I Want a Modular Pod-Car for My Bailout Money

google_cars.jpgThe Big 3 Auto industry bailout is all the rage now on blogs and news sites. Though many raise the question of why the car companies have not produced more desirable vehicles (UAW drives up prices and kills profits for affordable fuel-efficient cars, bad management with no vision, car companies force consumers to believe they want SUVs through advertising, etc., etc.), I have a different question:

What could the car companies be making that would reinvent our current scenario?? Solar-powered pod cars of course.

Even a decent hybrid would make me happy, but can you imagine the massive coolness of a WPA-like effort that created modular pod cars, solar-powered, that ran on rails for long-distances? In the software industry, modular development isolates the flaws in a program to a specific function that can be retooled as needed without crashing the entire program. Modular transportation would provide as-needed resources without the all-or-nothing approach we have now. For example, my family goes up to Tahoe fairly often in the winter. We decided we needed all-wheel-drive for safety on those trips. Not to mention a car that could slam a snowbank and we’d survive. But that leaves me driving a 20 mpg car on a daily basis. We could give up our trips to Tahoe, but my sanity would suffer! (Mountains… snow… ahhh…) It would be sooooooo groovy to be able to unhook my personal pod for day trips to the grocery store. To tack on the 4WD engine-assist only when needed. To take the rail at least 50% of the way: hook the pod to the rail and go, via geothermal or solar or some other non-coal, non-petroleum renewable source.new-nissan-pivo2-concept-car.jpg

I have never understood why we get so brainwashed into our current scenarios that it seems like we have no other options. Yes, it would be really freakin hard to institute a change of that scale. But we have huge problems that need solving in new ways. We need more cooperation and much, much less “every man for himself” thinking. We tend to think of state-imposed programs as unAmerican and bad. It would be great if the Gates Foundation or Buffet’s money took on this task. Heck, I bet the Ikea guy could kick some ass with this! GoogleCars anyone?!?! Open source. With third party add-ons.

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody. ~Buckminster Fuller

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November 24, 2008 | Filed Under Future Freak, Great Recession 

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