Years of working in the field have taught me that nobody gives a shit what I think is OK or not.

With that said, I have nothing against solar. I have panels on my house in Europe. If I were going to move back to Africa, I would totally want a solar + battery setup at home, because generators are annoying; however, I am aware that $15,000 worth of solar panels, inverter, and batteries are a luxury compared to a $500 generator.

So then, why is SA pushing more gas cars in the first place? That’s already what’s there - and given that many of these ICE cars are older imports with worse fuel economy, why try to replace them with newer ICE cars that might have to meet tighter emissions regulations and ultimately burn less fuel?

International politics are against Africans getting used cars. See, for example, the UN Project of Safer and Cleaner Used Vehicles for Africa, which aims to prevent the import of vehicles more than 5 years old to Africa.

If you’re from a rich country, it’s easy to forget that most of the world is poor. It’s tricky to find the stats, but best data I can find suggests that the worldwide median income is less than USD $3000 per year. I suspect that most of /r/cars would consider someone very poor if he only earns that much in a month, but half of the world earns less than that in a whole year. I spent over a decade of my life working for NGOs trying to improve life in the poorer parts of the world, and I think it’s great if the Saudis are working to improve the availability of energy that’s cheap to buy and easy to store, distribute, and put to work. More energy means more development.

I wish them all success. I hope that a decade from now African cities will be buzzing with cheap and cheerful locally produced cars.

A shill article for mandatory “smart” speed governors. Sweet. There was a thread about the same topic on this subreddit a week and a half ago, and the mods locked it without giving any kind of justification: https://old.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/17xffc2/ntsb_wants_speed_reduction_tech_in_every_new_car/

From my perspective, a car that doesn’t allow you to speed is a bit like a phone that doesn’t let you send texts with hate speech. On the implementation side, it’s likely to be imperfect, but more importantly (to me), a car that doesn’t let you accelerate to whatever speed you want is like a phone that doesn’t let you type whatever word you want. I’m neither a street racing nor racism enthusiast, but I think those are less evils these kinds of heavy-handed government mandates.

For what it’s worth, I live in an EU country, where I’m going to have to deal with the EU mandate requiring governors, and I’m not looking forward to my next new car purchase.

Jeremy Clarkson already drove upside down in the sewage tunnels under Belfast with a Twingo RS133, and he fit Ross Kemp in the boot.

“Upside down in a tunnel” starts at about 1:15 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwAasSkZ7pA

By the way, fuck the /r/cars mods who configured AutoModerator to remove my previous comment that included a link to an ad-free non-Google version of the video.

This is an interesting topic. I like the Pontiac 301 Turbo– 200 HP out of a turbocharged 4.9L V8.