They used metal sintering to make the brackets. Sintered metal is NOT strong, so must be heat treated after forming to get any proper crystal growth and strength. That isn't mentioned so probably was not done.
The same technology could be used to make molds to cast the metal parts rather than sintering them and then heat treating them. This would be less work and likely stronger in the long term.
The titanium tubing is epoxied (glued) together into the brackets for good reason, despite the complaints in the comments. Somewhat forgivable ignorance on their part, but the designers knew better. If you heat up Titanium above 600'C to weld it, it absorbs oxygen like a sponge and turns into a white powder used to make white paint and cosmetics. This powder is its most common form. To avoid this, you have to immerse it in argon and drive out the oxygen, then weld it inside a 6-8 foot diameter plexiglass dome using gloves and sleeves from the outside. A leak ruins the project. Titanium is a PITA to work with for this reason. Gluing titanium together avoids the issue and really is the best option. However, the epoxy durability over time is likely limited and will eventually fail, unlike a weld, leading to the bike cracking at the worst time and place. Not a good thing.
Carbon fiber has the same problem with epoxy, but it is easier to work with than Titanium, which is why Carbon Fiber frames are more common. They're also quite a lot cheaper. They do require vacuum molds, something else this technology could do.
They made the components on the bike themselves, thus the single speed. No derailleurs, and that stupid belt which lacks any visible centering mechanism I can see, so its going to fall off.
How would I do this better? Off the shelf components. Aluminum TIG welded frame, heat treated for strength. Fit and finish work done by people who care about craftsmanship. Build a carbon fiber version the following year.
Apply what is learned to moped design using same techniques, using aluminum for one model, steel frame for another, and carbon fiber for a third. Test for strength with road-test models and weekly checks for damage. Figure out the proper wheel size and suspension requirements, using what is learned from Mountain Bikes and Underbone scooters. Make the best options production models after at least one year of testing. Retain 4-bolt engine swap design, and offer the bash plate as standard. (bash plate is a piece of thick aluminum under the engine which protects the engine from hitting stuff the front wheel goes over in off-road conditions.
Build Underbone transmission case which allows mounting TWO mechanically synchronized engines on either side, similar to a BMW opposed engine, going to the single drive output. Allow mounting from 70cc to 200cc engines, and rate parts for that amount of torque stress.
Build ultralight towncar/golfcart to use this transmission, including electric reverse gear which also doubles as regenerative braking system to ultracapacitor for extra power that trickle charges into Lithium Phosphate battery option. Car should be very light, leaning or mini-truck type slow vehicle, not made for highway use, just in-town deliveries or farm use. These will eventually be the dominant vehicle for poor people someday as they are cheap to build, use little fuel, and are better than nothing.
Considering that Chrysler is now Fiat and its headquarters have moved to The Netherlands, it is no longer remotely an American car company. There is no Big 3 anymore. It is Ford and GM, and most of their business is done overseas. We are left with its former employees either fixing things wrong with the production models using the aftermarket parts they were forbidden to produce under contract or entirely new designs they weren't allowed to make because it would embarrass their flagship models by revealing the flaws Executive's careers depended on ignoring their responsibility for causing. With their collapse, we have freedom to be creative. Particularly with the huge market for kit cars. And reskinning a crappy hatchback around a race-tube or aluminum tub frame bolted to the crucial registration numbers avoids the crash test nonsense. Just carry the book with the pictures for when you get stopped by the Highway Patrol.
This is a reasonable direction to take your bicycle building, if you're any good at it. Or can you can stop and rest on your laurels at any step of the way and stop innovating. In the real world, building cars from 3D printing at various scales is the ultimate outcome of the technology. Building 3D printers too. They are sort of Von Neumann probes, after all. When they get good and fast enough, we won't even need to import from China anymore. Their factories will be irrelevant. How d'ya like d'em apples?
So since I gave up adult beverages I drink a lot more tea and coffee. Decaf coffee, even the good stuff, is pretty inexpensive and is considerably more nutritious than diet cola, or diet ginger ale, especially this time of year. Winter, remember?
The thing about the local decaf is that the stuff at the grocery store you can buy bulk and grind? Its decaf Colombian roast. A very middle of the road and slightly sour tasting. So I've been experimenting with flavors to correct that.
I found that this works well:
1 T cinnamon-sugar (white sugar and lots of cinnamon mixed in a sealed plastic container. Great on toast)
pinch Allspice
5 drops vanilla extract (cheap artificial stuff is fine)
2 tsp. caramel
1/4 cup milk
Fill with coffee, stir. The cinnamon is obvious as you breathe it in, and the vanilla smoothes and combines with the sugar and caramel to balance the flavor nicely between bitter coffee and sweet spices. Very nice. Without nutmeg, you don't end up comparing it to eggnog, and it also doesn't cook into custard because there's no egg, no cream, and its low fat.
From 2006 to 2008, I was in welding school. I learned how, though I admit I am not very good at it. The class tended to show up and grab their gear for the day, run off and weld stuff till either time was up or they got frustrated, which happened to me pretty often. I was fortunate that I managed to get a friend who taught me the secret of welding properly, and how to practice outside class. The teacher meant well, but it was a bit chaotic and I think in the second year, when he got us into proper lectures it really helped. Apparently he got paid for lecture and barely anything for labs, so that helped him too.
Stick welding is a huge PITA. The rods need to be kept in a heated dryer or they don't work chemically. The thing you're welding must be degreased and have no paint on it. It will bubble like nuts if there is grease or hydrogen in the weld area. Unfortunately, knuckleheads would use the ONLY wire brush in the place to clear grease off parts, meaning the brush was fully greased up and using it contaminated your parts. Idiots. Cleaning it was possible but never happened in the 2 years I was there. In the real world of welding, you MUST also preheat the steel AND brace it so it doesn't warp. That or pre-angle it so when it cools and contracts, it is where it needs to be, which is very difficult to estimate using a handheld tool and so many variables. And we were learning on soft steel, nothing special. Not hardened tool steels. You end up learning a lot of metallurgy and understand the real limits of welding being a small forging process, melting metals together in a small area rather than the whole thing. This works as long as the metals are similar, but different crystals react badly with each other, and metal is made of crystals when it cools into solid again. Hugely important to remember that. Also, with stick welding, there's spatter, drips, and the position you weld from matters a great deal. Flat is best. The others tend to run and make a mess.
MIG is easier, but tends to be the lowest quality welds due to lack of penetration. We were taught to make circles with it to improve penetration and make a stronger weld. Uses 3 times as much wire, which is often pretty expensive, but for a simple tool with only 3 real adjustments and hand held user, its the best you can manage. For assembly, this is one of the better choices. You can position, spot weld, verify the position is right, then finish the weld. It can be used in all positions pretty easily. I do recommend users of this have auto-dimming helmets and full safety gear but tig welders gloves. They give better feel. A friend was building a teardrop trailer with this method. Watch out for cracks. In a motor vehicle, the welder is legally liable if it fails on the road. This is a great reason to buy someone else's product rather than fabricate something for sale.
TIG is the best quality and cleanest welder with the lowest cost. You need argon gas, and the right tungsten rod, and the right fittings. We used 3/32nd tungsten and the fittings to make that work, we were using pretty thick 3/8 to 3/32nd steel and aluminum with this. Thinner metals need a thinner tungsten. If you're working with stainless, a 1/16th tungsten would be better, and the proper fittings to go with it. Keeps your weld temp really low, which reduces damage to the metal and the heat affected zone, which corrodes, is minimized. If you were building an exhaust for a car or motorcycle, this is how you'd do it. Not this kludged together stuff I keep seeing on BikeExif with inch wide stripes of iridescence, each of which can rust and probably will.
Another thing I learned about is Spalling. Carbon steel does this, badly, when it heats and cools. This is one of the reasons wood stoves are cast iron instead of steel plate. A steel plate stove needs a coating of cadmium I think. Something like that. Another option is stainless steel, which doesn't spall, but warps like crazy. Wood stoves are a good thing to buy from other people too. They are insured and have good reason not to burn down your house and negate your homeowners insurance.
Welding does give you all sorts of capabilities. In motorcycle building, welding up the frame from parts is something you can do, provided you are skilled enough. Practice a lot on scrap before you do the real thing. And ask yourself if the cost of a welder justifies itself when you can buy a frame used and clean it up, then mount all the parts and accessorize so nobody would have cared anyway? What makes the most sense?
Note I didn't talk about brazing, which is a related skill to welding, as brazing requires oxy acetylene gas setup and I don't think you should have that in your house. The above welders are safe to keep in your garage. MIG uses CO2 gas. TIG uses argon. Stick doesn't need gas at all. However, Acetylene is particularly dangerous as a sharp shock or slightly too high pressure in the line can make it explode. Exposure of the lit gas to grease also causes explosions. It's the preferred method for cutting thick steel and preheating parts for welding, and it's relatively cheap, however it is really dangerous and will greatly increase your homeowner's insurance. I suggest you use other methods or build a shed away from the house for its use so you don't get yourself into trouble.
There are other ways to cut steel, including a plasma cutter, which combines a TIG welder and high pressure air from an air compressor to generate 25,000 degrees and can cut up to 1/4 inch steel or stainless or aluminum. Hot knife through butter, basically. The parts degrade with use, so you have to have a good supply for them.
Good brands are Miller and Lincoln. They aren't cheap, but they aren't exhorbitant either. If you do opt to get something like this, take a class or two and find out if its for you. Its really too expensive for an untested hobby. And the best TIG welders have water cooling along the hose to the torch. Those which don't can overheat and melt. That gets expensive. You can do without if you use them only a few minutes at a time. There are guys whose work involves portable welders, like farmers and fence and piping repairmen. Most use a generator and carry their welder on a strap. Figure out what you NEED before you spend any money, and take some classes to see if you're any good at it. The realities of welding, and the low pay, are what put me off.
You can learn a lot about it on YouTube videos, however. A great deal. If it doesn't make you itch to try it for yourself, you don't need to spend the money.
Electric bicycles are heavy, expensive, and often make for lazy people. They don't have to be this way. There are some easy solutions which would make them relevant again, and by relevant, I mean compared to proper scooters which cost less than $800 new or regular bicycles which are just as fast as an electric due to weighing less and being pedaled by someone reasonably fit (but only on the flat). As soon as you talk hills, things change.
So:
LiFePO4 (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries don't wear out, can be discharged properly so they have a better useful capacity than Lithium Ion and only cost a bit more than Lithium Ion. No electric bike should sell without these.
Lithium Phosphate batteries also means you need less battery weight, lowering it by half.
Torque sensors make for good pedal assist, meaning when you pedal, the motor works. When you don't pedal, it doesn't move you. This is superior to current twist throttle controls.
Improve the efficiency, if possible, of regenerative braking, which is actually just engaging the electric power as a generator flowing into the battery. Loss to heat and overcharge danger can damage the battery, however ultracapacitors would fix this.
110V AC plug in, standard computer cable port with a waterproof cover and a circuit breaker so a short won't kill the rider or melt the thing down. Charge at the office, charge at home, only need half the battery. This means a bike would only need 1/4th the weight of current Lithium Ion batteries.
Bike first, electric second. Keep the weight down below 45 lbs and a reasonable number of gears. Simplify redundant weight parts. Tires wide enough to provide grip on corners and reduce rate of flat tires. None of this skinny velodrome tires crap you see on racing bikes.
Cost equal to a Cheap Chinese Scooter, so $800.
Just enough suspension to protect the electronics from shaking damage and allow the battery-bike weight to roll over bumps instead of break itself. Soft enough tires and rubber battery mounts may be the easiest way, with simple mountain bike shock forks on the front. Many inexpensive bikes are already sold like this, so converting one might end up easiest.
Keep the batteries low, since they are heavy, so bike stays agile. For conversions, hang them horizontally under a rack so you still have usable cargo space.
Install batteries so they can be replaced. Use electronics to monitor them, including temperature and capacity, so you can tell which are starting to fail and which are okay.
Design electronics to survive water and static shocks and other annoyances of the real world.
If you do all the above, and wire the batteries to lights and signals it becomes a viable bit of transportation. Not perfect, but better than just a bicycle. Especially in hilly country like where I live.
So I was watching TV with my Dad yesterday and a weird show called Tech Toys 360 was on which showed off an interesting moped. Its a 50cc 2-stroke with 9 HP and what looks like direct oil injection so you don't have to premix fuel, oil cooling, and full sized wheels. The bike is made in America, though I suspect basic components are Chinese, much as you see with Cleveland Cycle Werks.
Their Halcyon 50 weighs 173 pounds, has a 6 speed manual transmission like a motorcycle, and drum brakes, gets 60 mpg and can do 55 mph on the flat, with a tailwind. Considering the engine is tiny that's kind of amazing. I wonder just how much maintenance it takes, and if it vents hot exhaust gases into the crankcase, destroying its own lubrication oil and thus eating itself alive like nearly all 2-strokes do? The bike looks really nice and its American made.
Downside? Its $5300 base price, and a $2900 deposit to get started since they build to order. The saddlebags and chrome or stainless steel exhaust are extra. On the flats, drum brakes are probably okay. Up here in the mountains, with steep roads being the rule? Not so much. As ugly as the MadAss is, its better value. And any used Enduro bike in running order is cheaper yet, and easier to maintain a 4-stroke engine than a 2-stroke like this. Lovely bike though. I do like it on pure aesthetics. For American labor costs and warranty, the price is probably appropriate, however you can buy a nice Honda for a lot less, new. This is Vespa money. And probably the same target audience, of 1%ers. It is almost certainly safer than a Vespa, and isn't made of plastic so will last longer, though spare brake pads will be crucial with those drums, and it remains unclear about the maintenance requirements to keep the engine from seizing on burnt up oil.
The MadAss is 4-stroke, is 100 mpg, not 60 mpg, has disc brakes, and the engine swaps with 4 bolts for half the price. Its just really ugly compared to this. And its made in China, which is an unreliable "partner" at best. $600 more than the MadAss gets you a real motorcycle, new, from CCW.
With disc brakes, a 250cc engine, common tires, vintage 1960's looks, and able to deal with the freeway, barely, though not as well as a bike with fairing and windshield. Around here this would be a good choice for canyon rides if you must have vintage, and its $3400 new. Probably a lot better starter bike than say, a Harley Davidson, which costs 3x as much.
All the above in mind, I still wonder about an ultralight stripped out city car with good tires, good brakes, good exhaust and intake and a recent oil change for pure driving fun. And with 4 wheels, a great deal more stability. It is a shame that they only seem to give us the 4-door Fiesta, the 4-door Civic, the 4-door heavy boring vehicles that are overweight and bad handling and slow. I miss the old days of no safety and blithe joy. Why did those damned Boomers decide to ruin our fun when it was our turn?
It is a shame that the Xbox platform, created by the makers of the best flight simulators, doesn't have one. They have airborne fighting games, but that's not quite the same thing. See, flight doesn't have to involve bullets. And it doesn't have to be boring either. Nap-of-the-earth flying (close to the ground) is exceedingly dangerous, which is why aerial tanker fire fighter pilots get killed doing it. Going up a canyon with a heavy load, on the verge of stalling out, to drop it right as you're about to hit the hot air over the fire? Yeah. Kills pilots. Fire fighting planes are mostly old retrofits, as well, often DC-10s or likewise nasty prop driven planes with big motors. A spotter is sometimes modern, but just as often a faster Cessna with a pilot willing to circle over a fire. In the Foothills, where people surround their homes in trees because its pretty and natural looking, and build in canyons, fires here are really dangerous. Considering we have drought, though we're expecting rain tomorrow to Thursday, fires tend to be very bad in California. Way more dangerous and damaging than earthquakes. The hills have the views and the privacy and usually better weather. Its 10-15 degrees warmer here in the winter, and 10 degrees cooler in the summer due to being above the central valley inversion layer.
And keep in mind there are roads crossing this line, and towns above and below it, which affects the costs of heating or cooling and thus price of those homes and cost of daily commute based on distance. Flying through an inversion layer, into fog, requires instrument flying and is very dangerous. In a more technical sort of aircraft, a VR rendering system would project the environment, based on compass and GPS, to display the world outside the cockpit, including warnings and color coded, so you can use your eyes rather than land based on instruments. They're primitive and require you to trust you know where you are based on them. Most pilots would rather not fly than fly in fog in a small plane. You'd think that eventually upgrades from the GPS and computer age would reach to Cessnas so a small relatively slow and cheap plane would be just as safe as a jet. Maybe someday.
I have no interest in flying big jets. I know they're more stable through turbulence than small Cessnas. And they crash a lot less, and have better controls and trim options. Still, small planes give you way more places to land, more options to fly, more terrain to cross at lower altitude, though I am aware that flight plans suck the fun out of flying something fierce. You can't just turn left to see something cool when you're in a plane. Deviating from flight planes is a major violation of FAA regulations and will result in fines, possibly jail, and losing your license. There's more freedom on the road.
Proper flying, like in dreams, is sadly a thing of fantasy and video games. Or very slow biplanes which have so much lift its harder to crash them. That not to say you can't make a fast mono-wing plane do it. Flight assistance controls could pretty easily calculate paths and adjust trim, flaps, and power faster than you could, enabling nap of the earth flying without being so dangerous. The problem with nap of the earth is a 1% grade isn't terribly visible to the naked eye, yet puts you into the ground faster than you can react. It HAS to be done with a computer controlled plane. The F-111 fighter-bomber proved this, time and again killing pilots while they worked out the system bugs. Eventually they gave up the upgraded project the B1-B bomber, and moved onto stealth instead. Proper altitudes, invisible to radar and heat detection. No nap of the earth. No fun.
The most interesting piloting I've seen on TV is the Alaskan Bush Pilots, who land on dirt strips in smallish cargo Cessnas, built rugged and able to de-ice, I think, and pilots who are almost fearlessly brave yet don't die terribly often. Takes a lot of training to fly up there. And they can't do it year round. The trouble with Alaska is the weather changes every half hour, so turning back after the weather goes from sunny to snow is a real likelihood. And making the wrong call could kill you and your passengers. Its also the fastest and most efficient way to get around since frost heaves of 6-10 inches destroy pavement so roads are often gravel or dirt, and wash out seasonally. Between the melt in spring and the roads getting repaired, and all repairs are accepted as temporary, there's need for hauling emergency supplies and people to the hospital etc. Alaska is ridiculously expensive. They don't have their own refineries. Fuel is refined down in Richmond (SF bay), then put on a tanker and shipped back up to Alaska. So drivers and pilots are paying for shipping too. Visiting Alaska during my college years gave me a lot of perspective. America is largely empty, and there's tar oozing out into ditches in northern British Columbia, from the edge of the Alberta Oil Sands. There's lots up there, however they really need a refinery in place instead of shipping crude everywhere at lower profit. Canada would be helping itself quite a lot by only exporting finished products like Gasoline and diesel and jet fuel.
I remain baffled that Microsoft won't put its flight simulator into the Xbox. Whatever. I'll fly my Dad's sometime and see if I like it. Maybe some nap of the earth flying with a small plane would be fun. We've seen pilots seeding rice fields in springtime along Highway 20 between Yuba City and Colusa. 50 feet off the ground and spreading green dyed rice grains so the birds won't eat them. Its cheaper than using a combine and less disturbing to the soil under that foot of water.
I'm kinda surprised they don't offer games based on Air Tractors and fire bombing wildfires and bush piloting. Those are interesting enough to justify. And maybe someday offer seaplanes for Ground Effect along the pacific, though probably should stick to the Inland Passage around Vancouver Island since surface waves can and do catch wingtips and kill pilots with that type of aircraft, the main reason they aren't used in the real world.
Notice the water is just ripples? Real Pacific swells are 12 feet or bigger. Calling it the Pacific was a name of pure irony. And I know that someday, when fuel is more precious, we'll have rail and sail driven ferry-boats on our coastline again. The roads wash out in winter storms. Building boats that can smooth out those swells and carry commercial goods and passengers reliably will be a real challenge of bravery and engineering. If the railroads running to the coast are unreliable or frequently disabled, I could see the point of the ferry system. Ferries need ports to dock in, and the ports along the coast mostly need dredging, and their jetties (breakwaters) maintained and lit so incoming boats have a place to stop that's still enough to offload passengers and cargo, then room to turn around. Runways are cheaper, but carry far less cargo. A plane like that can run on a car or truck engine because weight isn't much of a factor. The air cushion is so strong, unfortunately, you feel every wave crest like a bumpy road. This is the big downside to flying nap of the earth, really close I mean. Not a hundred feet up.
Good times. I still think M$ should make its flight simulator for Xbox.
Oh noes! The polar bears aren't dying out after all. They came on land and eat whatever instead of dying out because the ice that isn't actually melting anymore won't support them to hunt seals that warming cultists thought was the only thing they could eat! Shucks. What now?
I knew that, actually. In 2012, there was a Polar Bear DNA test that revealed the species pre-dates the ice age, same as humans, and having survived it like we did, proves their adaptability. When the ice age returns, they'll go back to Ice Age techniques, same as we will. I wonder if our descendants will have snowmobiles and cellphones and solar panel powered laptops? Will they have greenhouses to keep fed during the longer and colder winters? Or will they just move to warmer climates and not worry about it too much? There is an AWFUL LOT OF LAND south of the current temperate zone which was temperate and wetter, ideal for growing crops, untouched by serious glaciers or frost. Mexico, the Sahara, even the Middle East were pretty nice during the Ice Age. Its not like the ice age returning will be hostile to life. It just moves to different locations and continues.
During this brief interglacial period of time which is probably close to over, we enjoy a warmer and drier climate, and the accompanying El Nino droughts. The thing is, even during Interglacials like this, we get some extremes being the norm rather than the stability we like to imagine. The Little Ice Age from 1250-1850 had the Thames freezing in London hard enough to walk on, use as a road, and hold faires and festivals. Only since 1850 have we had "stable" weather patterns and being as people are stupid, they pretend stable is normal. It isn't. Stable weather is historically rare and usually infrequent. Stable weather is unusual.
The other little gem is that the Medieval Warm Period is something that really upsets the cultists. They don't like that warmth = more food. They want apocalypse because their funding is running out, and they need panic for funding. The warm period ruins that. And there's LOTS of evidence for it. Same with the Artic Vortex (silly name) causing fairly normal winter storms (at least to my memory from childhood), far South into the US. Not very nice to be in, since Easterners are out of Practice dealing with actual weather again, but folks moved to California decades ago to get away from that crap. That's why they accept drought here. We're not stuck in snow, rusting cars, and frozen pipes. I get to open my windows in January and enjoy an 80'F breeze flowing through.
So yeah, polar bears returning to their pre-ice age food techniques, like other bears? Not a surprise. The pathetic whining of the cultists is what makes me laugh the loudest. I encourage them to eat some black dirt at $35/oz. It's: "Cleansing, healing, mm-kay!" Damn cultists. Do something useful.
I would very much like to find the person who wrote the code that cheats cars into lines that violate physics after every rewind in Forza 4 and beat them with a wet haddock. A haddock is a fish. I would like to find the clown-programmer who decided that brakes don't really work and again, haddock beatings. I'd like to find the idiot who decided that anytime you get stuck behind a car in the game, traffic-wise, it nails the brakes directly in front of you, wrecking your car, and haddock-beat them. The idiot who clearly knows NOTHING about cars and setup the "Easy Upgrade" really should have retitled that "Car Ruiner" because all it does is boost the power, leaving the tires and handling alone, unable to use it. Making a car too fast for its tires is 1970's Musclecar idiocy. Was this person retarded? Who approved this decision? Didn't they beta test? Their auto-upgrade makes each and every car it is used on undriveable. You have to do this manually, but you CAN'T without quitting the race and losing the points, setting back your own career after the game screws you into failing or failing. This isn't fun. I'd like to find these people and make them stink with North Atlantic Haddock slaps across the face. They need concussions to justify their mistakes. And they've had 2 years to fix them and send out the patch, free, to all Xbox users, who paid for this broken glitchy game. I suspect they were too busy congratulating themselves for the few Jeremy Clarkson comments such as the game intro you hear just the one time, and having gotten the contract for Forza 5, which has more Top Gear and Stig content than 4 did.
These are ridiculous glitches that did NOT exist in Forza 3, and I have to wonder why "making it worse!" was turned into a "feature" in the newer version of the game. Why? Were they handing out cocaine at the Turn 10 programming shop? These are 1980s Cocaine kind of errors. Like Delorean making his car out of stainless steel so it was 1000 pounds too heavy and couldn't be fixed after a wreck because it wouldn't corner. Cocaine. Why did Forza ruin their own physics engine?
Yes, other drivers are more like drivers, but the ones at the back will hog the whole road and swerve to cut you off for no reason I can see. They also block you after magically passing you at the start, violating physics while your tires just spin and getting your own car moving is extremely hard. When you run into them, as you will because their brakes work five times better than yours and your tires just lock up unless you have ABS on, which prevents you from advancing your career due to lost points... I could go on. There are a lot of flaws here. I suspect I'm going to have to turn all the driver assists back on just to stop before corners. And stability control so the tires will grip on starts. And apparently "normal" steering means the wheel works, since simulation it doesn't more often than not. The only advance I can see in this game is the car is no longer constantly threatening to flip over like in 3. That's it.
The random "rewind doesn't work" glitch is really weird too. I have NO IDEA how they screwed that up since it happens in semi-random locations, not just the race starts. This is why I only buy 9.0+ games rather than 8.5. An 8.5/10 game is usually so glitchy I curse like a filthy sailor. I am pretty disappointed here. Why don't hot laps END, and why can't they be set to start from complete stop. That's how Star in a Reasonably Priced Car works. Start from dead stop, race around the track, etc. No cones. No disqualifications for missing the lines by a foot on a corner. And no HOT LAPS. This thing records hot laps, which are at least 4 seconds faster than the real thing. That's cheating.
The computer cheats a LOT in this game. 1970's musclecars can apparently do 200 mph in this game, when in reality over 100 mph often exceeds their straight-axle suspensions stability, loses grip, and flings them into a roll of flaming metal and screaming passenger. Into a wall or tree or off a cliff. If you're going to have 1970's musclecars, they should NOT allow ABS, stability control, steering assist, braking assist, all the things that real modern cars have. Top Gear has shown that even crappy little city cars are faster lapping tracks than musclecars. Even a Vauxhall Astra Diesel is quicker. It has proper suspension and brakes. Show how incredibly useless musclecars are. But don't make people drive them for long. Musclecars are for looking at, not for driving. They make a loud noise. They waste a lot of gas. They have wide back seats for time alone with your girlfriend. That's about it.
I can see a lot of things to fix in this game. I suppose I'll just have to accept the need to have all the assists on since the game is cheating so hard without them. Its a shame because I was quite comfortable driving without them in Forza 3. Funny how that is.
Avoid repeating words in a paragraph. It reads poorly.
Spelling errors are unforgiveable. Spellcheck is F7. Fix it.
Never EVER begin a character dialogue with the phrase "I know." It grates. It's childish, and a sign of immature writing.
Its and it's are not the same. Watch out for that.
Avoid creating a Mary Sue character. Conflict is drama.
Get a beta reader if you can. They will spot errors you missed and notice mistakes you made.
Remember that villains are smart too. Stupid villains aren't worth reading. Stupid villains are crap writing.
Avoid shopping lists. Boring.
Avoid shower and toothbrush nonsense. Unless it's really important to the plot, you just marked yourself an obsessive idiot.
Show don't tell. Break up any exposition. Too much "because" is a sign of Aspergers.
The reader is the 3rd part of the conversation, so what the reader can infer doesn't need to be said.
Recounting already described plot is not only useless, but a huge turnoff to readers. They read it already. Just say "He briefly explained what had happened" and move on.
Every page must be interesting. If more than a couple paragraphs are dull, the reader will skim. If the reader skims more than one page, odds are they'll drop the book entirely and avoid your work in future. You can't afford to lose readers. It is better to cut/edit out boring material than lose readers.
Write first, edit later. They are different processes and your mind needs to be in radically different places. A first draft is just a first draft. Editing and fill and more editing can come later.
Get in the head of your characters, even the villains. Give them logical reasons for their actions from their perspective. Good writing and dialogue should flow from this. Worry about accents later.
Remember the 5 senses. Poor authors forget most of them, but a good author mentions them in each scene. The more senses, the move evocative and immersive the writing, the better it reads, provided details don't overwhelm the plot pacing.
Pacing matters. Sometimes you must leave out details or barely mention them to give the reader a sense of things moving faster and faster.
Mind your word choices. Many readers find reaching for a dictionary to be annoying.
Writing below the level of your readers also turns them off, so pick your writing vocabulary on the same level as your readership's education. Note that many bestselling authors write for high school graduate level readers.
Promoting your books is your responsibility. New York Publishing Editors are parasites and don't really care about your work. It is up to you to promote your books because publishers won't, and those who do, CHARGE AUTHORS MONEY FOR IT.
Self publishing via print on demand is the way to go. This is more work for you, but far higher profit and lower cost books FASTER. Organized publishers average 2 years from submission to books on the shelf. If what you are writing is a timely subject and will be boring in 2 years, you MUST self publish via Print On Demand to have any hope of a viable audience and sales.
Learn enough web design to make promotions for your books to drum up interest. And despite being a writer, a picture is still worth 1000 words, so Flicker is probably a good idea, and referencing your work to gain attention and readers to buy your book, chapter by chapter, will pay for itself.
Depending on the genre, you may need to promote your books at Conventions. Get used to travel and do the taxes to write these costs off as a business expense, which it is.
Be friendly with the fans, and understand the service you provide is helping them live fuller lives than burger flipping or code editing. You are saving empty lives from suicide in the modern horrible economy.
Keep tabs on what interests your fans, research these topics thoroughly, and write about them in your books in a way they like, including plausible or factual details from experiences either share or want to know about beforehand. Fantasy novels are about self gratification and affirmation, after all.
Every opinion you issue will offend someone. Be careful what you say. This is particularly difficult when writing, so always preface convention answers with "The character" rather than yourself. Heroes can be villains, and villains are heroes that lived long enough to become them.
One of the better writing teams in scifi are Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Pournelle is a survivalist, Niven is a hard scifi author from Caltech in Pasadena. He's the reason Gravity gets a big Yawn from me. I read that sort of story half a dozen times from the greats, some of them written before humans had even orbited a man in space. The actual moon-shot mission was based on a scifi story by Robert Heinlein, who married a communist woman in the 1930's and never quite recovered from the experience. Keep in mind that communists are zealots, exactly the same kind of crazy as religious wackos and global warming cultists.
So anyway, Niven and Pournelle had some really interesting books in the 1980's, a silver age of Scifi. They wrote Lucifer's Hammer, a book so fascinating I remain appalled that Hollywood didn't make that story into a movie instead of the drek they DID make with asteroids and comets hitting while space men go TO the rock to blow it up, since that was "better".
LH was far more plausible. The rock gets spotted, its too late to stop it or turn it away. Now it is too late, and too easy to do, and would be called a copycat of that drek Hollywood shat out. The basic plot is a comet, made of ice and rock, is headed for Earth. The ice keeps shifting its course and it goes from a long shot to pretty close pass to OH GOD ITS GOING TO HIT and then it breaks up in the atmosphere and becomes many hits.
The book explain how this is a bad thing, because many of them smack the oceans. The oceans are full of water and water is non-compressible, so more of the energy is transferred from the projectiles to the planet, the planet rings like a bell, and every fault under tension cracks causing huge quakes. Worse, the water columns up to 2 miles deep in the oceans vaporize and we get enormous clouds of steam and heat, causing superstorms which results in years of rain. Worse, basic chemistry means when the heat drops and elevation takes over, snow at lower and lower elevations. It starts the next ice age, and the story deals with that, and the survivors who escape the initial very tall tsunami. I think they overstated the height of those, but still, they would be a hundred meters tall at least, which would make for a billion plus deaths in the first day, most within hours of the strike.
Oceanic crust is also thinner than land crust, being more dense, and is easier to punch through so every hit site makes a volcano, which makes even more steam than the initial impact spray. In Geology it is believed/hypothesized that hot spot volcanoes on the Earth, of which there are many more than just Hawaii, are actually caused by asteroid impacts leaving scars on the outer core through a process called unloading. This makes for a persistent magma plume and why the Hawaiian islands go further NW and N to vanish under the Asian plate near Kamchatka. Yellowstone may also be a hot spot, though the evidence is weaker due to geochemistry differences. And it is worth noting that statistically, if you live above 200 feet elevation you're probably immune to most tsunami, even those from asteroid impacts in the sea. Naturally, half the world's population lives below that. Niven and Pournelle's novel won the Hugo and Nebula awards. Its a good read, should be at your library and is likely an E-book download.
Their other interesting book, though somewhat distracting, is Footfall, which is about alien invaders. I'm not as big a fan of this one for obvious reasons (space alien invasions are silly because distances are so huge it's pointlessly expensive and a one way trip takes centuries or more). Footfall does have proper use of Flying Crowbars as space artillery, which is a real thing and might actually exist despite it being against international treaties. The aliens chuck rocks at the planet, aiming at worst possible sites, including cities and oceans to kill as many people as possible. No lasers needed, though they have those too. Ground troops have rifles with bayonets, if you can believe it. I recall one of the characters being so pissed off about Death Valley being flooded by the rains caused by impacts, wiping out his precious ecology, he murders a traitor to keep secret the counter attack. This will never be a movie either because Independence Day has too much in common, despite this being written 20 years earlier. Hollywood did a good job with ID so I won't complain much. This also won awards.
In the future, humans will have sufficient technology to convince themselves that a near earth asteroid passing by would be a good opportunity to put raw materials for space exploration into a useful orbit. See, lifting materials into space is expensive. If you have the materials in space already, you've saved ridiculous amounts of energy, and can build manufacturing in space using robots to refine, process, and build say probes or tugboats or mining ships or even generation ships of more robots to go out into the solar system, start building bigger and more powerful ships to get further out, and eventually get more than 1% of lightspeed heading toward another star, see if there's anything out there. We'll need AIs for that, ones that can think and solve problems and ask questions. And hopefully not turn into Berserkers.
If you've seen Oblivion, that was a Berserker, a Von Neuman Probe of alien origin which exists specifically to wipe out all life found in the Universe. It is such a big job that anything short of infinite probes will take infinite amounts of time to accomplish. The best way to detect intelligent life is radio waves, which travel at light speed. Earth is already detectible out to 80 light years due to Hitler's Olympics broadcast. There is strong argument to suggest any aliens we ever run into will be xenocidal, seeking to annihilate other species and other life for their own religious reasons. There is equally strong argument for them to share their technology with us in hopes we'll contact them in return. And a much bigger chance that aliens become secluded isolationists with no interest in other civilizations so no space probes either. And the biggest chance of all that they wiped themselves out because to advance in technology, you generally need conflict and planning ability and communication, and where there is communication, there is war. The Babelfish caused more and bloodier wars, after all. Communication is destructive. Only potheads think communication is peaceful.
Even if the xenocidal aliens are long dead, since cults usually implode when the money runs out, their Berserker machines might be durable enough to continue their assigned project: repairing, improving, improvising, and annihilating. The most effective way to annihilate a species is accelerate a rock to 1% c (1% light speed = 3.8 x 10^6 m/s) and hit the planet. With sufficient velocity, the planet is utterly wrecked, and by utterly I mean flashboil the seas, burn up the air, churn up the ground and possibly knock the core out of the planet. That would be far better than decelerating and talking to us. That's silly Hollywood fantasy with no logic at all, other than "never let facts get in the way of a good story". If you're even more capable, you can mess up their sun, somehow, and have IT gobble up their planet. Even a sufficiently large CME would be effective, depending on how good their magnetic field is.
The Moon hit the Earth 4.6 billion years ago during the solar system's formation (planetary accretion process) and lost its own iron core to merge with our own, probably kickstarting our magnetic field dynamo in the process, which I suspect keeps spinning due to frequent solar electromagnetic bursts from CMEs. I don't have much proof, but solar magnetism is a source of power and induction heating and spinning makes more sense for long term stability than any claims of radioisotopes decay heat over this long of a time scale. Geologists prefer to claim the core mechanics need more study but few seem to be doing it. Geologists like camping field trips and scotch and coed field assistants as bed warmers, and you can't do that in a lab with no funding because core mechanics aren't sexy enough for grants or perky grad students named Britney! Keep in mind that Geologists denied Wegener, a weather man who proposed continental drift in 1912 which was later proven true in WW2 while hunting for submarines. Really. Science is funny that way.
It is entirely possible that global warming research, once unbiased data is recovered from the cultists modifying it to match their predictions which don't work in the real world, we might find some good data to give us a timeline on the return of the ice age. We have plenty of evidence to support that, just not a When. Advancing ice sheets bulldoze the crucial evidence about how they start, so we don't have very good data on that. We only know how they end: sudden increase in temps, probably by Milancovic cycles (orbital mechanics), and melting. And floods, thus the silly Biblical flood stories have some basis in fact. Ice dams are frequent and common problems in some places, like Missoula. And result in the scablands flood plain on the way to the Columbia River.
It is entirely possible that Earth's Magnetic field strength and stability over time is one of the 33 key factors that enables life to exist. There could be several more. Just finding planets in space doesn't mean we're finding planets with magnetic fields. Even slightly blue stars have poisonous levels of UV light, and by poisonous I mean sterilizing levels of mutation, so only YELLOW SUNS can have life around them. If its slightly blue NOPE. Pity, since those look so cool on the covers of Scifi novels, but nope. Life seems to be infinitely rare. And despite the statistics and hope of cultists everywhere, I still think we're it for the whole universe. Then again, I'm a Pessimist so if there were other life, it would naturally be Xenocidal cultists sending out endless Berserker probes to wipe out any life it finds. You know, because that would be more ironic. And it mimics life on Earth, too. Suicide Bombers, anyone?
So we're having drought. Some wanker at Berkeley is claiming this is the worst in 500 years, but he's full of poop. Its about like what we had in 1976. I was there, so I remember. The cause seems to be a persistent high pressure ridge offshore that's pushing storms north of us so normal rains aren't falling. Considering we got rain last summer when its normally completely dry, I would not be surprised to learn we'll get more of that pattern as the year progresses. And not to say we won't get a blizzard or two between now and June. And various rain storms. And there's the potential for an Atmospheric River event, since I've been through several of those. California makes a nice landing pad for those, and they can carry tremendous amounts of water for days and days of rain and usually flooding. One of those would refill all the reservoirs.
Of course, if we don't get much rain, and no snow, then it starts to get less pleasant. North America and the world in general have a long history of El Nino events which cause drought. These events are easily traced in Africa and can last for decades, destroying complex civilizations since water = food. No food and 3 meals to rebellion, voila, collapse. If we did get unlucky enough to land in a 60 year drought, as that is their typical duration and its FAR TOO EARLY TO SAY, if we did, leaving California to be a desert like Baja Mexico would be for the best. Coastal California (LA, San Diego, Big Sur, North Coast) could install vacuum desalination for human water supply, and minimal farming close to that, but it would be a miserable existence and leaving this behind for better rainfall totals would be the smart move. Where there's water, there's food and people. Generally speaking. The Bay Area gets its water from the Sierras and if there's no rain fall or snow pack, there isn't enough water for those 12 million people. The inevitable consequence of either jacking up prices or shutoffs by contract to protect the rich in San Francisco, who can afford to pay, and the resulting civil uprising to destroy what they can reach (the historic answer to resource wars), is likely to depopulate the Bay Area. Costs for desalination are in the billions, and that's going to be a local tax, paid by everyone who doesn't benefit to help only the rich, who bribed the legislature to give them water. That's how govt works in California. It's quite the opposite of fair. With lots of bribery and unwelcome realities.
I am uncertain as to whether rainfall is normal in Idaho and Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon or not. I know they got double normal in Nevada during the summer, thanks to all the monsoon rains, but right now? Dunno. If you stay in the West, you may end up with more of the same consequences.
Of course, that's assuming the drought is persistent. And we've had these before. A period of oddly warm winter weather followed by more normal rain storms and brief high pressures like this one. That it hasn't broken up is the weird part, but it shouldn't last. The mechanism for it sticking around is the curiosity.
The big upside to this winter drought is its great to be outdoors to enjoy it. If you own a Motorcycle in California, you can keep riding it. Same with bicycles, which I see around town frequently, mostly the rich race bikes with skinny velodrome tires. Wrong for the roads here, but whatever. A Lamborghini Diablo or Diavel are often the wrong car for the grocery run. Those long doors in the narrow parking spaces. Lack of storage in the trunk. They're just not ideal. Yet people buy them. And people drive various sportscars in this warm dry weather, including convertibles, though its a little chilly in the morning, but on the way home top down is fine. Open the windows during the lunch run. The warm weather is also good for BBQ, gardening, hiking, and photography. Sure, the trees are starting to bud out Spring leaves, since its nearly 80'F every day, and if we get snow later, it will kill them, but what can you do? Its drought.
The thing that worries me about persistent drought is wildfire. If the trees die, there's always a mad arsonist around to flip cigarettes out the window, on purpose, to light it all on fire, and the result is a big fire, burned homes and trees, eventual erosion and more plugged up reservoirs that hold less water for drought periods like this. The other problem with drought is California becomes less desirable when lack of water means dead gardens, no showers, bad tasting drinking water at much higher prices to convince us not to waste it, and the lowering of home values. Good if you want to buy a bargain house, but bad if the drought persists. You're betting against the weather, after all. Do you keep your underwater mortgage house when water costs as much as the mortgage you can't pay because Obamacare costs convinced your employer to cut your hours to avoid all the fees? Nope. You stop paying, and wait for eviction and pay off your credit card debt so you can bail out of California instead. Kinda obvious. Starting over in Tornado Alley is better than staying in a desert with 10x too many people. And I'd know: I'm from here.
If we have to get our drinking water on Baja California (peninsula in Mexico south of San Diego) level rainfall, which is less than 5 inches a year? We're screwed. The state will dry up and burn, the central valley will lose most of its crops and the $5B annual revenue will vanish, meaning no social programs, no paved roads, no water pumping because there's none to pump. No water for high tech industry either. Those can be anywhere, and mostly are. Its inertia and home price investment in mansions by those tech executives that keeps high tech companies in the Bay Area. Not sensible reasons like local education levels which are abysmal. Good people move to jobs. If the high techs moved to Austin Texas the people would follow. Thus California would lose another $1B in revenues. With enough drought, that will happen. There's no good reason to be here in the land of drought.
If the rain doesn't fall and the reservoirs go dry, this complex civilization and all its smug assertions about Social Justice are over. The state govt will pay welfare with their dying breaths, even as they're closing schools and releasing feral children to the tender streets of Oakland, Stockton, and Fresno. We have more in common with Somali pirates than we'd like to think.
"Look at me. Look at me. I am the captain now."
On the upside, if drought persists and the state empties because there's no drinking water and life is crap from all the fires and no open hospitals and Somalian lifestyles, those who live on the coast and manage to get water will have a quieter state to live in, and with no roads because there's no money to fix them, ports will get busier. It will be very scenic, with ruins and burned foundations, like Detroit. I wonder if I could be happy in a trailer park out on the North Coast? Follow the rainfall, solar panels on the roof, bathing from a basin with a washcloth and a gallon of lukewarm water? It would be like Morocco without the kasbah. Good times, right? Doesn't that sound wonderful? Somehow I suspect I'd leave the state instead. Somewhere it rains a bit more. With a future. Come back after the rains do and they've paid for repaving and the state has a small and balanced budget with no welfare moms, and no welfare department.
There is little question you can buy pasta cheaper than you can make it. There is no question that buying it is also easier than making it. Making requires several tools and quite a bit of time, since you need to dry it on a rack so it won't stick together before you can cook it. And the best pasta includes an egg, which is asking for salmonella, a surprisingly spreadable bacteria that sticks to many things, especially walls and light switches and fridge handles and cabinet knobs. It goes all over the place. Kill it with bleach in a water solution and cut down on the indigestion.
The thing is, homemade pasta tastes good, partly because having made it, you feel pride in your accomplishment of a common household task in any Italian home for the last 4 centuries. When I make pasta, I use a handcranked machine rather than electric one, mainly because you have to get your fingers in there and its easy to stop and back up when you're turning the handle yourself. The electric can do bad things to your fingers. You're better off buying pasta than using an electric, just for safety's sake.
When it comes to bicycling, the big choice people often get wrong is skinny tires or wide ones. Skinny are fashionable, but likely to pop. Unless you're riding on very smooth surfaces, such as a velodrome, ultraskinny tires are the wrong kind to have. In the real world, on paved roads, wider gives you more surface area, lets you run lower pressure, and thus reduces the number of flats as well as transferring less energy to your tail and keeping the forward motion going. Ergo, wider tires are better, up to a point. I run 2.5 inch wide slick tires, which give it the best rolling resistance and contact patch, yet allow me to coast faster than a 0.6 inch wide race tire that belongs in a velodrome.
See? This is where ultra skinny tires belong. Notice how unlike it is to a road?
Also, while its easy to whine about sculpting components for reduced air resistance, your body is 30X bigger problem there, and your riding position has a huge impact on the resistance, as well as the clothes you're wearing. As embarrassing as it is, spandex and shaved legs DO cut wind resistance. That said, are you racing hard enough to care? The English still have vintage bicycle touring clubs, which wear vintage woolen riding clothes, rain or shine, on roads through the English countryside. You don't have to join a racing club. You can ride with more normal people.
See, nice normal riding, paved trail, families. Good places to stop for a photo or picnic.
That's important to me because I'm a amateur snapshot-type photographer. I see something I like, I photograph it. I'm not very technical so don't care that much about perfect everything. I just want to click the shutter and hopefully get a decent photo to adjust on the computer later. For me, stopping often is valuable. I don't need to be fastest. I have a game for that. Its safer, since wrecks aren't real, and cheaper since the cars aren't real either.
If you like to sightsee, go slow. This is a good reason for a scooter. It forces you to slow down and look around.
Similar idea with a convertible. You have the open sky around you. Look at it. Not just growl at the road or complain how the convertible is heavier than a hatchback so is actually slower and less fuel efficient. Having driven the Mazda Miata series 1 in a driving simulator game, I can honestly say it needs wider rear tires because its just powerful enough to be tail happy and try to kill you. Driven slowly with the top down its probably just fine. As a fan of mountain roads, it is no longer on my list to someday own since that tendency to break loose at the apex, or coming out of the apex under power, is the sort of thing that kills you. I'm trying to enjoy myself, not die.
So far, I'm finding the front wheel drive hot hatchbacks to offer the best control and speed on twisty roads. My current car is front wheel drive, and when I eventually upgrade the tires, it will grip better and be more fun to drive. This is a simple and effective fix. The right tires and the right pressures, I'll see huge improvement in handling and performance. Front wheel drive cars are front heavy, but the weight is on the wheels with the power so the grip tends to be better, unlike the Porsche which also has the weight on the wheels, only the front wheels tend to get light and on corners can break loose and send you ass backwards into a tree or off a cliff into the river. While this is a well known problem, people still buy them. I've driven a 912 Porsche all the way to Alaska, some of those roads were gravel for immense lengths, and so I can 4 wheel drift that car and not die. Good times. And simple pleasures.
If you like driving out into the country, with a sandwich and a bottle of water and a camera, looking for a few good views, secondary roads are often a good choice. Ones near rivers or through mountains are also good. The twistier the better, since twisty roads are often avoided by trucks and commuters so tend to be empty and rewards a good driver with slow but fun turn apexing, gear changes, and all the stuff that makes driving a good car enjoyable. To prep your car you need:
Good grippy tires.
Right tire pressures, check and correct as needed before you leave.
Clean air intake filter, a $12 part from the auto store that takes 5 minutes to change it yourself.
Recent oil change. Engine will rev higher with more power.
Full tank of good gasoline.
A comfortable pair of shoes, both to drive with and if you get out.
Sunglasses and a hat.
Camera.
Lunch. You might find a restaurant on the way, but if you find a good spot with a great view, that's often better, and quieter, and less likely to give you indigestion.
Road map and highlighter to map out the route.
Clean the inside and outside of the windows. Huge improvement in driving enjoyment when you can clearly see the road. Dust the dash and instruments too. A clean car is a nice car.
Good driving music for the stereo.
Don't drive near the beginner or end of the month. Cops have quotas to fill then and will ticket you.
A recent service including transmission fluid and filter change, and valve adjustment. That helps it shift faster and revs higher with more power.
Remove junk from trunk, under seats, out of door pockets, and from glove box. Tighten down tools and spare tire so they don't rattle. Bring the tire gauge, tire pump, tire plugs to repair punctures, cellphone to call for a tow, car insurance card, medical insurance card, drivers license, basic first aid kit, and bright yellow poncho if you need to change a flat so you're visible. Doubles as rain protection. Also bring toilet paper in a ziplock bag. If you gotta go, be prepared.
Clean around door sills so you see proper paint color when you open your door. Surprisingly positive feelings from this detail. Little things add up. Miserable people have filthy cars.
These things make driving somewhere interesting both fun and safe. Simple things. And cheap, too.
I love those tiny trucks they have in Japan. They're the size of a subcompact car, seat one in the front, and have either no doors or a canvas sheet or a bit of plastic so you can see out. They're the Japanese version of the Piaggio Ape made by Vespa shortly after WW2.
Its a very basic 3-wheel. One at the front, 2 at the back, tippy on the corners so go really really slowly around those corners and brake on the straight lines. Notoriously tippy, and often caused injuries, flinging the driver into the street, possibly with the vehicle on top of him. No A/C, No heater, and the engine under the seat. The original ones were powered by a 2-stroke 200cc scooter engine. These are still made.
To improve the design, competitors later added a wheel and a seat to turn it into a truck, but kept the format ultralight, ultraslow, and offered an insulated box on the back for food delivery. They only go 30 mph and creep up hills about as fast as you can walk with such a tiny engine. However, they are practical for around-town delivery and repairmen with their tools and minimal materials in the back. If they need more, order a truck to deliver it.
Many Japanese truck companies make these simple utility vehicles, and they are imported and sold in the USA as farm vehicles, illegal for use on proper paved road since they don't meet DOT safety standards and hold up traffic too. Still, as the population ages and converts their retirement savings into ever-higher medical bills, fewer people have money to pay for services, and what they have isn't much. If you want to sell a service, you have to operate cheaply. So far, the answer has been to cut staffs and overwork what's left, insisting on ever-longer laundry lists of skills, many of them certified at employee cost, but eventually you end up with underskilled staff lying about certifications they can't afford and still work at the low wages offered. Quality takes a hit when you can't pay your employees for it.
If you do have a viable market for a business, avoid loans, build your business as cheaply as you possibly can, and watch out for overinvestment caused by optimism or materialism. Telling yourself a fancy tool will make your job more efficient is only sometimes true. If you notice local gardening crews you'll see its very basic stuff, most of it well worn, and done as cheaply as possible.
Garden services from the back of a pickup or a towed trailer with a crew of two or three working different houses, swapping equipment between them for best efficiency and lowest cost. The poorer the customer base gets, the less they can pay for.
Maid services running from station wagons or hatchbacks with the best possible fuel economy and the mops and brooms and vacuum cleaners on their sides, with a magnet stuck on the sides to identify the company and advertise their business. Cuts down on the police calls about burglars too.
IT making housecalls or doing installations should be using hatchbacks or even scooters. Real IT often use tablet PCs to read the Wifi signal, the rest is either online or in a thumbdrive, since those hold libraries of software and upload faster than a CDROM.
I see a potential market in grocery delivery, since the elderly eventually give up their licenses. Buying their groceries and delivering them to their doors is a viable job, provided the distance doesn't wreck your profits. Charging per mile is important. Maintaining your vehicle and paying your insurance is important too. Remember that if you operate your vehicle in a commercial capacity, your insurance rates go way up. It may bankrupt your business, even if you have no accidents.
A dumb little truck that costs little money to buy, and goes really slowly on those secondary roads is the answer to Japan's poverty, or at least allows it to continue. It lets tiny businesses move repairmen around, make deliveries, carry small amounts of stuff from place to place very short distances in narrow streets, cheap. Big trucks cost a lot more to do the same thing faster and using more fuel.
Have you heard of the Keystone Pipeline? Recently, the PM of Canada complained that the USA has to make a decision about allowing it or not. Its not a simple problem, oddly enough. For once I understand the current administration's ambivalence to it. The basic idea is a pipeline from the Canadian oil sands in Alberta, down through the USA to Galveston's refineries. The catch is, American Oil Companies plan to export the gasoline for higher profit, mainly to Europe, who can pay through the nose for it. The initial claim about selling those products to Americans to drop the price of commuter gas? NOPE. Its about overseas profits. And it gets better. In irritation, the Canadians are building their own pipeline out to Vancouver to sell to Chinese oil tankers so they can bargain on the price rather than suffer the NAFTA deal hurting their profits. So really expect your gasoline price to rise. It is coming. With that in mind, high fuel efficiency vehicles make excellent sense. If you must go further and faster than "around town delivery" you're back to dealing with conventional cars, and their costs, but there are some efficient options which can keep up with traffic.
One of the nice things about the hot hatchback is their fuel consumption varies by how hard you put your foot in it. The little Ford Fiesta ST is rated for 35 mpg Hwy, 50% better than the Subaru WRX, but both have a turbo charger and both are known to be fast. If you were a courier kind of person, carrying stuff on paved roads, the Ford Fiesta would be fine and its a fun drive with its stick shift and 196 BHP engine. If you get into gravel and ice, the Subaru would be better, provided you mount studded snow tires when using those roads. Some police ticket for studded tires, because the studs damage pavement, but it depends where you are and how obvious you are about it. I wonder if you can get a permit for it?
The mini trucks of my youth mostly got lowered and given stupid wheels and huge stereos when I was a teenager. Eventually the fools doing this wrecked their trucks and the breed vanished, along with people who drove them. The downside is all those trucks were pretty much bought up for the fad and died with the fad. I wonder if they've been melted down and made into refrigerators? It would sort of figure.
Someday, we'll get creative about our vehicles again, and stop worshiping at the altar of traffic safety, learning to accept risk like normal people should. Life isn't safe. It can be SLOW, however, and a tiny Japanese delivery truck might be in your future. I wonder if the current car companies can imagine selling small cheap slow trucks again? There's less profit in it than the monster trucks they sell now, but still, CHEAP and SLOW get the job done. A gardener doesn't need a fast truck. Meet the market, Big 3. I suppose they'll argue that 4 door hatchbacks are close enough, and maybe they are. The Ford Focus RS is big enough with the back seat folded down, to hold a fair bit of stuff. Be reasonable about this, and remember that if you can't see around the corner you might get a surprise. Be safe, but not stupid about it. Life has to be worth living, and cars are best that are fun to drive, not just economical.
