin or two and the whole thing rotated up and out of the engine bay so that you could reach the back 3 plugs (transverse-mount V6).
My 69 Dodge Dart had a engine compartment I could stand in. Made working on the slant 6 real easy, except the engine was all on one side of the car. The heads were all facing the empty portion, but if anything went wrong on the other end you had to jack it up and come from the bottom.
My first car was the '63 Dodge Dart. I just saw one on the road this morning, too!
There was chevy Nova that required that… had to detach it from the transmission to move the engine… to change the back two plugs.
The trucks we had when I first started working for Uncle Sam were all built on the Dodge truck chassis. V-8, but just a little 318 - didn’t matter what the vehicle was for, same engine.
Same key, too… every single Dodge truck in the Army had the same key for doors and ignition.
You could sit on the fender with your feet on the wheel covers. In fact, it was easier to reach stuff that way, sometimes.
The engine for the Hummer filled the whole damn thing. One of my least favorite memories is changing starters on them. Trying to squirm an arm through the top to hold things, or crawling under it to hold the dang thing in place while someone slammed me in the head with their wrench tightening bolts.
But mostly just holding starters up.
Fiat Palio weekender (2006 model)
Need to remove oil pump and alternator before you can remove the water pump. Fun.
1970`s Land Rover (2250cc petrol engine) - pleasure to work on as it was designed for in-situ repairs in the bush.
The Subarus I worked on in the 90’s were very maintenance friendly.
The mini-wagin we had came with a switch-end screwdriver - one end cross, the other straight, two open-ended wrendches, each end a different size so four in total.
All standard maintenance could be done with those three tools. Belts had the adjustment bolts extended to where the wrenches could reach, the filters and fuses could all be gotten with one, etc.
The only odd exception was the oil pan - that took a 17 mm which was the only 17 I found on the car.
Front disk brakes were obviuosly meant for ease of changing. The caliper swung up out of the way after undoing one bolt. The second bolt was captive and actually hard to figure out how to remove it… because you shouldn’t even have to!
It took me about 15 minutes to change the pads out on both front wheels… and at least five of that was standing back, thinking: “What did I miss?”
A buddy in high school had an early 70’s ish Dart with a 318. Roomy engine bay. My 65 Mustang had plenty of room around most of the 289, too.
Subarus are a little less maintenance-friendly now, mostly owing to evolving “packaging” (read: car design cramping the engine compartment). I tried to change the spark plugs in my 2010 and was only successful in reaching one of the four. Maybe I should have tried going at it from below instead of above.
Buddy used to have a Tahoe w/ the 350 and he sat on the fender to change the spark plugs. Engine bay can take a 454 so the 350 left lots of extra room.
Who the hell do they think they’re kidding? Minimum wage in San Diego is about to be $11 an hour.
$12-16/hour? That’s pathetic.
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