We’re in a major transition, as in 1830 and 1900, and yet vehicles are still being made to the standard format developed half a century ago. With the coming of trains, coach builders still built coaches as if they were pulled by horses. With the coming of automobiles, coach builders built cars as if they were still…

Humans have been reverse engineering for thousands of years. We plagiarize constantly and no nation is pure. It’s called not reinventing the wheel when that is not necessary. The West may have forgotten the 19th century opium wars but China has not. That was when Britain forced Chinese to become opium addicts in order…

Bears have a powerful sense of smell, better than dogs. That’s why the primary predator of deer fawns here in northern Minnesota are bears, not wolves. I’m guessing there was some spilled pop on the outside of the cans. Bears binge eat, so going through all the cans makes sense. Also, the bear could tell the diet cans…

I remember when pickups were cheap, had a single bench seat, a six cylinder engine and three on the tree manual transmission. They were slow and weren’t used as daily drivers. The most important part of the pickup was its box. Now pickups try to do everything for everybody and have become super expensive. How many…

I’m 73 and have never owned a new car. I couldn’t see paying that much on an object that depreciates so fast. Instead, I buy used cars (mostly Mopars) for cash and drive them far past 200,000 miles. It makes for a low cost per mile. When I was young, people traded in their old car for a new one every three years. My…

That’s been my experience with Mopar minivans. Repairs have been mainly wearing parts replacement -- tires, brakes, shocks -- and I usually drive them past 250,000 miles. My present 2012 Town and Country has had no issues and is at 222,000 miles now.

Absolutely. You don’t need a crossover. You need more sidewall on the tires. I drive on frost heaved, potholed  northern Minnesota roads in my minivan. I even take it down logging roads and off-road vehicle trails. Just watch out for the rocks. I like to go up one size on aspect ratio and down one on tire width. I had…

There certainly is a role for battery-electric short haul trucks, i.e. the city run. The problem for over the road trucks is that the amount of battery to supply the power to haul 80,000 pounds GVW is so large that it seriously cuts into cargo weight. Rail is easy to electrify. Present trains are electric. It’s just…

Cars operate at low duty cycle. Trucks, farm and heavy equipment operate at high duty cycle. They need a lot of constant power. The answer to electric trucks is not a truck. It’s a train running off overhead electric lines. Trucks could also run off overhead electric lines. Germany has been testing that concept. There…

The ocean is an unforgiving medium. This autonomous vessel is small, only 120 TEU, operates on short runs in coastal waters within 12 miles of land, and has electric propulsion, so no internal combustion engines to maintain. I’ve been a farmer and millwright. Everything breaks down. It’s only a matter of when not if.…

There’s another electric rate category, dual-fuel electric, we’ve been using for decades to heat our home. When there is a peak-load condition, our electric heat gets turned off. This can go on for up to 8 hours, normally at night. Dual-fuel rate is about half regular rate. Off-peak rate is lower yet but only provides…

My 16 year-old son failed his first driving test. I was happy. He wasn’t ready. He passed when he was 18 and was a better driver then. Five years later, he said to me, you were right about having the radio on too loud -- it is a distraction. My older son didn’t tell me about his youthful car escapades until he was in…

I’m 73, and when I was young, I didn’t have any money either, but I never thought of buying a new car. If I couldn’t pay cash, I didn’t buy it. I still pay cash and have never bought a new car. I drive so much, any new car of mine would be a high mileage car in no time flat.

That’s not a lot of miles on the Scion. If you have a good mechanic, repair it. Get another used car and it will need repairs too, but they’ll be different repairs. My son lived in Philly. I’ve driven around there in a minivan and done the Philly U-turns but finding a parking spot on narrow residential streets is…

First picture looks like my road. I’ve done plenty of off-road and logging road driving in my Dodge minivans. You just have to straddle the rocks and holes properly. Driving 300 miles on black ice through northern Minnesota and Wisconsin was pretty stressful, as was being out in a North Dakota blizzard and the only…

Wyoming is a major producer of renewable energy and has the ability to do more; however, the major campaign donors come from the fossil fuel industry. Yes, Wyoming (and North Dakota) have little electric car infrastructure, and that’s because of very low population density. Well, actually, they have little electric…

Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann, who have been the top observers of Congress over the past 30 years, have written frequently on how the two political parties are not mirror images of each other. Democrats still focus on policy and governance and are willing to compromise; whereas, Republicans have gotten caught in a…

The U.S. is no longer the most important auto market. China is, and Europe is right behind. Citroen has always pushed the envelope and has been at the forefront of automotive design. I think the 2CV is the greatest design of all time because it provided the most with the least. In 1959, Jan Myrdal drove a 12 hp. 2CV…

In the Stellantis stable it looks like Citroen and Peugeot concept car developers must live on different planets, and it’s Citroen that developed concepts more readily applicable to tomorrow’s EVs — simplicity, light weight, limits on performance, recyclability. I think Citroen’s OLI should have been in the shape of…

This is also why EVs need much better thermal insulation than IC vehicles. I live in northern Minnesota where air temperatures (not windchill) drop to 40 below zero and colder every winter. And it’s not just heating the interior that’s a problem in the cold. It’s keeping the windows defrosted. When I lived in…