Vroom-vroom-vroom-vroom

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

US Cities Should Follow Paris’ $160M Plan to Boost Cycling

Thibault Camus/AP

Paris has a pollution problem. Instead of the smoke from Gauloise cigarettes and the aroma of freshly baked bread, the air is packed with smog, an issue that got so bad one day last month, the city forcibly halved traffic by allowing only cars with odd-number plates to drive.

Paris is working toward less authoritarian, more considered solutions, including a program that gives drivers up to $11,400 if they trade in an old diesel for an electric car. It changed its public transit fare system to charge passengers equally, whether they’re staying in the city center or commuting in from the far suburbs.

And this week, the City of Lights unveiled a bold, $164 million plan to make itself “the cycling capital of the world” by 2020. The goal of the plan, which goes to the city council for approval April 13, is to triple the share of all trips made by bike from 5 to 15 percent. To get there, in the next five years, it wants to double its network of bike lanes to 870 miles (partly by making many lanes two-way) and drop speed limits on many streets to 18 mph. It would create 10,000 secure bike parking spaces and offer financial incentives for those buying electric and conventional bikes.

Becoming the cycling capital of the world may be out of reach—cities like Amsterdam and Copenhagen are well ahead of Paris when it comes to share of trips made by bike—but the plan deserves credit for both for its scale and its scope. And there’s plenty American cities can learn from it, says Evan Corey, a senior associate at transportation planning firm Nelson\Nygaard.

“It’s ambitious,” Corey says, which isn’t surprising for this city. Paris has one of the world’s largest bike share systems, and it’s been rolling out extensive pro-pedestrian initiatives in recent years. This new plan looks to improve just about every aspect of the cycling experience, and backs it up with the necessary cash.

Providing a good cyclist experience—so pedaling around the city feels safe and comfortable—is key, says Geoff Anderson, president and CEO of Smart Growth America, a coalition that works against sprawl. More bike lanes should do that, especially the five proposed “highways” that will be almost entirely protected from car traffic, on some of the city’s biggest corridors, including the Champs-Elysées.

It’s also key to build a real transportation network, Anderson says. “Way too many places are just thinking about cycling in terms of individual facilities, rather than as integrated systems” that actually take you from one place to another. Paris seems to get that as well: Along with all the extra lanes, the plan calls for making biking into and out of Paris safer, with traffic calming measures at the busy intersections around the city’s edge. That makes cycling more practical for inhabitants of the largely impoverished suburbs. The 10,000 new parking stations would make the end of any trip easy instead of a pain.

The financial incentives to buy bikes are especially helpful, Corey says, because promoting cycling is all about eliminating reasons not to get on two wheels. It’s easy to forget or overlook, but the money it takes to get a bike in the first place is one of those disincentives. (Paris’ Velib bike share system also helps on that point, but while it’s affordable at $32 per year, it’s not free.)

In the US, “if you look at any transportation survey, people don’t think that the answer to congestion is building more roads,” Anderson says. “They think of it as more transit, more biking, more walking, more choices.” That’s especially true among the young, affluent people cities want to lure into their tax bases.

So what’s the takeaway for US cities that want to encourage cycling? It should not be that it takes more than a hundred million dollars to make it safe and practical. First of all, that’s not really an option. “Our funding context is quite different from what’s being done in Europe,” Corey says, and it’s unrealistic to think an American city would be willing or able to drop that kind of cash in just five years.

The good news is that investments into things like encouraging walking and biking “are often really, really, cheap” Anderson says, especially compared to building infrastructure for cars. “You can actually make significant impacts on transportation behavior with relatively small amounts of money.”

What’s important is to make sure that whatever money is spent goes to attacking barriers to cycling in a thoughtful way. That’s what the Paris plan does best: The ideas presented aren’t new, but they consider each step of the process, from buying a bike to parking it. And it thinks about different use cases, including tourists and commuters, those in the city center and those in the suburbs. Any plan that matches its scope, whatever the scale, will help encourage cycling.

You might not get “Paris-level results,” or the world’s best city for biking, Corey says, “but you can still get a lot of bang out of your buck by spending more on bicycles, transit and walking.”

Monday, April 6, 2015

Mercedes Thinks Americans May Want a Luxury Pickup

Sketch of the new Mercedes-Benz Midsize Pickup. Daimler

Mercedes-Benz is making a pickup truck, and it thinks Americans might want in.

The first vehicles this plan brings to mind are Cadillac’s Escalade EXT and Lincoln’s Blackwood and LT. Despite Americans’ ravenous appetite for pickups, these luxury trucks were hardly big successes. The Lincolns lasted just a few years on the market. The Escalade EXT was discontinued in 2013, after a decent run. Do Americans actually want a Mercedes-badged truck?

Maybe, but let’s step back for a minute. For this vehicle, Americans are an afterthought. The yet-to-be-named, midsize truck is expected in 2020, and it’s aimed primarily at Latin America, South Africa, Australia, and Europe. “There’s a global need for pickups, and we’ve decided that we’re gonna get into that space,” says Steve Cannon, CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA. “The business case was made without the United States.”

It could be a smart move, says Jack Nerad, executive market analyst for Kelley Blue Book. Mercedes wants to increase sales, and it’s got the necessary global distribution network and name recognition. Its partnership with Nissan, which has extensive pickup experience, could cut development costs. And its commercial business, based around vans and trucks, is “an important part of their overall profit picture, so it makes sense that they would pursue those kinds of opportunities.”

So that part checks out. But Mercedes is evaluating whether it wants to sell the pickup in the US, and says if it does, it will be a luxury vehicle, not a ute. Considering the lackluster history of Lincoln and Cadillac’s luxury pickups, Germany’s foray into the segment seems questionable. Who wants a luxury pickup?

Cannon says it’s not crazy: He sees neighbors in swanky Greenwich, Connecticut driving what he calls full-size “lifestyle pickups”—and thinks they might want something a bit smaller, with a five-pointed star on the hood.

Mercedes may be best known for luxury sedans and sports cars, but it’s spent the last two decades expanding into the crossover market, filling every market niche it can sniff out. That’s how it ended up with vehicles like the GLE Coupe, a small four-door reminiscent of a Chihuahua-Great Dane mix. “A pickup truck is almost mainstream compared to some of the things they’ve put in the marketplace,” says Nerad.

It’s hard to predict how Americans would respond, but it’s not the craziest idea: If Mercedes wants to keep growing—and it does—it’s got to find new segments to conquer. And our love affair with the pickup is tempting territory.

Friday, April 3, 2015

The 10 Coolest Cars at the New York Auto Show

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

How They Made Furious 7’s Tricked-Out Cars

When Furious 7 hits theaters this Thursday, moviegoers will be reunited with Vin Diesel, the late Paul Walker, and the cars that have starred in the street racing movie series for the past 14 years.

Because Furious 7′s tricked-out cars have as much of a starring role in the movie as its actors, these metal and carbon fiber co-stars are hand-picked by a picture car coordinator the same way a casting director selects human performers.

Dennis McCarthy has filled this role on four other Fast and Furious movies, starting in 2006 with Tokyo Drift. For the latest sequel, he was in charge of choosing almost 300 cars.

In some cases, McCarthy’s job is as simple as finding an appropriate ride and getting it to the set. Other times, it’s a far more complicated process that involves modifying cars so they’ll survive the incredible stunts called for in the script.

The 1968 Charger R/T driven by Vin Diesel’s character Dom is McCarthy’s favorite car in the movie, and it’s also the car that required some of the most serious modifications. This car doesn’t street race in Furious 7; it goes off-roading. And as anyone who’s driven or seen a Charger knows, they’re not built for hitting ramps and churning dirt.

“When I read the script, I knew what I wanted the car to look like,” McCarthy says. But it wouldn’t be easy. “It’s obviously hard to make a Charger into an off-road car without it looking horrible.”

Building From Zero

The process didn’t start with a real ’68 Charger. Working out of his Los Angeles shop, McCarthy and his team had to build the car from zero. Actually, they built seven of them, a standard number for a car that plays a big role, to allow for filming multiple scenes simultaneously, with spares in case something breaks down. Spoiler alert: There are nine versions of the new Charger Dom drives in the movie’s third act, and six of the Lykan Hypersport that plays another significant role. Because the Lykan supercar costs $3.4 million, those are far cheaper replicas that W Motors built just for the Furious 7.

Designing the chassis of the ’68 Charger took about a week, and the body (with extra room for wheel travel and fenders designed to make the car still seem low to the ground) took six more. McCarthy and his team did most of that work with CAD, and then computers cut the parts. To speed things up, McCarthy sent orders for parts to different shops around the area, which his team assembles into the cars.

Once the car’s built and tested, it gets painted and decorated accordingly, and loaded onto a trailer for shipment to whatever exotic locale it has for a destination. Universal

The old-school Charger doesn’t look like the cars that surround it on screen, but it actually has the same powertrain as all the cars McCarthy builds: a 500-horsepower fuel injection unit, with a three-speed manual transmission, sans clutch. Each car is fitted with a 9-inch rear lock differential, to make sure both rear wheels spin (it wouldn’t be a Fast and Furious movie without buckets of spinning tires).

It’s all about simplicity: One powertrain means just one set of spare parts to carry around. But it also means every vehicle sounds the same, and that won’t fly. This is why McCarthy works with sound editor Peter Brown in post production. For the ’68 Charger, the picture car coordinator tracked down a car with a powertrain to match what the real car would have had. Then he and Brown cover it in microphones, take it to an empty airport tarmac in California City, and spend the whole day sliding, revving the engine, and smoking the tires. Then they repeat the process for every car in the movie. In the understatement of the year, McCarthy admits, “It is not a bad way to spend a day at work.”

Hitting the Track

Before the cars appear on camera, they have to be tested. Testing is a multi-step process, and it’s about simplifying and saving time. The more McCarthy and his team prepare the cars before the camera rolls, the smoother filming will go. Once a car is drivable but not camera-ready, McCarthy’s team takes it to a track. They run it through a road course to make sure the brakes, suspension, and everything else work properly.

If the car will be doing stunts, it’s then sent to the off-road course set up in a parking lot. The team takes it over ramps, starting at an easy two feet and gradually increasing to three and a half. They build its speed up to 65 or 70 mph, enough to send it 90 feet before touching down. Then they adjust the rebound compression to make sure the car lands the right way, without excessive bouncing. Doing this testing early means that once shooting starts, the driver can hit the ramp at full throttle the first time, without holding back and without breaking anything.

Then it’s on to the dirt, where the stunt driver who’s driving a particular car during filming gets behind the wheel. He or she makes sure it’s to tweaked to suit his or her preferences, adjusting things like the sway bar to allow or more under- or oversteer.

Occasionally all this prep is interrupted by a mechanical problem, but McCarthy’s been doing this for a while, and says they “have that part pretty much dialed in.” Once the car’s built and tested, it gets painted and decorated accordingly, then loaded onto a trailer for shipment to the exotic locale where it will be filmed.

Now that Furious 7 is done, McCarthy has time to relax and take on other projects. Of course, he’s ready to take the call if the movie franchise returns for an eighth installment. “I hope they just keep going and going,” he says.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

The Electric Scooter That Could Make Battery Swapping Work Launches This Summer

The electric scooter company that thinks it can transform urban mobility and the way we store and manage electricity, is opening for business in Taipei.

Gogoro is the long-hyped, well-funded startup that revealed its debut product, the Smartscooter, at CES this year. It’s a sleek looking ride with impressive stats, but the real innovation is the system that lets customers swap depleted batteries for fresh ones at ATM-sized stations.

A pilot program starts this week, with a full commercial launch planned for this summer.

Battery swapping for electric cars has an unimpressive history (see: Better Place), but there’s reason to think it could work for scooters. The batteries in the Smartscooter weigh just 20 pounds, so you don’t need complicated and expensive machines to handle the swapping process. A rider can easily pull them out and pop fresh ones in. Based on a Gogoro demo, the whole process should take six seconds. The stations will be small and affordable, and easy to put in enough places to make the idea of range anxiety disappear.

The pilot program will be open to 100 riders, about half of whom will be selected from the general public (and who’ll get to ride the scooter for free). The goal is to log 100,000 hours of riding time, “to start stress-testing the infrastructure and stress-testing the vehicle itself,” CEO Horace Luke says. The infrastructure bit is especially important: If a rider can’t easily get to a swap station, or does get there only to find no fully charged batteries, the whole idea is kaput. “So we’re taking the beta program to the street to really work those kinks out.”

Based on that data, in a few months Gogoro will start a “very aggressive deployment” of swapping stations, going for “critical mass” right away, Luke says. He won’t say how many stations will be hitting the street, but given their small size and relatively low cost—less than $10,000—you can count on seeing a whole lot. The Taipei metropolitan area, which includes Taipei and New Tapei City, covers 105 square miles, about twice the size of San Francisco, but still manageable. And the location has its benefits.

The company chose to start its work in Taipei largely because of the city’s enthusiasm for becoming a “smart city”—New Taipei City has installed more than 10,000 WiFi hot spots and more than 90 percent of households have internet. Residents have a “good adoption history to smart technologies,” Luke says.

It also helps that the city’s working with Gogoro to offer “a very comprehensive subsidy program,” similar to the tax benefits US drivers receive for buying an electric vehicle. Riding a Gogoro scooter will also come with “privileged parking” near building entrances.

Gogoro has so far been quiet on one of the biggest questions about its business model: How much riders will pay for the scooter and the right to swap out depleted batteries for fresh ones. “We haven’t settled on a cost yet,” Luke says, but that should be settled and announced before the program launches for real this summer.

In the meantime, interested consumers can head to the city’s tony Xinyi shopping district, where Gogoro is opening an “experience center”—basically, a store—to get a closer look at the sleek scooter and the company’s plan for changing how we get around.

Friday, March 27, 2015

F1 Drivers Push Their Bodies to Extremes in Malaysia’s Heat

Formula One's official medical car, the Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG S. It carries F1's head physician, Dr. Ian Roberts, in case of a crash. Mercedes-Benz

Formula One holds races all over the world, in all kinds of climates. From the rainy summer days at Silverstone to the autumn heat in Texas, drivers, mechanics and cars must all be prepared for whatever mother nature might throw at them.

One of the worst races, from a weather perspective, takes place this weekend at Sepang Circuit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. With temperatures expected to touch 90 degrees Fahrenheit along with 80 percent humidity, both man and machine will be tested. Oh, and then there’s incredible tropical rainstorms that can bubble up out of nowhere.

The near-daily rainstorms wash away rubber that gets laid down on the circuit, meaning track evolution—the movement of the racing line and optimal grip as the race progresses—is difficult to predict. It also means the asphalt is exceptionally rough because the rubber can’t lay down and smooth it out, and the course, with fast corners and a bumpy surface, puts significant strain on the Pirelli tires. That’s why cars will be equipped with the two sturdiest tire compounds that Pirelli offers Formula One teams, the white-labeled Medium and the orange-labeled Hard. Aside from tropical Singapore, which is held at night because of the hot temperatures, Malaysia is generally the hottest and one of the toughest races on tires.

As tough as the course is on tires, it’s even tougher on drivers. The exterior heat and humidity are compounded by the cars themselves, with drivers sitting right against the hot engine, and full-body, flame-resistant Nomex racing suits aren’t exactly suited to keeping cool.

During the 193-mile race, each man behind the wheel will burn as many as 1,500 calories and lose three quarts of body fluid. In the days leading up this race, drivers drink as much water as possible, and will work to keep cool and hydrated. In competition, their heart rates will reach 170 beats per minute. To keep sweat out of his eyes, Mercedes driver Nico Rosberg says he wears a ladies sanitary napkin on his forehead. Last year, during pre-race ceremonies, several drivers wore special cooling vests to keep their core temperature down in the high heat.

All of which makes Malaysia an especially tough place to come back to racing for McLaren’s Fernando Alonso, a former world champion who missed the season’s first race in Australia because of a concussion suffered following a crash during preseason testing.

Keeping drivers safe is why the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), F1’s sanctioning body, lays down piles of rules governing the medical tests drivers must pass before getting behind the wheel.

Like in football, a single concussion for a driver is not a huge deal. The danger comes from repeated concussions, a non-trivial risk whenever one is in a race car as even minor crashes (which aren’t infrequent) could cause significant g-loads to the brain. Even when they stay on the track, drivers deal with signifiant lateral and longitudinal g-forces, and prolonged stress to the heart and breathing systems. Malaysia adds major heat and humidity. To keep drivers safe, there are numerous medical checks and tests all must pass before they can jump in the cockpit.

There are few things the FIA loves more than rules. That’s why there’s a 24-page document outlining what drivers need to do to get international racing licenses. During an annual medical examination, drivers fill out a questionnaire covering family and personal medical history, any diseases or infections, medications. They undergo cardiovascular and musculoskeletal examinations.

Some conditions, like epilepsy or blindness in one eye are, unsurprisingly, grounds for automatic disqualification. Drivers must be able to distinguish the color of flags being waved during competition, and stereoscopic vision—depth perception—must be functional. Any amputated fingers must not impair gripping function in either hand. And on and on and on.

Before a race, drivers must perform an “extraction test“, where they unbelt themselves, get out of the car safely, and reinstall the steering wheel (so the car can be steered by rescue workers), all within ten seconds. Any driver who fails the test, like Valtteri Bottas did in earlier this month in Australia, is forbidden from racing. Drivers must be able to get themselves out of the car quickly if something were to go wrong.

It all sounds like a bit much, but it’s more reasonable when you consider just how tough the sport is on drivers. Winning in Formula 1 requires getting to the finish line, and that’s never guaranteed. Just as mechanics must ensure the car is reliable and in good working order, the drivers need the same treatment.