What, that autoplay ads now start with sound? I love jalopnik, but the content may not be good enough to justify that much annoyance.

Power-wise, they are right there with mazda. 150hp is considered just enough by some people.

Or just make wider cars. Wider cars may not drive better, but they look fantastic.

“Doing this makes the rods hit more extreme angles at the bottom of the stroke vs. ‘taller’ engines and puts a bunch more stress on pistons and bearings.”

It doesn’t look like the lack of lubrication that did these engines in, but rather too high accel loads from the high linear piston speed. If they had a crank with shorter throw, they could have run faster.

At least they had water to fall into. Relatively calm water at that.

The winners seem to be the ones with skinnier tires.

Not only that but the profile isn’t the only thing that determines CD. Its probably isn’t the main thing.

Yes, but its a rather good motorized pedal cab.

It seems to me a lot of sense for a certain rather narrow application. Taking couples sight seeing, for short distances, in a city where the streets themselves are rather dirty and filled with horse manure. Something like a rickshaw.

Thus the real reason why the halo is safer than the windshield.

So basically, the Halo flip flop is waay stronger than a windshield. Got it.

The weight is a big deal, but there is also the more steady state conditions which help immensely. Power plants don’t have to worry about power bands and throttle responses.

I think the state owned (Aramco, rosneft, petrobras) are since their profits are tied up in social programs and they dont have the flexibility to change. The large semi private concerns (chevron, BP) can probably wiggle out of it (probably with a name change)

Oil companies can diversify. If they are smart, they will be using their profits to invest in other forms of power generation. The ones that don’t are likely to be in trouble.

Absolute worst case here is that electric cars will be as expensive to run as gasoline cars are now. But even that’s not very likely. Even if natural gas prices increase (which does seem likely), it doesn’t have the sort of refining costs that gasoline does, it’s cheaper to transport, large scale electrical generation…

Even if plants ran on oil (which most don’t) large scale electrical generation is over 60% efficient, while no one has hybrid ice is less than 35% efficient (due in large part to heat scavenging systems). So if you changed all the cars from ice to electric, and charged them all with oil powered plants, you’d still…

Cars and drivers communicate now via visual system. It’s easily hackable (you can make your vehicle resemble an emergency vehicle), and is sometimes hacked. This is a problem we already know how to deal with.

States can help jump start V2v communication by using smart signs. Attach a cheap, solar powered transmitter to road signs that transmits the area to which the sign applies (outer 2 lanes of highway 6, from mile 230 to 231.5) and the content of the sign (slow down to 55, watch for zombie bears). Made in mass this…

I take it you aren’t married. Families, at least well running families, operate as a single unit. It makes sense to send the strongest one as a scout, who can then request additional help if he needs it. It’s not like they could get help out there twice as fast if they both came out. Plus, were there kids in the back?…