One of the more interesting discussions I had over the holidays was with a couple friends of mine who work at Ford. As usual (to my wife’s good-natured annoyance) the topic eventually turned to cars. What I’ve been really curious about these days is figuring out what our long-term replacement for traditional gasoline engines will be. There seems to be little doubt even among the average citizen that we can’t depend on oil forever, and that some day we’re going to have to get off the teat of the middle east. Of course, no one knows for sure what exactly our savior will be, but there’s plenty of speculation to go around.

Currently the two main candidates are pure electric cars and hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Both of these types of automobiles actually exist and can be bought (sort of) right now; if you’ve got about $100,000 you can grab a blisteringly fast all-electric Tesla Roadster, and for $600 a month and a lot of luck you can get on Honda’s list to lease the family-friendly hydrogen powered FCX Clarity — provided you live in southern California where they’ve installed some hydrogen filling stations, that is. (No, you can’t buy the FCX Clarity — some estimates value the vehicles at $10 million each, given the R&D costs Honda has put into them.) Neither of these vehicles emits anything harmful; the Tesla just gives off a little heat, and the only thing that comes out of the FCX Clarity’s tailpipe is pure water vapor.
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Just yesterday, GM finally revealed the production version of one of the most anticipated cars of the decade, perhaps several decades — the Chevy Volt. Some information about the Volt has been available for a long time, but yesterday was the first time anyone outside of GM’s iron curtain laid eyes on what many hope will be the auto giant’s messiah.

The Volt will be different from popular hybrids available today (like the Prius) in that it will be a series hybrid instead of a parallel hybrid (read more about that distinction at Wikipedia, if you care). It’s quite simple: in parallel hybrids like the Prius, Civic hybrid, Camry hybrid, etc, a small electric motor and the traditional gas motor can both drive the wheels. In a series hybrid, only the electric motor can drive the wheels, and the gas engine is there purely as a backup generator to charge the batteries that drive the electric motor. This gives the series hybrid the ability to go a decent distance without burning a single drop of gasoline — in the Volt’s case, GM claims it will be 40 miles.

So 40 miles on just electricity, and since you can plug it into any electrical outlet to charge it (with a cost estimated at around $0.80 for a full charge) this thing will no doubt be very cheap to operate. Imagine how great it would be, if you live less than 20 miles from where you work, to be able to go to and from work all week without ever using any gas. Good for your wallet, good for the environment, everybody wins, right? This thing will be a revolution, won’t it? Ah, but you must be wondering what the Volt will cost.
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I realize this is the Internet, but this is a whole new kind of stupid.

Someone over on the CobaltSS.net forums, a web site for car tuning enthusiasts, posted the following:

For real entertainment, feel free to read some of the replies on the subsequent 20 pages of comments.

So I’m driving into work this morning on I-65 south, entering Indianapolis, and there’s a spot where I-465 joins I-65 that is perfect for cops to hide. You know the situation…there’s a low cement divider wall off on the shoulder, and it’s positioned just after a slight crest in the road so you couldn’t possibly see the cops camped out in their favorite hiding until you’re practically on top of them.

This morning, there were three motorcycle cops positioned behind this wall, with their handheld radar units perched atop it. My speed-trap Spidey-sense was tingling, so fortunately I wasn’t speeding when I came over the rise, but several people in the other lane were. As I passed, I watched in my rearview mirror as a cop simply pointed at a driver, and then jerked his thumb over to the side of the road. Obediently, the vehicle pulled over, about 50 yards past the cops’ little bunker area. Between the three cops, they had five vehicles pulled over at once!

Is this laziness or efficiency? My first thought was to wonder that so many pulled over because of a hand signal. I have to believe that at 65 or 70 miles an hour, a number of people this morning “didn’t see” the hand signal…or perhaps really didn’t see it. Considering that none of the cops looked inclined to get on his bike anytime soon, I imagine any such drivers just got away scott-free. Is this a situation where you get punished for doing the right thing? What would you do?

If you were looking for concrete evidence that sky-high gas prices are affecting consumer buying habits en masse, look no further.

The Ford F-150, which has been the best selling vehicle in America for 17 straight years, has, in May 2008, fallen to 5th place behind the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, and the new best selling vehicle the Honda Civic.

All four of those well-built vehicles offer a lot for the money and get about 30 mpg or better on the highway, while most full-size trucks are about half that. With $4 gas, a lot more people appear to be asking themselves the question, “Do I really need that truck?” As I’ve personally pointed out for years, most people who drive them don’t actually need them.

Source: Autoblog

From the Captain Obvious news desk, a new report by GMAC Insurance concludes that over 16% of American drivers don’t know the rules of the road and would flunk a written driving test were they forced to take one. Frankly, given how much stupid crap I see during my commute every day, I’m surprised it’s only 1 in 6 who fail. A couple of the biggest problem areas were what to do when approaching a yellow light (it’s not “speed up so you can run the red before the other way turns green”, morons) and the safe distance to maintain behind another vehicle (I’ll give you a hint: it’s a lot more than 3 feet).

Interestingly, drivers out east (New England and DC) had the worst scores, while drivers in the midwest, where I live, had the highest scores and the lowest failure rate. Also, “…the study found that drivers over the age of 35 were more likely to pass, and women were more likely to fail than men.”

Apparently, one of the “bright spots” of the results was that almost all test-takers knew “how to interpret a solid yellow line.” I’m guessing those drivers could also interpret a solid concrete barrier.

Source: CNN Money

Just sixteen Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradales (a special version of the standard 360) were imported to Australia and New Zealand, and now there’s at least one fewer gracing those roads. A (very nice — or perhaps very naive) father allowed his son to borrow his extremely rare Challenge Stradale, who promptly got a little too excited with the right pedal and wrapped the beautiful and expensive sports car around a pole.

As sad as that is, it’s not the best part of the story. No, it actually gets funny. Naturally, anyone who wrecks a Ferrari is going to attract some attention. News crews were apparently there within minutes, and mercilessly filmed the son as he called home to tell his father what had happened. Unfortunately, there’s no video record of what the father did to his son later.

I think I would have just never gone home.

Bayonne, NJ: Squirrel chews on power line. Squirrel ignites. Flaming squirrel falls onto parked 2006 Toyota Camry. Camry is engulfed in flame. Squirrel and car both meet their maker.

Imagine filling out that insurance claim.

Via Amazon Automotive Editor’s Blog and Autoblog.

I drive 120 miles each day on the interstate, so I see a lot of interesting people who seem to call themselves drivers. But even before I began experiencing my current commute, I was known to not withhold my opinions from my fellow passengers about the relative intelligence of some of the other people on the road. Since my wife is fairly tired of hearing me complain, perhaps I can find a somewhat wider audience here for my crusade. Or venting. Whatever.

Crappy drivers of the world, this Bud’s for you:

1. You have cruise control. Use it. Or at least you probably have cruise control. This is just a guess, but I’d say that at least 85% of cars sold today have this lovely feature. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been in a car that doesn’t have cruise control. Yet almost every day I wind up jockeying for position with someone who can’t seem to decide if they want to do 65, 80, 70, 85, 75–MAKE UP YOUR MIND! The worst offenders are the ones who seem to unconsciously match speed with whoever’s next to them — so you go to try and pass them, and they speed up; if they go to pass someone else, they slow down. Half an hour of this crap gets really irritating. Pick a speed, press the button. Wow, that was hard.
2. Tailgating me when I’m behind a dozen other cars cannot make me go faster. Yeah, you in the big, ugly, compensatory Hummer behind me…I can’t even see the bottom of your bumper over my trunk lid. Guess what? You’re not improving the situation. Yeah, I know we’re going 15 mph below the speed limit…see, it’s called rush hour and semi trucks. Trying to kiss my rear bumper only tempts me to slow down even more to piss you off. Or, if I’m ever driving a car I don’t care about, to slam on the brakes (“I thought I saw a deer!”) and collect the insurance money from your sorry butt. Now back off.
3. If you can’t remember that you activated your turn signal a whole 5 seconds ago, you shouldn’t be driving. Seriously. Turn it off already. Even Alberto Gonzales could remember that, and he said “I don’t recall” 168 times during one Senate hearing. Beyond the memory issue, if you’re that unobservant that you don’t even glance down at your dash a couple times a minute (and you’d better at least be checking your speed, because I know you’re not using cruise control — see item #1) so you might actually notice the bright green blinking arrow, I’d say you have some other issues as well.
4. If you cut me off, you don’t get to flip me off. Say I’m going along in the left lane, about to pass you, and suddenly you decide that right about now is the time to pass that truck you’ve been behind for several minutes — yeah, right now, when I’m practically next to you. So you go ahead and cut me off, causing me to slam on my brakes and swerve at 75 mph, nearly causing a multi-car pileup in your wake. Then you proceed to flip me the middle finger through the window of your ultra-cool 1995 Dodge minivan. Wait, what? What the hell was that, a preemptive strike? “Hey, I’m an asshole…and just in case you weren’t convinced, here ya go!“
5. If crap is falling off of your vehicle, PULL OVER! In the last three months, I’ve almost been killed by flying truck tires, car bumpers, and a chair. You can’t tell me that you don’t feel it when your rear bumper is dragging on the pavement, when one of your giant truck tires is one rubber thread away from flying off the wheel at 75 mph, or that you don’t realize that when you don’t tie down furniture in the back of your pickup, it might — just might — become a high-velocity wooden missile. I’m calling the cops on you people from now on. You truckers too — if that tire’s about to fly off, call it quits before you kill someone. I’ve seen a big piece of retread smash the front half of a small car to nothingness. It’s not pretty.

I think that covers the big ones. Any major peeves of yours when driving? Post in the comments.

Forbes Magazine had the brilliant idea to try and enter a HUMMER H2 in a classic car hill-climbing contest. For some reason, the organizers of the vintage auto group allowed the modern 316-hp beast of a truck to compete against a 100-hp 1921 Ford Model T (in black, natch), driven by a 70-year old man, in a race to the top of a 475-foot hill.

I’ll save you the remaining suspense: the Model T won.

Yes, the 86-year-old Ford was, apparently, better equipped to deal with a big hill than the supposed modern destroyer of hills, a HUMMER. Not only that, but the Model T beat the H2 by about 0.8 seconds, a decent margin in the auto racing world (the HUMMER took about 10.74 seconds, the Model T just 9.96 seconds). The Model T was somewhat improved from its stock configuration (which was only 20 horsepower), but it was all using 1920s and -30s period parts — stuff from the original service era of the car. Of course, the economies of power-to-weight ratios immediately spring to mind as a way to explain away this victory of the classic over a modern monstrosity, but in my opinion that doesn’t make it any less cool…I mean, a Model T beat a HUMMER! In a race! And I bet it got better gas mileage doing it.

The HUMMER owners were, naturally, sore losers, saying they would only need another 1,000 feet to win the race (how much dignity must you not have to actually be making excuses for why your $50k+ SUV lost to a wagon with an engine from before the Great Depression?) and that the H2 was like an airplane to the Model T’s mule. However, I’ll remind you that mules can kick. Hard.

Original story on Forbes.com