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The expanding size of American cars over the past few decades is increasing congestion by reducing the vehicle capacity of roadways. SUVs are longer, require more braking distance, and drivers behind them need to leave more space to see around them.

In his latest video, Mark Rober shows how easy it is to fool Tesla’s self-driving capability (they use cheaper video cameras) when compared with other self-driving cars (which use lidar). Big Wile E. Coyote energy from the Tesla here. Oh and he also uses lidar to map out the interior at Disneyland’s...

The War on Cars debuts an ad that extolls the freedom of cycling. “Who’s really more free? People beholden to traffic, gas prices, and the high cost of owning and maintaining a car or those who are able to choose another way?” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Incredible: Nearly 96% of new cars registered in Norway in January 2025 were all-electric. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Gigantic SUVs are a public health threat. Why don’t we treat them like one? “Like tobacco, its use can — and often does — kill innocent bystanders. I’m talking about oversized cars.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

On these downhill skateboarding things, I’m always wondering why there aren’t any cars, but uh, there are cars in this one. Josh Neuman skateboarding down a mountain road while cars come up makes me real nervous! He almost skates into a barrier at 2:07, and towards the end there’s a biker riding up ...

Well! In the Yale Review, Chris Ware (one of my favorite cartoonists) writes about Richard Scarry (one of my favorite children’s book authors) and Cars and Trucks and Things That Go (one of my favorite books). This year is the 50th anniversary of Scarry’s 1974 Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, whi...

Five ways a Trump presidency would be disastrous for the climate. He plans to “delete spending on clean energy, abolish ‘insane’ incentives for Americans to drive electric cars, scrap various environmental rules and unleash a ‘drill, baby, drill’ wave…” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

In a continuation and tweak of his Coletivos project (which I posted about previously), Cássio Vasconcellos took aerial photos of scrapyards and arranged the junked cars, planes, trains, and other objects into dense photographic collages. OVER presents a scenario that seems to point to a dystopian f...

Forums Are Still Alive, Active, And A Treasure Trove Of Information. A huge list of still-active internet forums on topics like audio, drugs, plants, home repair, crafting, sports, cars, and all sorts of other things. Join the discussion on kottke.org →

A site called Chromeography collects chrome logos and typography from vintage cars & electric appliances. As I was looking through these, I wondered: “What the hell is chrome anyway?” So I looked it up: Chrome plating (less commonly chromium plating) is a technique of electroplating a thin layer of ...

In a collaboration with Red Bull & Prada (uh, ok) and with the help of the Polish State Railways, Dawid Godziek rode a mountain bike on a ramps course on top of a moving train, performing tricks & flips between cars. The train and rider moved at the same speed in opposite directions, which made it s...

Tom Gauld (and Richard Scarry) on cars of the future. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

When kids can’t get outside to play in a world built for cars, both they and adults suffer. “Kids didn’t need special equipment or lessons; they just needed to be less reliant on their time-strapped parents to get outside.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

London expanded their Ultra Low Emission Zone (which polluting cars need to pay a fee to enter) and pollution levels decreased significantly in the first 6 months. Particulate matter (PM2.5) dropped 22% and NO2 fell 21%. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

The myth about cars that’s hurting cities. “In study after study in city after city around the world, researchers have found that merchants exaggerate the share of patrons who arrive by car and undercount those who walk, bike, or ride transit.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

In the last 10 years, Paris has closed 100 streets to cars, removed 50,000 parking spots, tripled parking fees for SUVs, and built more than 800 miles of bike lanes. “Those changes have contributed to a 40% decline in air pollution.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

What cars would the Founding Fathers have driven? “thomas jefferson would have preordered a cybertruck. ben franklin would have made fun of him for it, but would himself own a rapidly depreciating model 3.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Video of a tornado in Nebraska going right over a train, filmed by the conductor. “The tornado blew over and derailed 31 cars. The engineer and I were unharmed.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

I love watching these genetic algorithm thingies. “The program uses a simple genetic algorithm to evolve random two-wheeled shapes into cars over generations.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

How crappy federal legislation has encouraged US automakers to build & sell bigger cars, trucks, and SUVs, which are more dangerous and worse for the climate. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Apparently you can teach rats to drive tiny cars? Chef Gusteau: “Anyone can drive!” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities — Until They Live in One. The car-free schemes end up being so popular and work so well that “once cities make the decision to reduce or remove cars, they rarely go back”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Tech has shifted from the Star Trek era (smartphones, voice computing, virtual reality) to the Douglas Adams age (hallucinating LLMs, wayward robo cars, AI girlfriends). “When technology becomes absurd, we must respond with absurd inventions.” Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Holy crap, how cool are these carved wooden cars by Kiko Miyares! The style is just incredible. Is light a wave or a particle? Neither: light is wood. (via @scottmccloud) Tags: art · cars · Kiko Miyares Join the discussion on kottke.org →

The global cost of cars: “We find that, since their invention, cars and automobility have killed 60–80 million people and injured at least 2 billion. Currently, 1 in 34 deaths are caused by automobility.” (via @davidzipper) Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Kyle Branchesi has created some fanciful “urban oddities” that imagine different locales in the UK being fully optimized for cars. For instance, here are Buckingham Palace and Westminster: Writes Branchesi: Amidst a political landscape where the ‘war on motorists’ is wielded as a populist tool, th...

Richard Scarry Cars and Trucks and Things That Go tote bag! Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Well, it has been a loooong week and this made me laugh a stupid amount, so now you’re seeing it. ✌️ Tags: cars

This is interesting: a new development in Phoenix is being built with mixed-use, no room or roads for cars, and more density than your average suburb. “Freedom is being able to just simply walk out and access places.”

This video from Practical Engineering offers a brief explanation of dozens of different types of railcars, from passenger train cars like the dining car & sleeper car to freight cars like the boxcar, tank car, and hopper cars (for hauling things like sand or grain) to specialized cars the rail compa...

From XKCD, the progression of people's opinions about cars & urban planning, from "I wish there wasn't so much traffic to get into the city. They should put in more lanes." to "Anything that makes a city a worse place to drive makes it a better place to live." As The War on Cars said on Bluesky, "Ra...

On July 4, 2023, a couple thousand people gathered in Alaska to watch old junker cars get launched off of a 300-foot cliff and just get obliterated on impact. (The launching starts at the 8-minute mark.) It's entertaining to watch in a Jackass sort of way, but the whole thing is a metaphor for a par...

Tom Scott visits the small Swiss ski town of Zermatt, where petrol cars have never been allowed. In the 1980s, the town skipped right from horse-drawn carriages to locally-built electric vehicles, which are made pretty much by hand and are expensive — but they are also easy to maintain and repair an...

David Zipper, who researches and writes about mobility and transportation, recently did a big thread on Mastodon (and Bluesky) about car bloat: the way in which cars and trucks have gotten much bigger and heavier in the US over the past few decades and how it's bad for society. The whole thread is w...

When you apply power with higher-than-normal voltage to electric kids toys, they tend to move faster. When you apply 30V instead of the usual 2.5V or 5V, they move really fast: This reminds me of when I was in grade school. Does anyone remember Stompers? They were battery-operated cars and trucks t...

McDonald’s started out as McDonald’s Bar-B-Q in San Bernardino, CA in 1940. Here’s a copy of the menu from that time: The drive-in BBQ restaurant was a great success: The restaurant had carhops serving guests and would often see 125 cars crowding the lot on weekends. They quickly saw their annual s...

The American car has gotten bigger in the past few decades but parking spot size has not kept pace. Regardless of the cause, the end result is roughly 50 percent of the American car market switched from sedans and wagons to SUVs, especially midsize and large SUVs, chunkifying the average American ca...

I was skeptical but if you listen carefully, there are some really solid ideas in this video on why designing cities around lots of cars makes sense. Brb, currently buying some cars and moving to cities. Tags: Adam Kovacs   architecture   cars   cities   video

It is Friday and this is the perfect Friday sort of post. BeamNG is a video game of sorts that’s “a dynamic soft-body physics vehicle simulator capable of doing just about anything”. In the simulator, you can quickly devise all sorts of situations with a variety of cars and then press play to see wh...

In this video, using before-and-after satellite imagery, Claire Weisz of WXY, an architecture and urban design firm, explains how her company helped redesign three of NYC’s unruliest intersections: Astor Place, Cooper Union, and Albee Square. Unsurprisingly, the redesigns all involved taking space a...

From the Brick Technology YouTube channel, a demonstration on how to build a 5-speed manual transmission with Lego. It even has a gear stick and goes in reverse. Unloaded, 1st gear spins an axel at 384 rpm and 5th gear spins at 3000 rpm. Really impressive. See also Designing a Lego Car to Cross Gaps...

This drone fly-through of Tesla’s new factory in Berlin is amazing. I’ve never seen anything quite like this — the drone flies through the robotic machinery in between cycles of stamping out parts and also through the cars as they are being assembled. A uniquely effective how-things-are-made video. ...

In the last decade, the number of pedestrians hit by cars in the United States has increased by almost 50%, even as that rate has

Great reinvention of a former parking lot in south-east Melbourne, Australia. Reclaiming the space from cars, including Saturda

Since reading Gregory Shill's writing about how heavily subsidized cars are in the United States, I've been on the lookout for dif

I read four things recently that are all related in some way to our cities and how we get around in them.1. Was the Automotive E

This is a fascinating & provocative article from law professor Gregory Shill: Americans Shouldn't Have to Drive, but the Law I