Asking you, our dear readers, for your questions ahead of an Autopian author attending a car reveal is standard fare here, and we appreciate the queries you give us – and of course, the clever comments. Jason asked what you want to know about the Lexus ES, and the best answer thus far is from Mechjaz:
How do the leathers taste compared to their gastronomical namesakes? Does the Cream leather taste like cream, Chocolate as chocolate, Caramel as caramel? How about Oreo créme? How do Oreos taste eaten off the leather? Do they pick up subtle notes of Lexus? If you were going to leave Oreo crumbs in the seats, which flavors would the designers recommend, and is there a colorway that works best for golden/lemon Oreos, or can one at least be specially optioned?
I think that’s all my questions, thanks.
It was just a few days ago when I remarked that, somehow, most posts at the Autopian somehow lead to poop in some way. I mean, the Morning Dump is already a double entendre. Well, I guess we aren’t beating the allegations, because we’re talking about poop again. Specifically, Jason wants to come up with a car version of the Diarrhea Song. Oh my.
You’ll find many, many more of these in the comments of the story, but here are a few standouts:
Highland Green Miata:
When you drive Dave Matthew’s bus
and some boat tour riders fuss…
Chris:
When your jackin’ up your car
and you fill your pants with tar.
MaximillianMeen:
When you’re downshiftin’ to pass,
And your’re squirtin’ out your ass,
Diarrhea! Diarrhea!
John Crouch:
When you’re riding in a jeep
and your rear seal starts to seep
Diarrhea, Diarrhea!
Angry Bob:
When you’re bouncing in a Deux Chevaux
And the seat says “time to go”
Diarrhea! Diarrhea!When the air-cooled twin starts wheezin’
And your stomach starts displeasin’
Diarrhea! Diarrhea!When the canvas roof is flappin’
And your back seat’s nearly happenin’
Diarrhea! Diarrhea!When the shifter’s in the dashboard
And your bowels are yelling “fast forward”
Diarrhea! Diarrhea!
Thomas wrote about how Android Auto finally has a fix for weird screen shapes. Erik Hancock describes modern tech:
Ugh, more solutions to problems that were created by solutions to problems that nobody had.
Matt wrote about how suspending the gas tax might not lower gas prices for long. BB 2 wheels > 4 makes a good point:
Removing the federal gas tax is a disservice to ALL americans. Our infrastructure is already decrepit. But voters just care about right now?
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic images: Lexus; DepositPhotos.com
Look at where gas taxes are actually going.
In spite of laws mandating how they are used, they’re typically stolen and where is kept secret regardless of laws requiring open information.
i hope it tastes like snozzberries.
No, don’t defer maintenance on infrastructure. The country is already way behind from recessions and COVID budget decisions.
Then again, I’m in favor of some kind of EV tax. They are heavier than ICE vehicles and have more torque, so it reasons that they cause more wear on the roads. We will need more than gas taxes to keep the roads and bridges together.
What you want, then, is a weight tax. Instead of penalizing vehicles for being electric and theoretically being heavier, penalize vehicles for being heavier. That would actually pressure both ICEVs and EVs toward lightness.
Which is good, except a considerable amount of the weight in modern cars is in safety systems (eg- the frames are far more substantial than cars from 20 years ago because impact criteria are a lot stricter). So you’d have to have a way to exclude that from taxation.
No, because safety is both regulated and desirable for marketing reasons. Weight is weight. If you want a safe vehicle, you’ll either need to pay for its burden on infrastructure (and the increased danger to others) or choose a smaller vehicle.
That’s like saying we shouldn’t regulate fuel efficiency because heavier cars are safer and less efficient, it just makes a confusing mess.
I disagree that safety should be a marketing point, and in other industries (aerospace, energy) there is a quasi-official Gentleman’s agreement that “safest” doesn’t appear in sales materials. So remove the incentive to cut safety in the name of profit. Something like “each passenger seat gets xxx lbs worth of primary structural material and restraint systems devoted to impact safety that are exempt from tax calculations” and you can still punish a pickup more than a coupe.
That would really hit sports cars.
I would remind you that pickups are actually useful.
Relatives showed up yesterday in a big minivan and a borrowed pickup, because even a rocking chair won’t fit in the minivan.
I had no trouble fitting a rocking chair in my Rabbit.
Impressive.
This is a full size antique rocking chair though.
It would only fit in the bed of my truck sideways to get under the topper.
In theory it might have gone in the minivan with the seats out. Runners are very long though, back is tall.
Why would it hit sports cars? The incentive to remove weight to increase performance remains. It’s just saying you shouldn’t get an unreasonable tax hit for a proper crash cell.
I never said pickups aren’t useful- they’re great. It’s also an inescapable fact of physics that their greater mass increases wear and tear on public roads.
Two seaters have been getting pretty porky for their capacity.
Wouldn’t be as heavy per passenger as a truck but would matter.
I’m not convinced main roads in good condition are affected by light trucks though.
Main roads are built for 100,000 pounds with multiple tires spreading weight.
My pickup is 3.5 to 4 tons, but tires are large and could be larger.
The bridge before my drive on a very rural road is rated 18 tons.
I’ve run a semi and trailer over it, though not fully loaded. Loaded and likely overloaded cattle trucks go over it fairly often from the neighbors.
Aerospace and energy wouldn’t talk about safety because those are massive organizational/civil purchases whose safety failures are usually the result of some anomaly or design/construction fault (power plant and air disasters, for example) rather than normal operation, which basically makes claiming “safest” an act of gambling.
Cars, on the other hand, experience crashes very often and regardless of their functionality. Some people shop around for cars with the “best” crash safety scores, others have higher priorities and want design trade-offs that are technically suboptimal for safety. Trucks, sports cars, super-efficient economy cars, work vans…they should make an effort to not be negligent, but they aren’t as safety-focused as a family minivan.
Or, to put it another way: A tax on weight meant to cover the indirect costs on others (infrastructure, safety) incurred by purchasing a heavier vehicle is aligning the market with a physical reality. There can be some argument to how that should scale, but it can be one formula to look at.
Trying to modify that to selectively incentivize weight in specific subsystems is introducing an artificial subsidy that’s subject to all manner of opinion and interpretation, that can rapidly go out-of-date based on changes in how vehicles are constructed, etc. It’s creating endless problems to solve an issue that shouldn’t realistically matter unless this “weight penalty” scales very aggressively.
This is the way.
“But voters just care about right now?”
American voters are hardly able to look past their own noses on anything, least of all the one thing we’ve been taught to treat as a totem for the state of the economy overall.
To be fair, if our district maps didn’t look like someone spilled spaghetti noodles, then maybe the popular vote would be reflected in the results.
I was going for posting volume on that article, happy one of them landed. I have to admit though, I was more self amused by the one I came up with that paired 2CV and the juvenile French term for poop.
Hahaha that was my strategy, flood the zone
When you’re heading home, and you flood the zone… Diarrhea!
When it’s comment of the day,
and your pants are full of clay…