How does ripping out 300 welds factor into the safety scores and crash tests? Are the bodies similar enough that the results transfer? Is “my engineers think” a legal enough reason to assume the results would be the same?

An important point I think Jason missed is why exactly alternators are better. They still have brushes, but it connects to the rotating electromagnet. If you put 7 amps into the magnet and spin the alternator, you get 70 amps out. This means 10x less wear on the brushes. The voltage regulator varies the current in the…

That top gear special on the Mercedes 600 claimed the entire interior was hydraulic powered. Seats, windows, doors, etc.

What’s the chance of Tesla remotely disabling them for some bullshit reason? Is there any agreement or contract in place to stop you from getting a paperweight? Right now the only thing they have is something Tesla allegedly said. Who knows if Tesla thinks their wishes were followed.

So what happens in 2 years when Google changes the API or something and the car can’t load Maps anymore? Will the car get an update? What if it’s in 10 years? My Mercedes with the original COMAND got map updates for 15 years. And of course, it will be fully operational until the CD degrades in 50 years or so. Will…

I tried this and it doesn’t always work. The charger type is stored in the head, and all the cheap chargers naturally program a lower wattage charger type than advertised. This results in your nice shiny 85W apple charger only giving 45W and your macbook dying unexpectedly cause it’s being told it can’t get enough…

Hah! My five year old Garmin does this. Maybe in another few years Google Maps can display speed limits?

That’s the heater core leaking a slight bit of coolant. At that concentration it smells like maple syrup.

My Saab is the same way. The “Oil pressure low” and “Windshield washer fluid low” are the same chime. I also keep ending up with a washer fluid level such that it detects it only during vigorous cornering.

That Cayenne he drove off a cliff and set off all the airbags in.

That’s a weird way of spelling Ryuji.

The thing is I worry that’s not all that true. In many cities where electric cars would have an advantage, the people do not have garages in which to plug their cars. They have to park on the street, perhaps far away from their own house. You can’t run a 1000 foot extension cord down the sidewalk to keep your car…

Probably because you’d have to pry the information required to do that out of some engineer at Nissan HQ’s cold dead, highly guarded hands. They’ve already got a system which hooks up a play station controller to some motors, so adapting it to this car is just some light mechanical engineering that can probably be…

We chucked ours at 180 after the second transmission died. In retrospect, that was kind of a mistake.

Okay so it wasn’t quite germane to the point you are trying to make, but any news of Vision 2020?

No, but we should put easy to understand warning labels (like mr. yuk) and mandate child-proof containers (like we do) to protect people.

Huh, really? I thought there were some that would watch you and encourage breaks from driving. Do you mean wired into the autonomous system? That may be true.

Especially since it’s absolutely, completely, and totally impossible to design a system which is smart enough to recognize that situation and prevent the doing of that. Even further, literally no one could have predicted that those instructions would not be followed.

Well from what I know, Tesla’s method of monitoring is to ensure you have a hand on the wheel. NTSB found that that’s not enough, as said by the person whose job it is to find out how people fuck with the system.