This shows uncreative thinking. It’s like buggy manufacturing at the end of the 19th century. The first cars looked like buggies and used their methodology, and then a better morphology was developed that was more appropriate for ICE automobiles. The industry has to look at morphology as a problem solving tool.

Better than a bicycle but still not there. Forget about pedal power. Delivery people get tired enough as it is running up and down stairs and all over the place. Bicycles are only good for document delivery. When I first saw the Citroen eAmi, I immediately sketched out a taller one-box design based on the same…

Which would require hiring a lot more delivery people, raising cost.

Looks as if the folded seats don’t drop down to make a flat floor. 

17 years ago, I drove for Fedex Ground local delivery — big stepvans with I-H DT 466 diesel. The 5-speed manuals got a real world 12 mpg and the automatics got 9. These are much bigger and heavier trucks than the Oshkosh postal vehicle. Rural mail carriers are usually contract workers who use their own vehicles, but…

They don’t need to dismantle the bridge. The yacht should leave the yard without its masts, and then in Rotterdam harbor have a crane or sheer hulk hoist the masts and put them in. And why does this yacht have such long overhangs, as if it’s conforming to some racing formula. It’s never going to be sailed on its side…

Good observation. The wiper would push snow down on to the hood instead of up and away from the vehicle.

It looks like the truck was built with a sheet metal brake. It doesn’t look very functional as a truck qua truck. With a battery-electric power train, it should be easy to redesign the morphology of a truck to maximize cab and cargo space while keeping length to the minimum needed. This design does none of that. Delta…

I farmed in North Dakota and live in remote northern Minnesota. I’ve driven across Nebraska many times, interstate and two lanes. Piece of cake — and I don’t listen to the radio but drive in silence. Two weeks ago I had to drive 1900 miles to JFK in New York City. The traffic was crazy. Guy in front of me on I-80…

He’s no Fangio or Clark, but more in the lines of the Lampoon’s High School Yearbook, “live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse.” It’s his business if he wants to end that way. Unfortunately, he may bring others with him.

Burning anything releases PM 2.5 particles that are very bad for our health. Even if we didn’t have climate change, we would ultimately have to stop burning fuels. Electricity is the easiest form of energy to produce sustainably. It’s not a left wing thing. Auto manufacturers are hardly lefties. They’re realists and…

Trump’s great innovation was to give people permission to be mean. No more hiding one’s amygdala under a rug. I recognize that many people are frightened by change and unwilling to change their lives to adapt to changing conditions, but the auto industry is a business that must make money and produce cash flow to…

Automobiles are appliances for the vast majority of buyers, a tool for transportation. The industry can’t continue to provide vehicles for a small percentage of the population’s need for an adrenaline rush. The world is changing, and it’s changing fast.

100 kph/62 mph is the fastest speed at which a fuel mileage penalty doesn’t hit. After that, air resistance goes up rapidly (it’s an exponential function). That’s also the speed at which one feels in full control of the vehicle. I’m all for making that speed a national limit. I remember the double nickel (55 mph)…

I’ve gone off road in a Neon, Caravan, and Journey. Just watch out for the rocks. If you want to do serious off-road RVing, get a Kamaz 6x6 with a bus body on the frame. They’re all over Siberia.

It's a railroad bridge. It can’t be raised. The roadway has to be lowered.

“Owning” anybody, liberal or conservative or apathetic, is dumb policy. When one group is more interested in “owning” another group, that’s just a non-shooting civil war. It’s not a big jump to get to the shooting part. People and regions are not uniform. There’s a lot of diversity. I live in “the bush” of northern…

Politics is made by people, not land. Most Californians live on a small part of the whole state. That’s life. I live in northern Minnesota. Our local K-12 school has less than 600 students coming from a land area as big as the state of Delaware. Our total population would barely equal a neighborhood in Duluth, but I…

It was employers who drove the trend to higher education, and the rest had to follow along in order to get a job. In 1969, I started working in a machine shop and had no experience. They put me on a shaper and showed me what to do. Today, you can’t get into the door without at least a two-year tech degree. Life got a…

Consumer Reports rated the Dodge Journey at 16 mpg. I generally average 28-30 mpg in summer and 24-26 in winter with my AWD 3.6 liter. Even in town in Minnesota winter I’ve never gotten as low as 16. Did they drive it using the accelerator as an on-off switch? The Citroen AMI, a tiny urban quadricycle with a top speed…