We may complain about our overcrowded roads but did you know that there are more cars than people in Los Angeles? Intriguingly, in 1998, there were 228m firearms, according to FBI records, against a mere 208m cars in America. An interesting survey from that part of the world also revealed that pound-for-pound, a typical hamburger is costlier than a car.
To those persons, who question the viability of the modern motorcar, it is worth being aware that most cars around the globe spend 95% of their lifetimes parked up. Of course, you would not want to do that in Central London, which now boasts the most expensive car parks in the world, allied to some of the most swingeing anti-car taxes, including Congestion Charge Zone fees. In the meantime, it is buildings in London that emit the highest amount of pollutants.
According to research, the average age of the cars filling Britain’s parking spaces is 7.7 years, and an amazing quarter of them were made in China. If that sounds like an enormous amount of imports for one country, consider that, in 1916, 55% of all cars were Ford Model Ts, which remains an unbeaten record and each of them was available famously in any colour, as long as it was black! For what it is worth, the most popular car colour in the world today is white.
Ford’s perspective these days is on its production figures and it makes no less than 10,000 cars daily. At the other end of the scale, Ferrari produces a mere 20 to 30 of its exciting cars daily, although, as it is estimated to be worth in excess of £9bn, the slow rate of production has clearly not eroded Ferrari’s bottom-line.
Despite the innate politics, Ferrari is synonymous with Formula 1 and its racing cars produce around 3.5G during cornering manoeuvres, not dissimilar to an Air Force fighter jet. However, they can also generate enough aerodynamic downforce to drive upside down in a tunnel, something with which the fighter jet would have few issues, were the tunnel wide enough.
Of course, high speed may be exciting but there is a reducing number of public roads available in Europe, on which you might exploit the performance potential of your car, which does draw into question the vast number of seriously high-performance vehicles being registered these days. As the UK has the most-watched and monitored roads in the world, it is a surprise that speeding tickets are not more readily issued than they are. Mind you, in highly speed-conscious Sweden, the world record speeding citation was issued to a man charged with doing 180mph. He was fined a whopping 1m Euros for his crime.
It is suggested that the self-driving (autonomous) car will put an end to speeding for good and government figures suggest that it might reduce accidents by 90%, which would put the reduction on par with roundabouts, which are reported as reducing fatalities from accidents by an identical 90%. Perhaps there is an argument in favour of rebuilding all of the roundabouts on the A1M?
The self-driving car builds upon technology that was designed originally for cruise control, although I shall wager that you were unaware it was invented by a blind man. While music icon, Stevie Wonder, is reputed to drive his cars (on his private driveway), there is a city statute in New York by-laws, which states that blind people are not allowed to drive a car in the city, “in light of safety concerns”. It is worth highlighting that it is also “illegal to drive a car while sleeping” in the State of Tennessee. As critics of some TV commentators might highlight, there is nothing like ‘stating the bleedin’ obvious’!
The EU is renowned for legislating against curved bananas but it is EVs (Electric Vehicles) that are causing its current concerns…when not worrying about ‘Brexit’. As a result, while the actual noise details have not been finalised, all electric, or hybrid, cars will be required to make an artificial noise so that pedestrians can hear them approaching. What the noise will be is interesting enough but whether all the headphone-wearers will start looking before they cross roads will be even more fascinating.
On the subject of EVs, far from being new technology, they actually preceded powered vehicles and one of the first Land Speed Records (68mph) was created in 1899 by an electrically powered car. While most carmakers are turning to rechargeable battery power as a motive force for the future, it might interest you to know that the very first Porsche was electric, back in 1931.
Germany’s other major name in motoring, Volkswagen, now owns 12 automotive brands from seven European countries, including; Volkswagen Passenger Cars, Audi, Seat, Skoda, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Ducati Motorbikes, and even Porsche. In fact, one of the few German brands that VW does not own is Mercedes Benz, to which Adolf Hitler once wrote a begging letter requesting the loan of a car. It seems that providing ‘celebrity transport’ is not a recent invention. VW does have a slightly less controversial figure in its history: the co-founder of Domino’s Pizza, who sold his shares to buy a new Volkswagen Beetle…it probably seemed like a good idea at the time.
