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There's another thing I miss. non-computerized Diesels. Those things ran forever and were cleaner than gas! You could lose the alternator and keep going, fully mechanical injection. No ignition system or carburetor either. Simple! Now there's such a thing as 'diesel exhaust' fluid and it's really just cat urine.

Which is why I plan on hanging on to said vehicle until Armageddon, and beyond.
 
I wasn't aware a 1998 diesel anything had a fully mechanical diesel engine. I thought those died out after the 1970s International Harvester School buses. I do know there's a computer and electronics on a '98 Dodge Cummins. All the Land Rovers of that era were full on digital dashes and weird beeping alarms. I remember having to bypass the heater core on one at a junkyard. Think sounded like a jet fighter with the beeping alarms!

Never did figure out what that error on the climate control meant. Some icon of a book and ! symbol and it wouldn't respond.

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There's another thing I miss. non-computerized Diesels. Those things ran forever and were cleaner than gas! You could lose the alternator and keep going, fully mechanical injection. No ignition system or carburetor either. Simple! Now there's such a thing as 'diesel exhaust' fluid and it's really just cat urine.

Which is why I plan on hanging on to said vehicle until Armageddon, and beyond.
I wasn't aware a 1998 diesel anything had a fully mechanical diesel engine. I thought those died out after the 1970s International Harvester School buses. I do know there's a computer and electronics on a '98 Dodge Cummins. All the Land Rovers of that era were full on digital dashes and weird beeping alarms. I remember having to bypass the heater core on one at a junkyard. Think sounded like a jet fighter with the beeping alarms!

Never did figure out what that error on the climate control meant. Some icon of a book and ! symbol and it wouldn't respond.

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I lied, sorry, my 1998 Defender has some electronics, the radio. But, the motor makes such a racket I don't bother with music. So yes, my Landy is 100% mechanical. EMP that....

BTW, I get 10km on the litre, weighing in at 2 metric tons fully loaded.
 
The one at the junkyard was a 1996 Land Rover Range Rover. Fully digital dash, digital climate control which was frozen in whatever mode it was in, with a book icon with ! next to it. Heater core exploded during road test making us use the trick to bypass it and use the long-defunct A/C evaporator core as an alternative. The climate control remained frozen, in high and whatever temp it was at, and would blow you out of it with how hot it got. Pulling a fuse was the only way to shut it off.

Think sounded like the threat alarm of an F-14 Tomcat when it wanted you to fasten seatbelts, with 'seatbelts please!' in the little odometer display. I never saw Range Rovers/Land Rovers that were not high-tech messes in the 1990s. I remember the old 60s ones being quite simple, like jeeps.

We had one diesel golf cart come in (some Club Car side-by-side) running on a Kubota diesel. Customer complained it was a no crank no start, didn't know what a diesel was. Or what a glow plug was. Ended up being a shorted ignition switch and a bad fuel pump. Easy peasy. Wish more golf cars came with diesels.
 
The push toward autonomous cars strikes me as something they want to solve as opposed to something that needs to be solved. The old adage just because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done.

They are presently trying to sell us a future of electric autonomous vehicles where in many cases the vehicles are shared rather than owned by individuals.

Presently electric vehicles, on average, are expensive—too expensive for the average buyer without government subsidies. The infrastructure still has a long way to go to support vehicles with limited driving range compared to gas powered cars. A big elephant in the room everyone is ignoring is what to do with expensive batteries when they need to be replaced.

Hardly anyone really wants a self-driving car. We like having control of where we’re going and the idea of surrendering control and entrusting our lives to imperfect technology is a hard sell.

Shared vehicles are a form of public transit and few people really like public transit. Public transit is something people endure unless they can afford the alternative of private transportation. At present the idea of shared autonomous vehicles is to limit or eliminate our choices.
while I'm mostly agree with your point, I also knows tech is as good as how comfortable is to use.

there is need only a few tweaks to differentiate a successful device (iPod) from another not so good (Zune)

surfing web, making video calls and sending pics phone to phone was a thing before the iPhone, but it isn't the same isn't it??

I'm not agree with your claim of anyone wants to drive, on the contrary, going from one place to another in your own car, looking trhough the window or watching "tv" is a dream (which would take ages to come really true). BUT as you say, current tech (with current I mean middle term 10 years from now tech) is far from being ready to such a huge responsibility.

sharing autonomous cars is just like taking a cab, but with extra problems, so what's the point?? less jobs? more money for Apple and Google?
No virtual assistant is able of understand comand better than another human being. An no GPS knows navigating European cities as a taxi driver with a GPS assistant at his service to check routes or traffic. NEVER. An AI can't see if a truck is blocking the next street and turning right at time, or doing some little cheats as invading opposite lane for few meters to surround a stopped car.


Car sharing is a bit cheaper than a cab, but nothing else, you have to drive, you have to find the car and walk to it, the car sometimes smells, or is low on battery, or whatever…

it gives you some independence which is great sometimes, but I have my own car which I park at my door, and I use it 80% of times, 18% taxi/uber/cab, 2% car sharing
 
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The only real benefit I can find for an automonous vehicle is for helping the blind or deaf have transportation.

The limits of EVs are considered a good thing at least according to Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum. What better means to keep people in the smart cities they want us all to live in other than to make it impractical or impossible to travel outside of them? I do know with the Tesla if you put on an unapproved mod, it severely limits the range and speed artificially via software.

I don't really get the idea of car sharing. I don't want to sit in one that was last used by a chain smoker or a couple who had some romantic antics in the back seat. I don't want to have to take a UV light to one! In this age of COVID and other future pandemics, that problem will be compounded.
 
It’s quite possible the future planners and futurists are envisioning is not at all what will eventually come to pass. And thats long been true. Science fiction for several decades has dreamed of personal flying cars and they just assumed technology would solve how it could be done. But in the early scenarios individuals were still controlling their own flying car. Later shows like The Jetsons and films like Blade Runner and The Fifth Element depicted a form of autonomous computer control that allowed flying cars to work.

But realistically it’s already a herculean task to figure out how to make hundreds to thousands to millions of vehicles work together autonomously on a two dimensional plane. I can only imagine the nightmare of trying to make it work three dimensionally with variable and unexpected weather patterns, sudden wind gusts and varying precipitation to adapt to.

And so forget about flying cars. But also truly autonomous vehicles might actually end up being an option on a relatively small scale with the rest being an evolved extension of what we already have.
 
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I expect mass amounts of drones for packages and larger ones for passengers (rich people mostly) will become a thing way before truly autonomous cars going all over.

We’ve already since that very wealthy don’t give a flick about anything but themselves … they’ll give nary a single concern to littering the skies (not over their own houses and golf courses …of course) with ways for them to avoid the “little people”
 
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A lot of retro-futurism also depicted the possible dystopian outcome, as many a Fallout game and movies such as Idiocracy as well as Demolition Man have well demonstrated. Demolition Man is more likely reality as we already police speech (although not by deducting credits via a ticket dispenser) as well as the whole woke aspect these days. I don't want to live in that future either, although that scene with Stallone yelling at the autonomous car 'brake! BRAKE YOU STUPID MICKY MOUSE PIECE OF ******!!!' is hilarious.

I expect mass amounts of drones for packages and larger ones for passengers (rich people mostly) will become a thing way before truly autonomous cars going all over.
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"The sleek shall inherit an autonomous future"?

Steve Jobs realized that new possibilities should bring APPLE to reformat the (mobile) phone - “Design is not just what it looks like, it is how it works”. Besides swapping the fossil engine for electric drive, Elon Musk never came to reformatting the electric car. A Next-Gen EV can combine safety, automation, the pleasurable and the inevitable “doing more with less” IMO.

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And yet still fail to drive the 540 miles it takes to be with my girlfriend who lives in North Carolina. Most barely break 250 miles per charge, and I don't recall any charging stations anywhere on Interstate 40.

However, I feel that's the intent. To keep people in their own states and out of the country or rural areas. Smart Cities are the future and I don't want to live to see it. I oftentimes wish I were born a few decades before I was so I'd be on my deathbed by the time that day comes.

Also, why must EVs be so ugly? Make them look like KITT or the Audi RSQ or whatever that 1970s wedge was and they'd sell I assure you. If anything for the nostalgia factor.
 
Most barely break 250 miles per charge

However, I feel that's the intent. To keep people in their own states and out of the country or rural areas.

Also, why must EVs be so ugly?

Plenty of electric cars that have a range of over 250 miles nowadays. Trade-off is a battery pack that weighs 5-6 more than the usually single occupant (driver). That's what I personally have against EVs. The only way out is to dramatically lower vehicle mass and drag, without resorting to bringing a small car (that most people don't like for all sorts of reasons).

We should step away from cars becoming wider and wider (99% is now wider than their driver is tall), just to impress the neighbors. Sleek-footprint vehicles are a far better match for using them autonomously as well. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
 
We should step away from cars becoming wider and wider (99% is now wider than their driver is tall), just to impress the neighbors. Sleek-footprint vehicles are a far better match for using them autonomously as well. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Tell that to the minivan owners with those stickers promoting their 16 kids and two dogs and one cat! Americans still believe in the baby boom apparently, and those kid-haulers ain't stopping sadly.
 
By that I mean not everyone, of course. I calculated that 1 in 900 prospective buyers (globally) suffices to have a viable production for a sleek 3-seater. You therefore need to work with a global player, not necessarily a car maker. Actually, preferably not. Below: for whom? Interesting is that 60% of the global population live in and around cities, 60% of US households have 2 or more cars.


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From where I am standing, over 60% of U.S. households tend to have 5-6 kids too. Not sure what's going on with the new baby boom lately. When I was growing up, 1-2 kids tops was the norm. A 'one-child household' is unheard of in the midwest around here.

I can't even walk a mile before coming across this promotion of overpopulation:

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From where I am standing, over 60% of U.S. households tend to have 5-6 kids too. Not sure what's going on with the new baby boom lately. When I was growing up, 1-2 kids tops was the norm. A 'one-child household' is unheard of in the midwest around here.

What's the source on the # of kids data?

I know literally nobody in my close or extended networks, both up and down the age chain, with more than 3 kids.

I'd be fascinated to see those numbers if you could please link to it.
 
You've never seen one of those minivans plastered with the stick figures indicating the number of kids/pets they have?

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You can't go a mile here without spotting three or more of 'em. Seems about anywhere near suburbia you got these things. Seems we're in another baby boom.

 
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You've never seen one of those minivans plastered with the stick figures indicating the number of kids/pets they have?

Or course I have (often very Christian or Mormon families - very proud of their whole "clans" of kiddos)

But "bumper stickers" are not really an accurate way to determine society wide data

Do you have links to any data on this?
 
No, just simple math like multiplying the number of minivans against the country population. Obviously in certain states it's gonna vary but this trend has been going on quite recently for my area. I think a year or two ago I first started seeing it, along with a ton of folks driving cars with ZERO license plates, which seems to be a common occurance online as well with many folks wondering why none of them are getting pulled over. I've always been quite observant. I have a very high sense of awareness.

Let's face it, the rate of breeding has indeed skyrocketed. It was completely taboo when I was growing up to have more than two kids at most.
 
If you lived here you could easily make the speculation that the vast majority of suburbanites own minivans with tons of kids. Obviously enough to make EVs impractical. Personally I don't understand this obsession with literally having 'litters' of kids...
 
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