Only one EV charger at home?!

Ever drive a car with mechanical brakes? It's a good thing they could go all that fast.

When I was looking for a car in the early '70s I briefly considered a DS. Then my engineering mind totaled up how many strange and wondrous things could go wrong.

I wound up buying an Audi. It had its share of problems as VW tried to figure out how to build cars with the engine and transmission on the wrong end.

Our 1952 Hudson Wasp had, iirc, both hydraulic and mechanical brakes connected to the brake pedal. I don't know any details of how it worked.

They did fine with the Golf.

Toyota Yaris. I look on it as the cultural heir to the original Mini unlike the over-priced reincarnation. Cheap, FWD, transverse engine that runs like a scalded cat (for it's size)

We have our share of mentally challenged whites.

Why? Despite all the TV dramas a day in the life of most cops is boring routine. The smart ones move up in the ranks but you still need the rank and file. In any case IQ doesn't correlate well with dealing with people.

I saw that googling around, the Zero. Decades ago I hung around with some people who raced a Seven and they fascinated me. I'm a little long in the tooth to undertake building a kit car and I have the bikes if I want the thrill of bugs in my teeth and the aroma of rotting deer carcasses.

My Hyundai Gretz isnt big enough to sleep in even with the entire back seat removed and its only a to pins to get the entire back seat out.

Not sure about the passenger seat removed as well, but its considerably harder to remove.

Good idea on their part.

I decided to teach my girlfriend, who was over 30, how to drive.

I put a block of wood under the carboretor thingy so you could only get the car up to about 20 mph, and I found a bent piece of metal conduit I could slide underneath the kickpanel to the left of the driver's feet, and then across the brake pedal and over to the passenger side.

We lived in NYC but were in a small town for the day. Only 5 minutes in, she's driving along and I'm saying Slow Down, then yelling Slow Down, and as we got to the end of the road, I actually had to use my passenger-side brakes. We slid to a stop on gravel that had piled up there, and we even spun a little.

I asked why she didn't take her foot off the gas. She said she didn't know about that method!!!! Apparently I had't started with the basics. I didn't realize how little someone can know.

Next time I teach someone, I'll take her to a go-kart track and let her start on that. Learn that the thing slows down when you take your foot off the gas.

BTW, she was supposed to get a learner's permit, but she hadn't even done that. So that was the end of her lessons. (Had we gone beyond the road there was 20 feet of grass before we got to a cross-road.

She still lives in NYC, NY and still does't know how to drive and she's as old as I am.

Also in 1963 in Indianapolis, where driver's ed was part of high school and offered to everyone, and taken by everyone.

I don't think they wanted the burden of teaching how to shift gears when they first had to teach how to steer.

I read about it in a book, and in 1968 when a friend wanted to start early on our trip, he took me out in his car and let me drive it. To go from Chicago to Pittsburgh, you only have to shift about 8 times, and then he drove.

Same here.

Correct. And a LOT more. I am not sure how many classes of vehicle there are today, but moped, motorcycle under 125cc. motorcycle, car manual, car automatic, vehicle over 3.5 tonnes , over 7.5 tonnes, HGV & PSV, spring to mind from erratic memory.

by totally I mean well beyond my ability to do anything more than slightly better than coast to a atop. The steering became unusable too.

Yes happened to me in stop start jam downhill on the M25 some years ago. Kept on braking with the car idling. Suddenly no brakes...

I am not sure but electric pumps instead of vacuum or engine driven ones are getting more common.

On a BEV you would have no other option for power assist

My father tried to teach my mother. Soon my mother decided she would go to a driving school, and admonished me to never let him teach me, nor me teach anyone :-D

Yeah, there was some incident where the car with them flew into an empty house lot. She confused brake with accelerator or something :-)

In the UK when I passed it could be either. In fact I did it in my mothers car. Which had partially seized brakes. The emergency stop nearly spun the car, s O took my foot of and straightened the car before pulling up a second later. "Top marks for car control" the inspector said "But you would have killed the hypothetical child" I retorted "the child was hypothetical, the skid was real"

He passed me. I had been driving on L plates for a year. Every chance I got

I am not sure what the current EU mandated legality is in the UK, (we haven't changed any of it since we left) but when I learnt to drive in the 1960s there was no requirement to take even a single lesson. Many people who learn to drive during WWII never had to take a test either. All you did was present yourself at a test centre with a car. The inspector jumped in and off you went.

I had a start-stop Corsa (you know, they stop the engine when the car stops moving or nearly so, and start it automatically as you foot the clutch). The brake did work with the motor stopped, and the steering assist. The later I know was electric and would keep running from the battery.

The book said the motor could start again if the steering or brakes were used too much in that state.

Easily done. My sister on executing a left turn, which she managed to do, was told to 'straighten up'. She didn't know what that meant and continued turning left into a ditch.

People should star in go karts till they learn how to steer and brake and control the car. Then Tesco's car park on Sunday to learn how to reverse and be accurate and use the gears and clutch

THEN they are moderately safe on the road and can begin to learn the real art of driving - avoiding all the other assholes. And the trees. And the speed cameras And the speed humps And the chicanes.

I would think of that as coasting. OK it's not coasting in the sense of opening the clutch so the wheels are free to turn undriven, but the engine is not applying very much retardation force. For example, on the motorway going downhill in top gear, the car still gathers speed even if you let off the accelerator. Not as much as if you opened the clutch, but it still wouldn't decrease your speed. Whereas a sufficient application of the brakes would.

In that situation, you'd get more engine braking if you changed down (it would try to rev the engine faster) but it wouldn't be good for the engine.

Theo