Linkdump

Latest linkdump:

• Motor Authority: Chevrolet Volt prototypes reach 40 miles in electric-only mode
  
  The Chevrolet Volt [wikipedia.org] is a next generation series-hybrid car that will supposedly allow someone to drive for 40 miles on battery power alone -- before a conventional gas or diesel engine has to be started to provide extended range. The advantages of having such a vehicle (both as a manufacturer or a consumer) are obvious.
  
  The technological advances that must be made before this vehicle can be put into production are staggering (considering that current hybrids can only drive a mile or so at highway speeds with the engine off), leading many to be skeptical [caranddriver.com] of the feasibility of this car. Nevertheless, it appears that a test mule has achieved a key milestone -- driving 40 miles on battery power alone. Outstanding!



• Edmunds.com: The King Kong of Corvettes Versus the Godzilla of Japan
  
  The Nissan GT-R [edmunds.com] (pictured below) has been making a lot of headlines in the car world as the newcomer to the Supercar club, and the successor of the venerable Nissan Skyline [wikipedia.org].
  
  
  Now Edmunds has produced a thorough comparison to the new Corvette ZR1 (aka "Blue Devil") [motortrend.com]. Both have over 400 horsepower and a ton of torque, and neither will be affordable to me in my lifetime. But I can still dream. And the observation that the new monster Corvette has the same steering wheel as a Cobalt is hilarious.

Image of Nissan GT-R from Crouchy69's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Traffic

I keep seeing articles about how Americans are driving fewer and fewer miles these days due to high gas costs. Take, for instance, this article [newsday.com]:

"U.S. fuel demand averaged about 18.6 million barrels a day during the past four weeks, the lowest since June 1999, according to a weekly supply report from the Energy Department, released Thursday [Oct. 16]."

Depending on which source you use, the decline in US driving is generally down a few percent from last year. For instance, take this article [tirereview.com]:

"June figures [from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration] showed a drop of 5% and July continued with decreases of 3.6% from the previous year."

Every time I see an article like this, I scoff, because I'm out on the roads every day, and I haven't felt a decrease in traffic. Then again, without actually measuring traffic objectively, it might be difficult to perceive a decrease of a few percent.


I'm starting to become a believer, though. There are a few key bottlenecks along my commute that have been noticeably better in the past few months. One is along I-90, traveling west from Cleveland -- as you approach the West 117th St exit during afternoon rush hour, there would almost always be a slowdown due to the heavy merge of on-ramp traffic. However, I haven't had to slow down there in a while.

Image of traffic from respres' Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Linkdump

Latest linkdump:

• Top 10 Everyday Things People Do To Ruin Their Cars [ridelust.com]. Lots of interesting tidbits in there. [edit: link fixed.]


• The Next Meltdown: Credit-Card Debt [businessweek.com]. From the article:

  "Credit-card losses are already taking a bite out of lenders' balance sheets. Bank of America, the nation's second-largest issuer behind JPMorgan, revealed on Oct. 6 that roughly $3 billion of its $184 billion credit-card portfolio has soured, a 50% increase from a year ago..."
  
  "Likewise, American Express (AXP), which caters to wealthier borrowers, upped its provisions for credit-card losses from $810 million to $1.5 billion in the latest quarter, a sign that even upscale consumers are having trouble."

  About a year ago, when the stock market really started going down, I pulled almost all of my money out of the market and started buying CDs (thinking this would be the ultimate safe investment). I never imagined that we'd be looking at bank failures a year later. These days, we're looking at silent bank runs [charlotteobserver.com] that can very quickly sink banks. It makes me wonder if a healthy bank could be sunk these days by a media story hinting that it may be in trouble.


• Here's a video of a F-35B Joint Strike Fighter perform a vertical take-off, maneuver while hovering, and then vertically land [youtube.com].
  
  
  
  That is incredible.

Styling Improvements at Mercedes

I was into cars even when I was growing up. One of the brands that didn't even register on my radar was Mercedes. And the reason is because every time I saw a Mercedes, I thought that the styling just screamed OLD PEOPLE. Here's an example from the 90s:


Back then, the "exotics" that I wanted to buy when I grew up were the BMWs, the Porsches, the Corvettes, etc. Those were the cars that really made me impatient to get old enough to drive. As far as I was concerned, Mercedes, Bentley, Buick, Rolls Royce, Cadillac, and Jaguar were all the same -- cars for old people.

I'm amazed at how Mercedes has turned it around. When I look at a Mercedes these days, the styling makes me want to buy one:


Don't get me wrong -- I would never buy one, because the styling doesn't change the fact that they are stupidly heavy, and needlessly (mechanically) complicated cars. But from a styling point of view, I dig them.

It kind of makes me wonder whether Mercedes styling has actually changed that much relative to the rest of the car market, or whether I have just "matured" as a car buyer and am starting to like the cars that are traditionally aimed at old people. I'm pretty sure that it's the former. And I think that Lexus has gone in the opposite direction -- their styling is clearly aimed at old people and is no longer appealing to the younger audiences.

Picture of 1990 Mercedes 190E via michieldijcks' Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Autocross

I have mentioned here and there about participating in autocross, which is an amateur form of autoracing that is relatively safe and economical. You are racing against the clock, not wheel to wheel. And whenever I try to explain it to people, I can just tell that what they're imagining doesn't match reality.

Below is a well-produced news segment explaining what autocross is. I need to remember to link to this every time someone asks me to explain autocross.



If the embedded video doesn't work, use this link [racingfilm.com].

Oh, and the 2008 Autocross National Championships [scca.com] is next week.

Red Light Cameras

Like many other cities, Cleveland has deployed several red light cameras, that are designed to automate ticketing for people who run red lights at intersections.


It is readily apparent to everyone that these devices are there to generate revenue for the city, not encourage driver safety as most cities argue. But I had not seen actual data to back up this assertion until now. It turns out that there have been several studies that show that red light cameras actually increase the rate of crashes, instead of increasing public safety. For instance, an article on Science Daily [sciencedaily.com] cites a study performed by Florida researchers. Here is a quote from the article:

"'The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work... Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections.'"

"Traffic fatalities caused by red-light running are not increasing in Florida and account for less than 4 percent of the state’s yearly traffic deaths. In contrast, more than 22 percent of the state’s traffic fatalities occur at intersections for reasons other than red-light running."

What's even more aggravating is that 6 cities have been found guilty of shortening yellow light durations [motorists.org], in order to increase revenue from red light cameras. The cities are Chattanooga, Tennessee; Dallas, Texas; Springfield, Missouri; Lubbock, Texas; Nashville, Tennessee; and Union City, California. And you can bet that they're not the only ones who are guilty of this practice.

Picture of accident at intersection from Scoobyfoo's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

IOUSA and Autocross

• Tonight, you can see showings of the documentary I.O.U.S.A. [agorafinancial.com] at locations all over the country. Here's a description of the movie:

  "I.O.U.S.A. boldly examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens..."
  
  "The ultimate power of I.O.U.S.A. is that the film moves beyond doomsday rhetoric to proffer potential financial scenarios and propose solutions about how we can recreate a fiscally sound nation for future generations."



• Heimlich took some incredible shots at an autocross event last weekend. Here are a selection:
  
  
  
  More pictures on Flickr [flickr.com].

Falling US Demand for Oil

Bloomberg.com: U.S. Retail Gasoline Falls to $3.85 a Gallon. From the article:

"Gasoline prices retreated along with inventories, which have fallen 3.6 percent since July 18 to 209.2 million barrels, the Energy Department said August 6."

"U.S. gasoline demand fell a 15th consecutive week, as motorists cope with high fuel prices by driving less..."

Congratulations, America. You have done it -- you've managed to drive down prices by driving less. Now that the prices have reached a more reasonable level, you may resume wasting gas again.


On a related note, there are more and more articles being written now about the demographic inversion of American cities [poligazette.com] -- the more affluent parts of society used to move as far away from cities as possible, but in some cities, the general trend is for them to move back in (gentrification). Is this a real movement, or are we just setting ourselves up for another housing boom/bust cycle?

And on another related note, prices for new and used SUVs have been decimated, because no one wants to buy them [nytimes.com].

Image of traffic from respres' Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Fuelly

Matt Haughey [wholelottanothing.org] and Paul Bausch [onfocus.com] have started up Fuelly [fuelly.com], which is a website that allows you to share and track your car's fuel mileage, among other things.

They just opened their doors to the public last week, and apparently, it has started to take off.

I actually have been tracking the fuel consumption in my daily driver (and using Matlab to plot the statistics), so I can see why people would want to use this kind of service. If you are looking for a new vehicle, you can get access to a database of real-world fuel consumption by owners of that vehicle (albeit the data may be skewed, because Fuelly users will probably be more fuel efficient than average).

The reason that I have started to track my fuel mileage is because there are several things that I would like to measure (being a scientist), such as:

• Is there a noticeable impact on fuel economy when I change my engine air filter?
• Does my car do better with certain brands of gas than others (as I suspect that it does)?
• There is certainly a temperature-related effect on fuel economy, as lower ambient temperatures absolutely cause lower fuel efficiency numbers. But what is the relationship? Linear? Asymptotic?

In tracking my own data, I notice that the measurement of gallons of fuel is the largest source of uncertainty. The underlying assumption in these measurements is that if you fill your tank to the top every time you refuel, you will know how much gas you consumed in the miles that you have driven since your last fill up.

However, the gas pumps don't always fill your gas tank up to the same level. And if you "top off" your tank, you totally will throw the measurement off. My data once (erroneously) showed that I achieved 45mpg over one tank in my non-hybrid car (which is unrealistically high), because the gas station I went to didn't fully fill up my gas tank. And then on the next stop, where my gas tank did actually get filled to the top, my fuel economy dropped precipitously. Maybe there needs to be a way in Fuelly to add an asterisk to data that is questionable.

Image of Fuelly stats from mathowie's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Secret Agent Driving Experience

My sister sent me a link to a great gift idea for all of those car nuts: Secret Agent Driving Experience [excitations.com].


From the description of the driving school:

• "...grab hold of the wheel and test your limits in the same training programs used by professional special forces, SWAT teams and protection agencies and learn to nudge your adversary into a spin at high speed without losing control of your own vehicle!"


• "Learn to thwart vehicle assaults, break through barricades, do a reverse 180, and outrun the bad guys at 100 mph"

That looks like a ton of fun! This reminds me of those crazy police chase videos where the police try to use the fish tail maneuver [google.com] to spin out a fugitive's car. This is the kind of driving school that I dream about.

Picture of drifting car from jepoycamboy's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Ugliest New Cars

Recently, I saw a link to A List of the Ten Ugliest Cars Currently Sold in the United States [jalopnik.com]. Not surprisingly, I disagree with most of the ones on the list. So, here is mine:

10. Buick Enclave

Grills with just vertical bars are retro. Except that it's not retro in the cool, 60s and 70s, Mustang and Camaro way. It's reminiscent of the automotive design dark age known as the 80s. Ugh.

9. Chrysler 300

This car has always made me think of a really bad Bently ripoff. Why anyone would want to ripoff the design from a car that only elderly people would buy is beyond me.

8. Mitsubishi Lancer

Even though this car is clearly an econobox, it doesn't have to look like an econobox. That is where they went horribly wrong. And on top of that, the taillights are the final straw that send this car to the ugly car hall of fame.

7. Scion Xb

It's like they took the distinctive design of the previous generation Xb and let the people who designed the (insanely boring) Corolla designers run amok with it. So, now, instead of having a distinctive shape, this car is just another rounded box. By the way, great job making the C-pillar huge so that there is no rear visibility.

6. Subaru WRX

I have previously written about how ugly this cars taillights are, but really, it's just ugly from any angle. They took a rounded shape designed to appeal to older buyers, and then slapped a huge-assed hood scoop on it so that it will appeal to absolutely no one. The previous generation WRXs look beautiful next to this one.

5. Ford Focus

Yet another car with no redeeming stylistic qualities. I can't help but think that the other half of the taillights are supposed to be on the trunk lid, but were somehow forgotten.

4. 2009 Nissan Maxima

The Maxima hasn't looked attractive in nearly a decade. Now it looks like they decided to rip off the new Honda Accord exterior -- they shifted the headlights to the sides of the car to make room for the most enormous ugly grill that they could slap on it.

3. Dodge Caliber

The Dodge Caliber has always looked like a prototype that never got finished. The took the boxy front and rear ends from one car, and then took the rounded middle from another car. Congratulations on producing a mid-sized car with an appallingly small amount of interior space.

2. 2009 Ford Flex

All of these crossovers have convinced me that we have now come full circle in car design. In the 90s, we shifted away from station wagons to SUVs. And now we're going back to station wagons -- they're just called crossovers now. Ford did a great job of not even trying to disguise the fact that it's a station wagon. The result looks like the Mini Clubman's ugly big brother.

1. 2009 Honda Pilot

What is the point of even putting a badge on the grill, if you are going to surround it with so much metal that it looks camouflaged? It's like the designers were so worried about people commenting how ugly the rest of the vehicle it is, that they decided to throw a grill on it that is so over-the-top ugly that it would make people completely forget about the rest of the car.

Car Soccer

My favorite TV show these days is Top Gear [bbc.co.uk], which I probably have mentioned several times. It's a show for car enthusiasts, where they never stop amazing viewers with the crazy shit they think to do with cars.

Someone recently pointed me out to some segments that I missed. They actually put together a soccer match, where they used cars to kick the ball around:



Later, they did the same thing with VW Foxs vs. Toyota Aygos [youtube.com].

Those are incredible! Especially where they spin the cars out to hit the ball with the back end of the car. They look like they would have been a ton of fun to shoot.

1988 Lincoln Town Car

We sold one of our cars this weekend - the '88 Lincoln Town Car. It had a lot of sentimental value, because it has been in Heimlich's family since it was new.


It was in really good shape, despite its age. We knew all of its ins and outs, like exactly how many cellos will fit in its enormous trunk...


And it was built back in the era where the odometers only had 5 digits, so it is impossible to tell whether the car has 118,000 miles on it or 218,000 miles:


We were really sad to see it go, but it was time.

Toyota's i-real

Have you guys seen articles [jidpo.or.jp] about Toyota's new concept vehicle, the i-REAL?


How can anyone look at that and NOT think of those fat people in the movie WALL-E [imdb.com]?

For those of you who haven't seen the movie (this isn't really a spoiler), everyone in the future is fat and lazy, and spend all day being transported around on hover chairs so that they never have to actually get up and move around. It looks like all you would have to do is add a TV screen to the i-REAL, and you'd be there.

Oh, by the way, Toyota... Congratulations on taking the "worst car name EVAR" award away from the Subaru B9 Tribeca [edmunds.com], which has been the reigning champion for 4 years now.

Anyway, here is a short description about the i-REAL:

"It is the attainable vision of a seamless movement from room, to pavement, to road. In pedestrian areas, shortening its wheelbase allows it to maneuver naturally among people at eyelevel. And on the road, the wheelbase lengthens to provide a lower center of gravity and more agile driving performance."

Electronic Climate Control

I would like to expose the stupidity of the electronic climate control in cars. This has been a standard feature in luxury cars for some time, and is quickly becoming a standard feature in every other segment.

Ideally, the way that electronic climate control would work is you would set it to 75^o or so, and then leave it there. But that's not how it works. At best, you have to constantly fiddle around with it to maintain a comfortable temperature in the interior of your car. At worse, it takes far longer to fiddle around with it, because it takes several button presses every time you want to adjust the temperature.

How could the car manufacturers think that you will just want to maintain one temperature in the car at all times? The temperature that you will want it at is going to depend on how much sun is coming through the windows, the humidity, how much clothing you are wearing, etc.

Remember the old style A/C controls?


There used to be a knob for the fan control and a knob for temperature control. Adjusting the temperature was quick and easy, because you just had to turn a knob -- something you could easily do while driving without even having to look down from the road.

Here are the A/C controls from my car:


This is actually the best case scenario, because the settings are similar to the older style controls. In the morning, when it's cold, I can easily flip the temperature control to one end of the dial... and in the afternoon, when it's hot, I can flip it to the other end of the dial.

In many cars nowadays, instead of the temperature control being a knob, it is a set of buttons. So, if you want to go from 78^o to 68^o when you get in your car in the afternoon, it takes 10 button presses. And let's not forget that those buttons are harder to find when driving...

And don't forget about the automatic fan control. We have three different cars, all of different makes, and the first thing that I do whenever I turn on the A/C in any of them is turn off the automatic fan control. Why do the car makers think that they will know how to control the fan better than I could? The desired fan speed is going to depend on whether you have passengers in the back, or whether you're wearing sunglasses (higher fan speeds bother my eyes if I'm not wearing sunglasses), etc.

Just give me the old style A/C controls, please...

Picture of older style A/C controls from phoenixdailyphoto's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Top Gear

The show Top Gear [topgear.com] on the BBC has quickly become one of my favorite shows, and is indeed the only show I watch on a regular basis anymore. It's a show where new cars are reviewed and compared, where crazy car stunts are performed, and where cars are raced to show relative performance. But the best part is how funny the hosts are.


Now that it has been announced [thecelebritycafe.com] that Adam Corolla is going to be one of the hosts for the American version of the show, I can't help but think that the new one is going to be totally bastardized. I think that Corolla is a really funny guy, but I just can't see how it's going to be as funny.


In the British show, one of the things I love is how they will race a car against anything -- people on skis, people in jet-powered kayaks, bobsleds, you-name-it. It's incredible. And they're willing to do whatever it takes to make a great show -- whether it be turning a regular car into a ridiculously huge radio-controlled toy, and then try to jump it over camper trailers... or race huge RVs. I hope that they will be able to maintain the same amount of fun in the American version.

Picture of Top Gear host Richard Hammond with Bugatti Veyron from Garrette's Flickr Photostream [flickr.com].

Picture of Top Gear set from smin's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

Coasters for Car Nuts

Ok, here is another one of those kitschy gifts for car nuts:


Get it? They're drink coasters that look like brake rotors (buy them here [everythingcarz.com]). And they even have a holder that looks like a brake caliper!

I love it! What are they going to think of next? This is even better than the rings that look like tires [brianbergerondesigns.com].

Alignment Equipment

I've been thinking lately about doing my own car alignments. I haven't made a decision either way, but I'm trying to sort through all of the issues. Here's a picture of someone's homemade alignment rig:


For instance, what kind of equipment would I need? Most of the work can be done with basic tools (wrenches, tape measure, string, etc).

I think that the main problem with doing alignments is eliminating the friction between the tire and the ground. You need the full weight of the vehicle to be sitting on the tires. But when that occurs, it is very difficult to steer the tires left and right. Furthermore, that friction creates forces and moments that prevent the wheels from going to their natural positions (preventing you from being able to measure the toe correctly, for instance). I have seen that some people have solved this problem by parking the tires on top of a stack of two vinyl flooring tiles that have grease smeared in between them.

I see that Pegasus Racing has a full suite of alignment tools to choose from. I might start there.

Car Tail Light Styling

What is with those crazy automotive stylists these days? They just have one bad idea right after another.

Right now, one of the disturbing trends that I have seen is the migration towards "ricey" tail lights. For example, take the newly redesigned Subaru WRX:


Do these kinds of tail lights actually appeal to Subaru customers? My hunch is that there is a narrow (VERY narrow) segment of the population who actually like those tail lights, and the rest of the population is turned off by them. And the narrow segment of the population that likes them probably would be willing to change them out in the aftermarket, anyway.

I mean, what person sees a vehicle like that and actually thinks that they would want a car that looks like a 16-year-old wannabe street racer riced it out for them?

Picture of WRX courtesy of thatjonesboy's Flickr photostream [Flickr.com].

Remaindered

Latest linkdump:

• Here's a link to a video of a Honda Civic with a Corvette engine [streetfire.net] dropped into it. It looks like it would be incredible to drive, albeit really scary. And at the same time, I can't help but think how much work that would that have been, for something so pointless...


• PostSecret [blogspot.com] has a bunch of postcards on display from people who have sent in their Mother's Day secrets. After reading them all, it is clear that there are a lot of disfunctional family relationships out there, some of which are caused by issues that seem so simple to solve. It is yet another reminder of how easy it is to take loved ones for granted.


• On kottke.org [kottke.org], I saw a link to an interesting article about Niagara Falls [newsweek.com]. Did you know that they adjust the flow of water over the falls to make them more dramatic during the tourist season? Here's a quote:

  "...of all the world's natural wonders, Niagara Falls may be the most artificial. Upriver, technicians turn up the falls for the tourist season, by diverting less water for hydropower. From April through mid-September, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., they let 100,000 cubic feet per second go over the falls—double the usual 50,000, but still only half the natural volume. Starting as early as the 1830s, the topography has been tweaked, even rebuilt... The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has blasted and excavated, filled and graded; it has added eight acres to Goat Island, between the Bridal Veil and Horseshoe Falls, implanted sensors to detect rocks coming loose and reshaped the Horseshoe's American edge; the Canadian falls is now 400 feet narrower than it used to be.

Intelligent Highways

I was talking with some friends about the future of highways. Are we really going to be able to just keep adding lanes to highways as the required capacity increases? Arguably in most major cities, we have already hit the point where adding more lanes wouldn't help much, because highway width doesn't scale well.

Most American cities are now so decentralized that there is no hope for conventional mass transportation to ever work efficiently. What we can do is make our vehicles and roadways more efficient, although I am not claiming that I have the solution.


What if vehicles could communicate with one another? What if we could automate the task of driving (at least on the highway, and switch to manual control on surface streets). Maybe one day, if you wanted to drive from Cleveland to New York, you could put your car on the highway, switch to auto-pilot and sleep. Then you'd get awoken near your destination.

Although there are several technological challenges that lie in the way of automated driving, the most difficult one, IMHO, is the collision avoidance problem. I think that in order to reduce the collision avoidance opportunities, you'd want to have a system where vehicles on auto-pilot link up to form a train. The aerodynamic drag and cost of propulsion could be divided to make them each more efficient. Once they are mechanically linked together, there is no collision avoidance that has to be performed in between those vehicles.

Another reason why collision avoidance is such an important problem is because people will probably be unwilling to adopt an auto-pilot unless it offers a dramatically reduced chance of getting into an accident, compared to a human driver. I think that if an auto-pilot reduced the chance of getting into an accident by half, people would still want to drive themselves, because they would rather have their fate in their own hands.

The left-most lane could be reserved for these vehicles, and the speed limit for linked up vehicles could be higher, which would encourage their adoption.

Picture of highway at night from Nrbelex's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

225/45ZR17 Tires

Anyone need some 17" tires? I am trying to clear the garage, and I have two (2) General Exclaim UHP tires of size 225/45ZR17. Exclaim UHP are ultra-high performance summer tires.

They are used, but have plenty of tread left (see pictures below). The tread is still way above the wear bars. They have never been patched or plugged or anything like that.

Click for larger version:


New ones sell for $80 on Tire Rack [tirerack.com]. I am looking for $80/obo for the pair. Anyone want to make me an offer?

Formula One

I have been waiting for this weekend for a long time. It will be the start of the Formula One racing season.


Last season went down to the wire before it was decided which driver was going to win the championship. There hasn't been a Formula One season that exciting in a while. There were incredible battles on the track, nutty behavior by drivers off the track, a spying scandal between teams, and a driver nearly won the championship in his rookie year (Lewis Hamilton, seated middle in the below picture).


I have no reason to believe that this season won't be the same. New cars, same incredible drivers....

Picture of Ferrari via chrispercival's Flickr photostream, and picture of post-race interviews with Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen via varlen's Flickr photostream.

Buying Car Parts

Recently, I bought some car parts off of some guy on a message board. I was buying a set of used wheels, and the guy was in Indiana (which is a few hours drive from here). I decided to drive it, because the cost of shipping them to me would have been almost the amount that the wheels cost in the first place.

I think that it goes without saying that any aftermarket wheels I would be buying would be gaudy chrome-plated spinners. For my '92 Tercel.

Ok, anyway, the thing that I always worry about with these exchanges is being held up. You know, like, at gunpoint. I mean, call me paranoid, but it probably wouldn't be that difficult to spoof an IP address, post a few items that are for sale, and then use a prepaid cell phone to make contact with any potential buyers. Boom, instant cash. Wheels aren't cheap, which is why I was buying them from some potentially-shady guy on a message board.

Luckily, as usual, my fears were wildly out of proportion with the actual threat, and the exchange went off without incident. Being paranoid has given me a bunch of ideas for novels I could write, though...

Michelin Next Generation Airless Tires

Jim recently sent me some information about Michelin's next generation airless tire. In the name of full disclosure, I will mention at this point that I work for a tire manufacturer (one of Michelin's competitors).


I tried finding something official about it, and all I was able to find was this pretty impressive video [qj.net].

Like a lot of technology releases, the information that you can find is heavy on the eye-candy, and short on the details and technical info. If they are able to bring it to market, it might be huge. No more checking your tire pressure, or worrying about punctures.

They'll have a lot of difficult hurdles to clear before then, though. If it's substantially more expensive to manufacture, people won't buy them. If they feel harsh when driving over bumps, people won't buy them. If the mass of the tires are significantly higher than conventional ones, or if they have higher rolling resistance, car manufacturers will not want them, because they won't be able to hit their fuel economy targets. Any of these issues have the potential to relegate this type of product to a niche market, like military vehicles, where ride and rolling resistance are of secondary concern.

Nevertheless, it's a very interesting design, and they are intriguing.

2008 Saturn Astra

Recently, I got to check out the new Saturn Astra [motortrend.com]. I didn't get to actually drive it, but I got to poke my head around, and see it for myself (although I wasn't serious about buying one).


For a small car, it seems to be proportioned well, and has a well laid-out interior. The new offerings from GM are notably better than what they were selling only a few short years ago (which I never would have considered buying - EVER).

Some of the interior pieces seemed to be a little too cheaply made. But maybe that is inevitable in an economy car. It has a twist-rear axle suspension system. That is the first thing that I noticed that would make me hesitate to buy one of these, due to the tendency to not handle as well as multi-link systems.

Then I noticed that the front swaybar endlink was actually made out of plastic. That actually really shocked me, because that is not the type of part that you want to worry about failing on you. I don't think that suspension components should be made out of plastic. If a front endlink breaks, the swaybar will no longer be connected to the suspension system. The swaybar resists body roll, but also affects the front/rear balance of the vehicle. If you disconnect the front swaybar, the roll stiffness of the vehicle will shift rearward, and the vehicle will tend to oversteer (which is bad).

I don't think that I would buy a car that had plastic endlinks (or, at least, I would switch them with metal ones). I hope that this does not become a trend.

Picture of the European version of the Astra via mabarto's Flickr photostream [Flickr.com]

Unhappy Lexus Customer

I haven't always done all of my own car maintenance. I did some of it here and there. But it wasn't until last year when I really made a conscious effort to get up off my lazy ass and do as much of it myself as possible. And like many other weekend mechanics, I am finding that paying a dealer or a mechanic to do the work for you doesn't work very well, because they often don't do the job properly.

We have a fairly old Lexus that I used to take to the dealer for maintenance, back when I was too stupid to know any better. I've had bad experiences at some domestic brand dealers with service, but figured that a luxury brand like Lexus would be far better.

Except that now that I'm doing all of the maintenance myself, I am finding all of the half-assed things they did. According to the maintenance schedule that I found for my vehicle, it is now due for a new cabin air filter. So, I bought one, figured out how to take apart the dashboard, reached inside and found... nothing. There was a slot for one, but no cabin air filter was installed.

Of course, I wasn't doing my own maintenance, so I had no idea how long it has been like this. It's possible that it never had an air filter. I then discovered that many other people have complained about the same issue. This annoyance is just one of the latest in a series of things that have caused me to be fairly unhappy with Lexus -- a brand you would expect to have the best customer service (or nearly so) out of all of the makes.

Car Fuel Economy Increases

I'm sure that everyone has read about the new legislation mandating fuel economy increases for automobiles [yahoo.com]. This is something that I generally support.


The thing is, the last time there was a big fuel economy push, we went through this automotive dark age called The 80s, where all of the cars were crap until the automakers got their heads out of their collective asses. That was the era that spawned the Chevy Citation, the Dodge Omni, the AMC Pacer, the Chevy Chevette, and the Cadillac Cimarron. Need I say more? In fact, it is difficult for me to think of a single car from that era that was memorable for a reason other than how crappy it was. Despite my fanatical devotion to Def Leppard, Van Halen, and Motley Crue, it's not really an era that I would want to revisit.

Even the Mustangs and Camaros were total crap.

Picture of Chevette via dave_7's Flickr photostream [flickr.com].

ESPN's New Year's Even No Limits

Apparently, ESPN is going to have a crazy New Year's Eve broadcast this year, featuring two different motorsports stunts sponsored by Red Bull [redbull.com]. From their website:

"Maddison, a freestyle motocross star from Australia, will attempt to jump the length of a football field (more than 300 feet) to set a new motorcycle distance jumping world record. Millen, a champion drifter and movie stunt driver hailing from New Zealand, will attempt the first-ever backflip of an off-road racing truck."

As a guy that is into motorsports, this is something that I will definitely want to watch.


The thing about doing a backflip in a vehicle is that you are trying to get the vehicle to rotate about an unstable rotation axis. This is why it hasn't been done before. Take a typical book for example. Hold it in front of you so that the cover is readable to you. The longest dimension should be from the bottom of the cover to the top of the cover. Let's call that the x-axis. The 2nd longest dimension should be the width of the cover. Let's call that the y-axis. Try flipping the book up into the air so that it makes one complete rotation about the y-axis, but not rotating about any of the other axes (most notably the x-axis). You could spend all day attempting (and failing) to do that, because it's an unstable rotation axis.

People have tried (and failed) to do this before with a four-wheeled vehicle -- people who don't understand dynamics. My guess is that they have altered the mass distribution of the vehicle in this new stunt such that the lateral axis is no longer the intermediate inertial axis. For instance, if you made the mass distribution more like a motorcycle, the lateral axis would be turned into a stable rotation axis, and the stunt would become possible. Otherwise, that driver is in for a world of hurt.

Canada's Ice Road

Recently, I saw an article about Canada's Ice Road [popularmechanics.com].


Way up north in Canada, there is mining for diamonds. Canada is now the third largest producer of diamonds by value. Fuel and other supplies going to the mines are carried by trucks along a road that mostly consists of ice over frozen lake beds.

I have been fascinated by the articles I have read. Here's a quote:

"As a laden truck moves over ice, it creates a shallow depression all around it — a sort of bowl in the ice, several inches deep and many yards across. The greater the speed, the deeper the depression. Above a critical velocity that varies with local conditions, a truck can damage the roadbed so severely that the next vehicle to come along will break through the ice. For this reason, the top speed on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto route is usually about 22 mph. In some stretches, as on Waite Lake, the maximum is just a few miles per hour."

The water that is displaced by this depression forms a wavefront in front of the truck. And that wavefront can cause the ice to break when it reaches the shore. So, the roads are constructed so that the trucks have to make s-turns as they approach the shorelines, so that the wavefronts are directed away from the road. They also have to keep the roads plowed, because any snow will insulate the ice and cause it to warm up, weakening it.

Plus, the trucks have to travel in groups, so that if any fall through the ice, the others can radio for help. But obviously, the ice can only support so much weight, so the trucks have to keep their distance from each other.

Picture of the Ice Road from Andrew Johnson's Flickr photostream [flickr.com]

Luxury Vehicles Going Weird Direction

I feel that a lot of the luxury car companies are going off in a weird/bad direction with their features and/or styling. Every year, their cars get more and more unappealing to me.

Let's start with BMW. All of their new cars are equipped with run-flat tires, which might be the worst solution ever. No reputable garage will patch them if you puncture one, new run-flats in the right size are difficult to find in stores (unless you go to the dealer), and they're horrendously expensive (even if you don't go to the dealer). That's enough of a reason not to buy one.

But then BMW decides that it's also going to remove the oil dipstick from the engine compartment (which is just annoying from a usability standpoint [jalopnik.com]).

And every review that I have seen of iDrive has been negative [roadandtravel.com].

Then there is Lexus, which apparently hired the designers of the Pontiac Aztek [wikipedia.org] (a.k.a. the ugliest car in history). Take a look at the latest IS:


The rear end (especially the tail lights) looks way too much like the Mitsubishi Lancer (pictured below). You should never have a situation where a really expensive luxury car is almost indistinguishable from an econobox.


It's not that I don't like the styling or features of new cars. Just the ones of several luxury manufacturers that should know better. I dig Mercedes, Honda, Audi, VW, Saturn, Volvo, etc.

New Nissan GT-R

I've been seeing a lot of articles recently about the new Nissan GT-R [nissanusa.com] (latest version of the legendary Skyline GT-R [wikipedia.org]).


The thing is, did anyone else see the pictures of the new GT-R and not think that it just looked like a Toyota Celica (picture below) with a really bad body kit?


And when I say "bad", I don't mean "good bad". I mean, "bad bad". A Toyota Celica is really an econobox, to top things off. It really doesn't have the type of image that you would expect to be emulated in a venerable super-car.

Random Car Thoughts

A couple of random things that are car-related:

• I frequently am asked questions like, "What is the difference between understeer and oversteer?" Recently on a message board (related to autp-racing), I saw perhaps the best explanation I have ever heard in someone's signature:

  "Understeer is when you hit the wall with the front of the car and oversteer is when you hit the wall with the rear of the car.
  Horsepower is how fast you hit the wall, torque is how far you take the wall with you."

• In the past few weeks, I have had to drive a lot of cars that I don't own. And what I have noticed almost universally (in other words, independent of manufacturer) is that I use the tilt steering feature most often in order to make the instrument cluster fully visible -- and not for the purpose you would think, which is to put the steering wheel in the most comfortable position possible. It seems that packaging constraints these days are such that you can't have both.

Body Blading

One of the things that I was able to do last weekend (one of the first relaxing weekends in a long time), was catch up on all of the YouTube videos I have wanted to watch.

One of the videos I found was of body blading:



Essentially, a guy gets dressed up in a suit that has tons of in-line roller skate wheels, so that in virtually any position, he will be supported by the wheels. That way, he can head-first luge down a road... without the luge. It's pretty amazing.

Near the beginning of the run, the guy has to make a pretty tight turn, and he uses some ridiculous slip angles to generate the necessary cornering force. You can actually see material being left on the road from the wheels as he drifts through the turn.

Near the end, there is a tunnel section that totally reminds me of an infamous level in Test Drive 5 [wikipedia.org] (a.k.a. the best driving game EVAR). And my favorite part of the video is where he blows by a motorcyclist.

Motorhome Racing

Here's one of the funniest YouTube videos I have seen in a long time:



The deal is that some people get the idea to try to put together a motorhome racing league. You know, those huge land yachts? The idea being that most auto racers have a motorhome anyway, which they sleep in when they are traveling to and from races. So, why not just race the motorhome that they're bringing anyway?

In the course of things, they end up rewriting all of the rules that they wrote before the actual racing began...

Weekend Mechanics, Part 2

Being a weekend mechanics has just given me a great idea for a TV show.

All you would have to do is take a couple of people with wildly-overpriced educations, hand them tools and watch them attempt to fix stuff on their cars.

Having a show where you are guaranteed to see someone get hit in the face with brake fluid, etc every episode would just be pure comedy gold.

It would even be funnier if they had contestants with actual technical achievements in their career. You know:

"The next contestant has a PhD in Astro-Physics. He was the first person to identify an extra-solar planet and pioneered new techniques in radio telescope interferometry. Now let's watch as he tries to figure out how to use a wrench..."

Weekend Mechanics

One of our friends owns a fleet of cars that would put some of the smaller car rental offices to shame. This weekend, I'll be attempting to teach him how to change the oil in a car.

It's going to be like the blind leading the blind.

Seriously, this has all of the makings of a future posting on Fark [fark.com]:


"See, after you get the car jacked up, you take this wrench-thing and remove the hooby (which is the technical term for whatever this thing is)..." I would video tape everything, but I'm afraid that it would become evidence.

At least I know not to try to use a shotgun to remove the lug nuts [yahoo.com].

Synthetic Motor Oil

Last week, I went to a lecture being hosted by the Cleveland section of the Society of Automotive Engineers (of which I am a member). The topic of the lecture was motor oil, and why there are so many varieties.

Of particular interest to me and many of the other attendants was whether synthetic oil was really better for your car than conventional oil. The lecturer went through all of the components of motor oil, from the base oil to all of the additives. Motor oils have all kinds of additives in them to reduce friction, change viscosity, and a ton of other things...

Basically, the take home message that I received was that the base oil in synthetic motor oils is superior to that in conventional oils for resisting volatility and breakdown in high temperature applications. However, the additives in synthetics are consumed at the same rate. And because the maximum quantity of additives is regulated, they will be consumed in the same amount of time, regardless of whether you use synthetic or conventional motor oil.

The bottom line being that if you switch your car over to synthetic motor oil, you cannot go longer in between oil changes.

Automedia has an article about synthetic motor oil that basically says the same thing. Unfortunately, it is difficult to separate a lot of facts from myths about synthetics, because a lot of the information is put out there by the oil companies, who have a vested interest in convincing consumers to pay more.

Defroster without A/C

My 2002 Acura RSX-S is a little quirky. For instance, whenever you turn the knob to make the heating or air conditioning air come out of the vents on the top of the dashboard, the A/C is automatically kicked on. There are plenty of times when I want air to hit the windshield, but don't want the A/C on. For instance, there are some days when I am worried about the window fogging up, but it is warm enough to have the windows open.

I finally found a page where someone described the process to get the defogger on without the A/C:

• Turn the car off.


• Turn temperature knob to full blue (all the way to the left - counter-clockwise).


• Turn vent knob to off (all the way to the left - counter-clockwise). Make sure the vent knob is in the face position - NOT the auto position.


• Hold down air recirculation button as well as A/C button.


• Keep both buttons depressed and start car.


• Keep both buttons depressed for 7 seconds.


• The A/C light should blink.

Voila! I am copying it here so that I can find it the next time I need it. I wish that car manufacturers would stop adding useless features that owners have to spend lots of time trying to figure out how to defeat.

DARPA Urban Challenge

Well, the DARPA Urban Challenge is over [theregister.co.uk] and the winner (Carnegie Mellon) has been announced. The DARPA Urban Challenge was a competition between teams developing autonomous cars that have to run around in an urban environment, obeying traffic laws, interacting with other vehicles, and planning and replanning their routes without human guidance or intervention.

It has been a little difficult getting detailed information. I am interested because my PhD adviser has been involved, along with several of my former co-workers. Team Case apparently did not get selected from the National Qualifying Event to go to the finals. I caught this interesting little blurb [wired.com] on Wired about what happened to them:

"It was a case of too much work, too little sleep, and too much voltage that nearly doomed Team Case's entry in the DARPA Urban Challenge. One team member accidentally connected 24-volt laser range finders belonging to the team's robot dune buggy, named Dexter, into a 48-volt power supply, frying them instantly."

"Dexter is the only car in the race without any seating for humans, and it's the only one to be built from the ground up as a robot car. It made a good showing in the 2005 Grand Challenge, covering 81 miles of the 132-mile course for Team ENSCO before a blown tire forced it out."

The blog on Wired [wired.com] actually has had the most detailed information that I have been able to find on the event.

Michelin Lawsuit

Disclaimer: I work for a tire manufacturer.

I recently saw a link to this article [greenvilleonline.com] about a woman who sued Michelin and won. Apparently, she only bought two new tires and they were put on the front axle of her vehicle by the shop. She later lost control of the vehicle, and claimed that had the shop been informed that new tires should go on the rear axle, she would not have lost control of the vehicle.

"The jury found Michelin 100 percent responsible for the negligence that caused the accident, granting $32.4 million in damages to Boudreaux and her sons, according to court documents.

"Michelin officials were 'a little surprised and a little disappointed' by the verdict, Mann said."

It kind of makes you wonder whether we're going to get to the point where tire shops will only replace all 4 tires at a time, to protect themselves against litigation.

The article says that the accident happened on a wet road, but it would be interesting to know the other details of the accident: was driver error involved, did the car have ESC, etc.

It would also be interesting to know why the new tires were put on the front of the car, as I'm sure the shop knew the rule of thumb about always putting new tires on the rear axle.