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Detroit, 8:30 AM
Tue Nov 24
24 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/14/09
09/14/09
It will be a triumphant win for electric cars when they can go long distances on relatively quick recharges and we start putting that technology into everyday cars so the cost starts to come down. Until then every exclusive 2-seater electric hot rod is merely pandering to the trendy green movement. I see little redeeming value to this vehicle... and that's not even getting started on the styling.
09/14/09
Is electric the key? Possibly. Does this car have a purpose? Yes. The same purpose that a Bugatti has, yes a Bugatti can sustain top speed longer than the battery output on this EV supercar but the reality is most individuals run their car at top speed maybe once a year unless their running it around a closed track. Which in that case these supercars should be put aside for a proper track car...like the Atom.
Point is we should look at this as the starting block to the future of alternative powerhouse vehicles and not simply tag it up as a trend vehicle.
09/14/09
Sure, this thing's got it's purpose. But that purpose does nothing to further advance electric technology. This is not the first step, it's not the next step, it's just "look, we hope it does 200 miles per hour while getting uproarious applause from the environmentalists"
I'm not averse to the green movement, but this isn't movement, it's static, it's been done, it's a repeat... all they've got is styling, virtual-reality styling. And that is why this is pandering. It's jumping on the electric bandwagon because it's popular, but they're making no great advancement.
09/14/09
09/14/09
The Schigera lives!
09/14/09
09/14/09
09/14/09
09/14/09
09/14/09
08/20/09
08/20/09
As for the car itself, it's an improvement over current Infiniti's but it's basically a rebadged Maxima.
08/20/09
08/20/09
08/20/09
[karakullake.blogspot.com]
08/20/09
As a kid, I could walk up to the concept car and touch it. I remember the crunch rustle of my Tuffskins jeans and faint squeak of my Keds sneakers on a glistening convention room floor. It might just be a plaster mockup, but even just as a plaster mockup, it was a real object whose textures and colors existed were right there to see, and was it ever a thing to see. Engineers had sweated the numbers and designers had sweated ink to make it a car worth building, and then artisans had shed actual blood building the concept, the prototype, the first few examples off the line. Something large, heavy and expensive had been loaded onto a truck and brought to me so I could see it, walk around it, and hear what a hopeful man had to say about it. He was there to pitch it to me, to make me want it. But we were a frugal nation, a country populated by single incomes, little leagues and family campout vacations because that was cheaper. Good enough was good enough, because good enough was paid for. A man had to really work up the crowd's enthusiasm and when the cloth dropped and the busty smiling models stepped out of the way, the crowd of onlookers oohed and
08/20/09
...aahed as if they had been shown something truly remarkable. And maybe they had.
But now a presenter offers an abstract brushstroke on a screen, which morphs into a stylized car silhouette, which is transformed into a virtual car projected onto a neutral blank. There is thin, brief applause.
And I am not there. I see the reveal via a Youtube video that loads in fits and starts, and plays in fits and starts. And all this is brought to me via Jalopnik. My removal from the experience may exceed my separation from Kevin Bacon. Just as newer and newer cars seem to need people less and less, built by robots, navigated by satellites and correcting their own wheelspin, I am less and less engaged by automakers and their products.
I look back on Tuffskins and showroom models so new you can still smell the paint curing, and know those days can never come again. And that's a shame. Will my kids, once grown, look back on an experience like this, where a company and its workers laid their hearts on the line and built something for them to touch? Will they have been engaged on a level as earthy as putting an actual example directly in front of them, to be lauded or denied in the first person by the potential customer?
Somehow I doubt it.
08/20/09
08/20/09
08/20/09
Why give an edit button & not let us edit????
08/20/09
08/19/09