sneakeypete

Its not a cheap method, when you consider all of the medical costs associated with it.

Having played around with Cities in Motion 2 quite a lot I learned that the main thing to do is to avoid bottlenecks, its not so much about the width of the road but the amount of waiting at lights which kills things. An ideal way to fix the above, for example, would be to get the next door tile and build another freeway offramp from the main route straight to the industry zone, meaning you now have two intersections to cram all that traffic through instead of one, for example.

If you use a 3 lane highway for the last segment before the 4 lane intersection you should end up with a straight though, left, and right option.

How Fiddly is it upgrading streets, eg non tree lined to tree lined?

While at first you might think AWD will only have an effect when "drive" is applied to the car, you need to remember that it works both ways: engine braking will be applied to the drive-train in a much different way than a typical RWD or FWD car, and this will change the dynamics of the car during cornering and braking.

I think you may be slightly underestimating the amount of effort that is required for this cars. We're talking centimeter accurate mapping of the surrounds. To do this for the whole country, and then to somehow get governments to actually tell you where all the road works are (good luck) is certainly possible but will take a whole heap of resources. Hence my earlier point about it probably being a gradual transition, some of the self driving highway stuff doesn't need that as all it needs to do is follow a line. I do love how with this (and other new tech, say like 3d printing) whenever someone brings up a major problem with it "oh but don't forget technology advances so fast i'm sure someone will figure it out *real* soon!" the issue is that the majority of work conducted by people so far has been in refining the Laser based systems. However due to the way they interact with light, there is zero way that you can get them to work in rain. Its not a matter of refining them as I understand it, it just won't work, so they'll have to start from scratch with another sensing system presumably. At least all of the control systems can be continuously updated however.

Duke summed it up well. Its probably also important to note that companies like Google may not be the actual way that the technology is adopted over the coming decades. Despite your thoughts, the big car companies don't really have a problem with this (after all, they still sell the cars) and it will probably be them who, slowly and surely, add more and more autonomous features to cars. I'm pretty sure, for example, Mercedes is working on technology that can drive your car on highways in clear weather, of course you still have to be behind the wheel etc, but it will be gradual things like that that will bring around truly self driving cars, but it will take time.

The thing to remember about AWD (and 4WD) is that the D stands for Drive. If you don't have your foot planted, it doesn't actually do anything. It can however be very useful when driving in conditions that would break traction with just a single pair of wheels driving, eg wet conditions or acceleration under cornering. Having a rear biased (power is only sent to the front when the rears start to slip) system in my car is interesting, particularly coming from the RWD only model. I have to avoid the instinct to counter steer if i'm in a corner and it starts to let go, because now the front wheels are driving also and counter steering would make them pull me off the corner. However, when it does kick in its an amazing feeling. It feels as if the impossible is happening, or as to put it the way many others have talking about the car "its breaking the laws of physics".

The new Subaru WRX will be priced sub 50K brand new here, which is probably Sub 40K in the American market i would assume. Quite a bit of bang for buck

That's pretty much correct. You do get some advantages with E85 due to its higher octane rating allowing you to get more power at the wheels per unit of energy burned , but that's probably in the order of 1-5% at a guess, but in general the price of E85 isn't low enough to make it economical compared to straight petrol. If i wasn't looking for a cheap power upgrade I wouldn't be looking at it.

We (mostly) make it from the byproduct of producing sugar from sugar cane, though a small proportion was made using wheat in Australia. edit: and Soghum, a new plant using mainly that opened up here a year or two ago, only 40km from where i'm based on site currently actually. That also explains why they're growing so much dam Soghum here!.

I'll be getting my car Retuned to run on E85 later in the year, its nothing to do with being green, as i'll probably be seeing a 40+ Hp gain from doing so with identical components

I'll be getting my car Retuned to run on E85 later in the year, its nothing to do with being green, as i'll probably be seeing a 40+ Hp gain from doing so with identical components

For those playing in the USA, the 1989 R32 skyline models will be 25 years old this year, so allowable for import into the USA under the 25 year old rule (eg, not needing crash tests, smog tests and the like). Rumour has it that people are stockpiling the cars to sent to the states, though take that with a grain of salt, but if you did want one you can now (soon) get one in the USA.

That's subjective! And i suppose its obvious which way i'd lean. As far as speed goes, my car's making 360hp at the wheels currently, and hopefully 400+ once i get it on E85, so its got stuff covered there.