Collapse of innovation for internal combustion is kind of irrelevant at this point.

With the lifespan of ICEs as short as it is now, there's no reason to waste time developing a new common 2.0. Just use Toyota's.

My folks drove mostly manuals for the same reason I did, when I started driving: that’s mostly what came in cheap cars, back in the day. They drove three-on-the-tree Chevys and Studebakers until getting their first VW in 1965. Through the ‘70s and ‘80s, mom’s VWs and dad’s Toyotas, Ford Courier and Datsun 210 were all…

Imagine a DS with a modern engine and synthetic hydraulic fluid...I'm imagining it right now.

But nothing could malfunction in a French car, could it?

It didn't work when they were making spearheads.

How did he get a Mazda and/or Kia in Texas? I thought it was the law there that you could only drive a full size pickup or an Eldorado with steer horns and six-shooter door handles.

Detroit has no shortage of vacant or soon to be vacant acreage; it’s got to be the most falling-down city in the USA. Besides the cost of cleaning up asbestos and other industrial waste, the thing that's kept these buildings standing so long is that no one wants the land under them.

What happens when he fills it up in a few months?

If I didn’t hate 4 door pickups, and if I trusted Volkswagens, and wasn’t sick of Briggs & Stratton-level HP, and felt like spending more on one vehicle than I have on every car, truck, motorcycle, and saxophone I've ever bought, and if I didn't mind wasting that money on a truck that would get crushed within a year,…

Give it a tailgate and I'm there.

With my ‘84 and ‘93 Toyotas, I could get a Honda 70 into the bed without a ramp, and I’m 5'5". And they’d hold a Triumph 750 with the tailgate closed. Anything that’ll do that today is a special order.

I don't have kids, but I always figured the sex talk is the same thing you've told them all their lives: don't put that in your mouth, you don't know where it's been.

The Bronx has 1.5 million people, so if the other four boroughs have 200,000 between them, then I need to rethink what 200,000 people looks like.

There would have to be some kind of core charge, just like when you buy a regular car battery today. If you pull in for a swap, you pay $7 for a fresh battery but you're SWAPPING, so they get a dead battery that they can charge for another customer. Even a pack of AAs isn't $7 these days.

I saw a Tesla with Texas plates in midtown Manhattan, about five years ago. They could have trailered it, but there were enough charging stations even then that they could have driven it too.

Yes, it would be the swap station’s responsibility to keep bad batteries out of circulation, just like gas stations (theoretically) keep water out of their storage tanks. The only issue is making sure whoever leaves them with a trashed battery compensates them after the fact.

I drove electric forklifts for about 15 years and swapped (about 1 ton, lead acid) batteries hundreds of times. I’ve always thought this was a no-brainer and crucial to an all-electric future. Maybe there could be a system where you pay a base fee at swap time, and if the battery you leave isn’t within, say, 15% of…

So many questions: any space for fresh/grey/black water tanks, propane, hot water heater? If this had a toilet and shower and if I could be sure my state wouldn't revoke the reg like they seem to be doing, I would love to put a hotter motor in it, a Mini Trail on the front if it doesn't block the headlights, and go…

I wondered if anybody ever made a yellow flag with a snake in bondage gear saying “Please tread on me," and Google did not disappoint.