Turbo Diesel Registry
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/594528
54 www.turbodieselregister.com TDR 90 THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE FIVE P'S [Your Personal Prius Pod Painted Pink (or Purple)] by Robert Patton Doing a quick Google search reveals the opening lines to the "Twilight Zone": You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of the imagination. Your next step, the Twilight Zone! Actually, your next step could be through your garage door and into your new Personal Prius Pod Painted Pink (or Purple). Cue-up the "Twilight Zone" music. The place is here. The time is now. Imagine, if you will, you sit down at your computer to order your personal pod. You click the personal pod website and you have a three-dimensional visit with the person who is in charge of your personal pod. Your creative design is discussed and you shape your personal pod with the help of scale models and three-dimensional shaping of plastic resin. You like the design. It fits into the accepted governmental safety and dimensional mold. You hit "print" and your small scale Personal Prius Pod Painted Purple is presented to you at your printer's three-dimensional portal. You choose a powertrain. You present it for approval. You receive approval. You submit your payment. Two weeks later your Personal Prius Pod Painted in Purple is delivered at your place of residence. Wow, two weeks. Your next step is into your garage to admire that new personal pod. Two weeks later your Personal Prius Pod Painted in Purple is delivered at your place of residence. Is the preceding a little far fetched? Was Orwell's Nineteen Eighty- Four, published in 1949, a little farfetched at the time? I digress. (However, look up at the cameras at a crowded intersection in Metropolitan USA and you'll literally see that this part of Orwell's book was on-the-money.) Shall we do a google search on The Terminator movie (coincidentally released in 1984) and discuss some science fiction? Again, I digress. However, there is a method to the Twilight Zone introduction and mini-digression. In the last issue of the TDR, we had some fun talking about the autonomous car. As I travel to-and-fro and witness stupid stuff, and/or sit in congested traffic, the thought of autonomous travel has its merits. Thus, I present to you a collection of brief articles, quotes and headlines to give you the data that supports my thesis that the technology for the Personal Prius Pod Painted Purple (or Pink) is here and now. First up were the comments in last issue's TDR magazine. Guest writer Vince Tidwell and everyone's favorite, Kevin Cameron, shared their opinions and insight. Collectively there was no conclusion as to how this autonomous thing would play out. Cameron's final comment, "This is all giving me a headache, so I'd better stop here," was a consensus that I shared. Those fitting words ended TDR #89. Bottom Line (Your Point is…) I continue to be intrigued by the autonomous car topic. Turn to our "BITW" column (page 30-33) and you can read excerpts from articles about FCA's Sergio Marchionne and how he sees big changes ahead for all of the automotive industry. In the meantime I'm going to cut-to-the-chase with some quotes from Car and Driver magazine taken from an interview with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's leader Mark Roseking. The following come from C&D, September 2015, page 22: In the meantime I'm going to cut-to-the-chase with some quotes from Car and Driver magazine A Product, Event or Article Review