Summertime, and the livin’s easy…wait, it’s not summer yet? Could’ve fooled me. But it’s still a good thing…the sun and the heat means that the racing and show season is on in full force! If you aren’t gearing up for some events, aren’t out taking in some shows, or preparing for that long trip, what are you doing? We’ve got plenty coming down the pike, so much so that we’re re-doing our own calendar to make sure we can cover as much as possible. But in the meantime, we’ve got a pile of some of the choice cuts of news scraps for this week that we’ve tossed onto the grill for a light roasting before we serve it up for you. Here’s this week’s Scrapple…enjoy!
1. You know what? You go first.
What you are looking at is called the Airbus A3 Vahana. With eight propellors and one single seat, it looks like the kind of thing you might find in a futuristic Japanese anime film, but in truth what this experimental aircraft is supposed to be is a flying taxi. It flies to you, you hop into the seat, and it flies you where you want to go. The end. If you think this is just vaporware, you’d be wrong…it’s already undergoing flight tests and has been for at least a year now. What do you think…is the world ready for a flying taxi service yet?
2. Would Sir like anything else?
Speaking of technology meant to spoil the human being even more than normal, meet the Loomo. This is a Segway product that not only can be a mobility device, but also a wheeled puppy. Among it’s features are auto-follow and obstacle avoidance, the ability to respond to voice commands, and the inability to leave a fresh steamer on the rug like a real puppy. $1,700 buys you a robotic skateboard-like companion with a personality…if you are into that sort of thing.
3. “Drive safely or there will be…trouble.”
Here’s another beauty: SRI International and Reuben Brewer, an engineer, have created a robotic form of an officer to visit you at the window when you’ve overstepped the limits. The idea is to keep the officer in the car where they are nice and safe, and to make sure that the traffic stop is as odd as possible. And just in case you think about hauling ass away from the modern RoboCop, a “spike arm” will be deployed in front of the rear tires. Currently, this is only a prototype, so for now Officer Friendly will still have to get out of their cruiser and greet you at the window personally. License and registration, you know the deal.
4. Tesla A.I. found to drive like BMW owners. News at 11.
Consumer Reports recently got the chance to test out a Tesla Model 3 with the updated Navigate on Autopilot software that Tesla recently sent out to vehicles. The results? “We enabled the feature and drove on several highways across Connecticut. In the process, multiple testers reported that the Tesla often changed lanes in ways that a safe human driver wouldn’t—cutting too closely in front of other cars, and passing on the right.” And that’s just one item out of many in their review. Apparently letting a Tesla handle the work is at best, nerve-wracking…and not just for the poor sap behind the wheel.
5. Dead: Audi TT
The Audi TT, a sporty little coupe that has been around since the late 1990s, is going to go away in a couple of years for an electric model. Actually, let’s be accurate…per Audi’s CEO Bram Schot, “…we will replace the TT with a new emotive model in the same price range, with an electric car.”
Well, isn’t that just awesome…the TT is going to be axed in favor of an electric car, as is a potential R8 replacement as well if the persisting rumors are true. If you are a fan of Ingolstadt’s performance machines, bad news: thanks to parent company Volkswagen’s big time no-no involving the very dirty D-word (that’s diesel, you heathen), the knee-jerk reaction is going to be sunshine, open roads, and the sounds of golf carts whizzing by with four rings on the face. Rejoice! This is progress.
