50 Years? You forgot about this little guy from 36 years ago:

Vintage racecar because VINTAGE RACECAR!

Well, in that case I'll take it!

And that backhoe will build itself and maintain itself and choose it's own place to dig ditches? There will still be humans-in-the-loop in the 2050s, and those humans will probably not be the upper crust of society.

Depends who you ask and who's funding their research. The more important question is this: Why do some models predict the population will level out? Because the whole world is going to become one big developed nation? Sorry, but that's not possible. We all can't be scientists. Some of us need to be digging…

Never going to hit that point? The global trend says otherwise... and scientific predictions are all about trends...

It would require a HUGE investment in the power infrastructure.

I am a HUGE proponent of nuclear power. But I live in the real world and I acknowledge that most people are afraid of things they do not understand. Since most of these people can't begin to understand how nuclear power works, they continue to parrot the "boo, nukes are bad" line to the other idiots around them and…

There's plenty stopping us from completely moving away from those sources! Specifically, economics and applied physics!

If the glider has any plastic in it, then it's probably got some dinosaur juice on board!

And the electricity used to power electric vehicles comes from fossil-ish things like coal, natural gas, and oil. The intent of the article is that the fuel that is directly motivating these machines is not fossil based.

I bought a 2008 Si sedan new and owned it until this summer (replaced it with a Corvette) and miss the hell out of it. It rode great (especially with adjustable Koni Yellows), handled great, and was reliable as the sunrise. That sweet sounding engine was bounced off the rev limiter every day for 100,000 miles…

I'm just happy that this current pony car war isn't only focused on the drag racers! There's something for every kind of automotive enthusiast in this Camaro/Mustang/Challenger battle!

Hello!

I think we should enslave PETA and make it do animal jobs. Maybe a team of hipsters can pull an Amish plow in rural Pennsylvania to start. We can train them to sniff for bombs at the airport too.

I agree 100%. The only problem is that people outside the rotorcraft community (and that turns out to be just about everyone) are terrified of tilt-rotor machines. I love them and especially love the almost forgotten XV-3 and XV-15. In a former life, each day I walked past a large picture of one of the XV-15s…

I love that Sikorsky keeps stabbing away at the compound helicopter. They're persistent! This all started with the Advancing Blade Concept (ABC) which first flew in full-scale in the NASA 40x80 wind tunnel back in 1970, to my knowledge:

I don't mean to Necro this thread, but the better question would be: "What is the power per unit of engine mass?" That is where the LS will always win. Total engine package, not engine displacement.

C5 > C6 because fuck "accessible performance". Automotive shenanigans and tomfoolery are so much easier and more rewarding in a C5!!!

Hey Jalopnik, have you ever heard of the old Frontenac Ford conversion kit that put an overhead cam on a Model T engine? Google "Fronty Ford" and you'll get quite a lot of info on this. Fun fact: Gaston Chevrolet won the Indy 500 in 1920 in a Fronty Ford.