Street Legal Batmobile: Team Galag, a group of racers who all hail from Saudi Arabia, will be entering their to-scale Batmobile (seen above) in this year’s Gumball 3000. A win seems virtually impossible, given the nature of the race and the Batmobile’s top speed of 100 mph, but that doesn’t seem to be making us any less jealous. source
“[A]s a practical matter … if you are a farmer, 30 miles from town and you want to transfer a shotgun to a neighbor, you’ve got to go 30 miles into town, find the federal licensed firearm dealer, fill out the paperwork, pay the fee, have the background check and then you have a responsibility to keep those records for inspection by the government and that’s a huge burden on citizens.” - Asa Hutchison, former Republican congressman who led the National Rifle Association’s school safety initiative.
Re-Write:
“[A]s a practical matter … if you are a farmer, 30 miles from town and you want to transfer a
shotguncar to a neighbor, you’ve got to go 30 miles into town, find thefederal licensed firearm dealerDMV,fill out the paperworkchange the title, pay the fee,have the background checkhave insurance and a license and then you have a responsibility to keep those records for inspection by the government and that’s a huge burden on citizens.”
Today in making an argument through editing.
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» That’s the first time any state’s average price-per-gallon has dropped below the $3 mark since days after the beginning of the Libyan revolution. Fighting began on February 15, 2011, and prices in South Carolina crossed the $3 threshold a few days later on February 19. While a 2.3 cent gap may not seem like much, analysts expect the prices to continue dropping, and millions of Americans will undoubtedly welcome financial relief of any kind — particularly on a commodity that many of us rely on heavily in our daily lives.
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Google’s self-driving cars may be out on the road already, but it will take awhile before public is truly ready to give up all driving control to artificial intelligence. In the interim, Volvo has a solution that lets drivers (sometimes) sleep at the wheel while still improving highway safety—and it just completed the first real-world tests.
Dubbed SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment), the EU-backed project is working on road trains—vehicles equipped with software already found in many Volvo vehicles (including laser sensors, cameras, and radars) that are automatically led along the highway by a lead vehicle, which is commandeered by a professional driver. Regular drivers could one day simply use in-car navigation to find the nearest highway road train, get on the tail end, and let the vehicle platoon take over steering, braking, and acceleration.
So how long you guys think it’ll take before seeing a self-driving vehicle on the road is a common experience?
Thanks in part to high demand in the United States, and new tax incentives in Japan following last year’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, Toyota’s Prius line of hybrid vehicles is officially the third-highest-selling line of vehicles in the world. “It’s the phenomenon we saw with Chrysler and minivans,” says automotive historian and independent analyst John Wolkonowicz. “After all these years, Chrysler still is minivan sales leader. Prius was the first hybrid on the block.” (Photo via Toyota) source
That’s a 31.5 percent increase, guys. Chrysler did pretty good, but they didn’t do that good.
» Chrysler’s best quarterly profit in 13 years: Just a couple years away from a bailout that shook the company to the core and the merger with Fiat that saved it, Chrysler is on a little bit of a winning streak, with several car models posting their best monthly results ever.
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I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
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» But hey, it’s still a winner! Really. The Volt received some bad press since its debut, so it hasn’t sold as many cars as it could have sold. If only sold as many cars as it won awards; it just won the 2012 European Car of the Year — but the car also won the 2011 North American Car of the Year, the World Green Car of the Year and was named Motor Trend’s Car of the Year. Now Chevy just needs to sell more cars, and the Volt can earn its recognition on the roads.
At Today’s Daytona 500, some dingleberry named Tony Raines will be driving a car with this emblazoned on it. Santorum won’t actually be there, but Mitt will, and so will the UAW, flying above with this slogan on a plane: “Mitt Romney: Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” Friends don’t let friends watch auto racing. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images)
» What a record to break! One year removed from bankruptcy, American automaker General Motors posted record-setting earnings for the 2011 fiscal year. In recent weeks/months many investors worried that GM’s overseas operations would drag down the company’s year-end totals. GM lost a total of $747 million in European markets, with $562 million of the losses occurring in the fourth quarter alone. In South America, where the company reported $818 million in earnings for 2010, GM reported a net loss of $122 million. However, not only did the company defy global expectations, GM managed to break its former $6.7 billion earnings record, set in 1996.
excitablehonky asks: I'm not particularly inclined to defend whichever side of the issue Mitt Romney might be on any given day, but I think it's pretty dubious to say Clint Eastwood refuted the "unpopular opinion" expressed in Romney's November op-ed about Detroit with a Super Bowl commercial when Eastwood himself was saying that we shouldn't be bailing out car companies just a week or two before Romney's piece ran. Shouldn't sauce for the goose (Romey) be sauce for the gander (Eastwood)?
» SFB says: You have a handicap we didn’t last night — you’re refuting the point using evidence most people weren’t aware of yesterday (as we were liveblogging), a quote that didn’t surface online until three hours ago. Keep in mind that anything can look less shiny under the surface in the face of new evidence. Now, whether Eastwood actually believes that way or if he was the mouthpiece for a car company, let’s also keep in mind that visceral effect does speak for a lot, too. Which is to say, Eastwood’s voice sold that point, whether or not he was buying it. — Ernie @ SFB
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