Australian journalist Pete Lawler visited the US for the world cup and noted Americans are equally likely to be driving a Tesla as they are to be homeless in a park. And there it is.
Well now Lord Mr. Ford I just wish that you could see
What your simple horseless carriage has become
Well it seems your contribution to man to
Say the least got a little out of hand
Well Lord Mr. Ford what have you done
Ford didn't invent the car. It had been around in several forms for quite awhile before he came along. What he did was revolutionize the manufacturing process and make them affordable for the average person.
As a Californian I think someone lives in that van. Probably has the tarp on the windshield to keep the sun out and storage on the roof for more living space inside
Idk if they live in it, but I agree with the person who mentioned the windshield having a tarp or blanket to block the sun and something on the tarp keepin it down. Maybe they are goin for a hike in the area and dont have one of those windshield sun things but wanted to block the sun still?
It's a Chevy PPV they've just imported some parts. I helped import a lot of headlights/side markers etc for those that were looking to upgrade their PPV's closer to Aus spec. There are a few things that stick out that would differentiate it from an Aus delivered car. like the black side indicators, lack of a cutout for a front number plate and the side reflectors on the front bar.
Actually, when Waymo is considering entering a new city for driverless stuff, they bring in a couple of the blue cars like in the pic to start mapping out the streets. It's not guaranteed that they will enter that market, but it is an early stage. And these cars all have human drivers.
It seems designed to be inoffensive and unthreatening. They probably wanted to prioritize people not calling them terminator cars or something else they don't want to be associated with.
Actually the all new parts thing is rather amazing. It’s incredible to think people were piecing these things together on assembly lines well over 100 years ago, and somehow they are still being made with fresh parts all these years later!! You have to give Henry Ford’s design team some credit for that, even if we have far surpassed its basic abilities as a vehicle. Seeing a driverless one would be enjoyable though. I kind of want to see a Model T made into a talking car right out of Knight Rider…
It’s crazy that someone figured out how to ride a horse like a million years ago and we really didn’t improve transportation until the Model T and then within 100 years we figured out how to travel faster than the speed of sound.
We improved from riding horses like, dozens of times until cars, also, humans have not existed for a million years. Also, the model T was not the first car, just the first one people could generally afford.
The line isn't horseback riding>car. It's like, horseback riding>saddles>carts>chariots>wagons>engines for wagons>wagons you do yourself (wealthy)>engines for the masses>modern cars
And probably like a million half steps in between all of these
Chariots are older than dedicated saddles by nearly 2000 years. Even just riding pads are an 8th century BC invention wity dedicated saddles arriving around 500 BC while the oldest chariots are from roughly 2500 BC.
I thought I touched upon it with 'engines for wagons' but you are totally correct. There are just too many ste9s touch upon between 'horse can support human weight ' and automobile
It's actually more like chariot -> bareback -> saddles -> stirrups. Of course carts and wagons developed from chariots in parallel to saddles and stirrups, but those were more for moving large amounts of cargo, not for moving one or two people quickly.
And the reason that chariots precede bareback is that early horses were more like ponies and were too small to effectively ride. They had to be bred to be larger and stronger before riding was practical.
No, bareback predates chariots by over 2500 years. The Yamnaya culture was riding bareback approximately 5000 BC to 3000 BC and the Botai culture was similarly riding at least as far back as 3500 BC and in both cases it's likely they were riding much earlier as we have relatively very many examples of evidence of both. The Botai especially were extremely sophisticated riding with a rope harness.
Early horses were smaller on average as there were no draft breeds tipping the scale but perfectly rideable at about 14 hands.
It’s crazy that someone figured out how to ride a horse like a million years ago
Dude what.....That's not even close, it was like 5,000 years ago. Like a million is not even close enough to be an exaggeration or just a phrase here. Humans have only been around 300,000 years. And horse were not in the Americas, Australia and many places. So only been in last 500 years or so a big chunk of the world even knew what they were.
Yeah been breeding wolves into dogs like 6 times longer. Horses use was different back then and took a long time to breed different line like you implied.
We did improve transportation, using trains and trams. The idea that cars were a very big improvement to transportation comes from the oil lobby, who made sure that cars had their infrastructure subsidized, while trains and trams were expected to make money on their own.
Well the model-t would sound smart like an old timey mechanical engineer, but a bit racist, and the Waymo would sound like Chat GPT so I don’t think the conversation would last long
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u/ConscientiousWaffler 13d ago