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Miscellaneous News
- Thread starter bd popeye
- Start date
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proelite
Junior Member
Do these article ever talk about the monetary value of the GDP they enable?
US highways loses $300+ billion a year.
You can have both, but with these regulations? Not on your life. The fact that emission regulations change annually or at least progressively, squeezes engineers into a corner where they have to innovate at a rate so fast, that refining a design becomes impossible. Take the Euro Emissions Standard for example. They already have a chart setup for future regulations with that Euro 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 etc. bullshit. The other main problem is patenting. Patenting makes it so competitors have to come up with their own systems instead of following logic and coming up with unified solutions. Back in the golden days of modern design (between the 30s-60s), form used to follow function. Today form has to follow restrictive laws and regulations and stupid consumer choices.
This is why cars nowadays have to have EGR, SCR or DPF, and exhaust cooling systems for exhaust emissions. Hell there's cars that have all four, like the new Golf TDIs. They have to have VVT, DI and PI, turbochargers, variable-geometry turbochargers, water charged intercoolers, and now we have Volvo semis that have turbocompounds. Then there's regenerative braking, God I hate that stuff! The new hybrids are required to have EVAP systems (That stupid buzzing you hear cars make when they are shut off) where the car has to capture in the evaporated gas from the gas tank and reinject it back into the cylinders. You can't have all these systems under the hood with easy access, so you are faced with the problem of compact design issues where getting to, say, an oil filter requires the removal of the battery or the air intake box, or both.
Don't get me wrong, I like technology and innovation. I like driving cars that have dual-clutch transmissions that make you feel like you're in a race car. I like innovative solutions like active grille curtains that close up to reduce Cd when the engine is cool enough. I like the environment and protecting it, but what's taking place today is we are low-key moving backwards. Cars keep getting bigger, heavier, more complex, and the coefficients of drag keep on increasing. We went from classic Bugattis and egg/tear drop shaped cars like the 300SL Gullwing, Thunderbird, Porsche 356, and the incredible air-cooled VW Beetle, to brick shaped heaps of trash like the G-class, Jeep Wrangler, Humvees, Escalades, and minivans. The consumer is parly to blame here. They want bigger and higher and Apple Carplay and AI and self driving and seven seaters and 20 airbags and 20 speakers and 700km range batteries that weigh more than the entire car itself. I mean have you seen the new Hummer EV? It weighs over 4 tons!
So in summary, I think efficient low-emission cars are possible without complex engines and their emission control systems. Cars can be made lighter and more aerodynamically efficient, but will they ever? Probably not. Maybe we will get an economy of rickshaws/city cars going in the near future and finally get access to concepts like the VW L1 and Nils and some of these urban concepts we see in Canton fair, but for the time being, we are stuck with overpriced shitboxes.
People still try to paint Crimea as Ukraine. It's just comes off as cope.
However when in comes to territory, at the very least it would include Taiwan and whatever parts India disputes. After all the west and India keep saying it's not China's so we will just respond in kind. Maybe also include parts of Japan since they don't seem to show respect so we will respond the same way.
The "N word"
Trump really did a great job on this to deter China. At least MAGA guys think so.
Posts about Three Gorges Dam is getting extremely popular on X again...
Will Chinese leadership feel scared & kneel to Trump after seeing what happened in Iran last night? We'll see.
Does this make Li Peng — who called the shots on constructing the dam — the patron saint of MAGA gooners?
Trump going after Medvedev is going to give a huge boost to him. He is slowly becoming the key candidate to be the successor of Putin.
supercat
Colonel
The "Asian NATO" has a bad start obviously.
How women are treated in the US.
I'm surprised it took this long for US to react to Medvedev saying multiple countries are ready to give Iran nukes. Not exactly a small statement coming from head of Russian security council and basically #2 man in Russia, even if he has a history of trolling on twitter.
It also happened right before Iranian FM meet with Putin in Moscow, and just as Russia said at UN NPT is a scam because Israel isn't part of it.
Giving nukes despite NPT isn't exactly without precedence, Pakistan was given nukes to balance India, not officially but everyone kinda knew, and of course Israel was.
It will piss off Israel and US immeasurably, but with Russia already at war with NATO and NATO already went after Russia's nuclear force, it's also not as impossible as it used to be.
I don't think Russia will do it, its too tracable, but Russia might give Iran a hand building their own.