Tag: Cars

Alien Encounter and Parking Woes: A Bizarre Day | December 07 2025, 01:21

Such a “facehugger” jumped out of an egg nearby and attached itself to the windshield of my RAV4, just like that to implant its embryo, but the little car held its ground.

It all started when I went outside with my keys and realized that the car was not in the yard. Damn! I had used it to get to the metro, and Nadia brought me back from the concert in Washington in her Tesla. Well, okay, I’ll call an Uber.

The Uber took me to the metro parking lot, where the local parking attendants had found my car overnight and slapped a yellow card on it. Removing this thing takes five minutes; you just need to pay the fine by scanning the QR code. Luckily, the fine was divine, just 75 dollars accumulated. If I had remembered later, it would have been more.

Cultural Expectations of Driving for Work: USA vs Russia | November 22 2025, 16:21

Here’s what I’ve noticed. In the USA, there’s an expectation that an employee drives themselves if their job involves traveling. Companies often issue a company car or provide compensation for using a personal vehicle. This is commonly considered a regular part of job responsibilities, and having a driver’s license is often implicitly assumed. For example, Nadia, a volleyball coach, occasionally drives a small bus for us.

As I recall, the tradition in Russia is different: in organizations, especially in government, large corporations, or among managerial staff, it is more logical to expect a designated driver.

Am I mistaken?

Smart Car Seat Selection: How My Tesla Knows the Driver | November 03 2025, 14:29

Incidentally, in my Tesla, there’s a very clever system for identifying the driver. If I enter the car first but sit in the passenger seat, placing my phone immediately in the central console for charging, and then Nadia enters second but sits in the driver’s seat and also places her phone there, her profile is selected automatically because she’s the driver, even though both phones are on charge under the central console.

So, there are two possibilities: either there is an antenna which can precisely detect that a phone has crossed the driver’s door rather than entering the car in any other way, or there is a camera focused on the driver. In any case, it’s very reassuring that it “just works”.

From Tesla Model Y to Model S Plaid: A Swap Experience | October 14 2025, 16:51

Recently, my Tesla Model Y fell ill, and the dealership gave me a Model S Plaid as a loaner car. It’s simply a monster, accelerating to 100 km/h in 2 seconds. Over a thousand horsepower. But after driving it for a week, Nadezhda and I realized that we would still not trade our Model Y for a Model S.

Well, the fact that it’s unusually low to the ground is a minor issue. We would get used to that. But getting out from behind the wheel is always incredibly awkward for me. My belly isn’t that big, but in the Model S, it’s like a real cockpit. You have to carefully sit down and climb out, whereas in the Model Y, you just jump in somehow and go.

Moreover, the Model S is really noisy inside compared to the Model Y. You can hear the road. And this is for a price twice that of the Model Y. Also, for some reason, the mode where you just walk away from the car works less sensitively, and locks the car only when you are already quite far away.

And then there are the turn signals. What idiot decided to put their buttons on the steering wheel? It’s impossible to get used to that. The steering wheel still turns, and the buttons are always somewhere unclear.

But, damn it, it’s very beautiful from the outside. Especially with a light interior.

By the way, Tesla has somewhat poorly thought out the mechanism for issuing a replacement car, and it works with only one driver. You can’t set two keys for two different phones. Moreover, it would be nice to store the settings in the cloud and receive a replacement car already adjusted to your preferences.

And the car fell ill in an interesting way too. It’s funny when the car on the highway tells you that there’s a little problem, the engine is dead, but you should not distract yourself, just keep driving. After parking, the car might theoretically not drive, but so far all is normal. If not, we will tell you. Meanwhile, your drive will not sound the same.

As I understood, the car simply switched from 4-wheel drive to 2-wheel drive. Funny that such a fallback exists at all. Already fixed, it needed an inverter replacement.

The Ingenious Mechanics of Modern Fuel Pumps | September 28 2025, 13:36

With the purchase of a Tesla, there’s sudden interest like a fuel nozzle understanding that the tank is full. And a couple of other interesting findings on the topic.

There used to be an awkward problem at gas stations. Customers didn’t know when their tank was full and gasoline often spilled over. Engineers came up with a genius solution.

Inside the fueling nozzle, there’s a thin tube that pulls air from the car’s tank into a special membrane chamber (if you look at the “nozzle,” there will be two holes) When you press the trigger, fuel flows until the tube is submerged in gasoline (which means a full tank) and the air flow stops.

This creates a vacuum, which pulls three little steel flaps into the center of the mechanism, instantly releasing the trigger and cutting off the fuel supply.

By the way, approaching the diaphragm valve in the channel there is a compartment with a small ball inside. If for some reason the fuel nozzle falls out of the tank, the ball will block the vacuum channel, provoking a sharp increase in vacuum – and triggering the process described above.

It also turned out that the diesel nozzle is larger in size so it cannot be mistakenly inserted into a gasoline tank. But the opposite mistake can happen. Although they could have invented a different design that would work both ways from the start.

When a tanker refills an underground reservoir, the valve automatically closes when the tank is nearly full, and the gasoline vapors are sucked back into the tanker through another hose, where it condenses back into liquid fuel.

And it also turned out that if you drive away with the hose still in your car, there will be no fireballs, spilled fuel, or toppled gas pump. The hose connecting the nozzle to the pump is designed to disconnect into two parts when a certain force is applied. Next time you are at the gas station, pay attention to the metal connector on the hose. That is the break point. When the hose disconnects and you drive away, the area of the hose breaks, built-in valves in the hose cut off the fuel, but, of course, the pump will not operate for some time until everything is put back to normal again. Interestingly, this risk is considered and damage is minimized.

Oh, and here’s something for those who haven’t driven in New Jersey. By law, it’s prohibited to refuel your own vehicle. At all gas stations, there are attendants who do it for you.

Revolutionizing Car Safety: Pre-Collision Airbag Deployment and Smart Updates in Modern Vehicles | September 24 2025, 12:54

So far, I have only one car model and brand that can deploy airbags not at the moment of impact, but a moment earlier, so that by the time of the impact, it’s not too late to do so. We’ll see what the news shows, but tests indicate that this thing works better than the traditional method. Reality might turn out to be harsher, but we’ll keep an eye on it.

It’s also interesting that the car started to receive new exciting features after purchase. I never had this experience before. What you bought it with, you lived with, and sometimes you could go to the dealership for something new, and it usually involved replacing something physical.

The previous update (not very useful to me, but maybe to someone) was about automatic detection of children and animals in the cabin. And if it turns out they were left inside while the owner left, the car does not turn off the climate control. And of course, it screams into the app that this is not a good thing to do.

Charming Mini-EVs of Europe: A Street-Side Review in Amsterdam | September 21 2025, 17:41

I found such little cars in Europe very charming. All from Amsterdam, there are many of them there. It seems there are none in the USA, not even on college campuses. I think if they ventured onto our highways, first, everyone would crane their necks, and second, they would be blown away by the wind. Among those shown, the most interesting is the Microlino, a little green one. It has a door literally at the front. Electric. 15-18K euros. Among the rest, Opel, FIAT, and Citroen also have nice designs.

The 55 mph Speed Limit: Energy Crisis and State Autonomy in the U.S. | August 13 2025, 01:32

It turned out that the 55 mph speed limit in the USA was the result of the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which was adopted in response to the OPEC oil embargo, causing sharp price increases and oil supply disruptions. It was believed that by limiting speed, fuel consumption would be reduced. It worked, but a reduction of 2.2% was predicted, though the actual savings were only about 0.5–1%.

If a state did not comply, it would lose federal funding for the repair and construction of roads. In 1987–1988, Congress allowed states to raise the speed limit to 65 mph on certain rural interstates, and in 1995, the federal “national maximum” was abolished altogether and authority was returned to the states.

Before the national speed limit was introduced, Montana had no set speed limit. Instead, the law stated that a person should drive at a “safe and reasonable speed,” which was essentially determined by a police officer. There is a tale about a NASCAR driver who was stopped for driving about 120 miles per hour on Highway 2 and was not fined because for him 120 mph was considered “safe and reasonable.”

After the imposition of the 55 mph speed limit, Montana resisted as much as it could. The speed limit was a national law, but the consequences for its violation were determined by the states. Montana lowered the speeding fine to $5 and made sure the violation did not go on the driver’s record. It became common practice to put $5 bills over the sun visor and drive at any speed you liked.

There’s even a song from those times, “I Can’t Drive 55” (Sammy Hagar).

By the way, slightly off topic. My Tesla Model Y costs more in taxes (annual registration) than a gasoline car does because there is a special charge, introduced in 2020, to compensate for state revenue lost from the fuel tax — since electric vehicles do not refill with gasoline, and the state under-collects. The amount of this charge is fixed and equals 85% of the equivalent fuel tax a gasoline car driver would have paid given the same average distance and fuel consumption. As a result, electric vehicle owners pay about $128.14 a year (data for 2024–2025). Gasoline car owners pay significantly less. The last time I was stopped by the police in Washington for having an expiration of one and a half years, I had to park the car and urgently arrange payment – it was a few dozen dollars. After paying, I continued on, but with a fine of a couple hundred dollars.

Decade Without Police Sirens: A Personal Observation in Public Safety Trends | August 02 2025, 23:48

Interestingly, I haven’t heard a single car siren in almost ten years, except from medical and fire vehicles. At least around here, it seems even the police don’t use them for their purposes. Apparently, the reason is that a police car with a siren behind is perceived as a command to stop and be ready to show your documents. But fire trucks and ambulances, it seems, always use theirs.

Many people don’t know that what we think of as an ambulance doesn’t really exist here. That is, you can call 911 and request a medical vehicle, and they will come, but it’s usually only done in truly critical situations—like a heart issue or if you’ve fallen from a staircase and can’t get up.

This service, EMS, always sends a bill. The minimum is $550, but typically more than $1000, depending on the type of vehicle sent—which depends on what was said on the phone—and how many miles it is to the hospital.

If transportation to a hospital is necessary, an insurance company, Medicare, or Medicaid initially pays for it. The patient might only need to pay the difference—for example, a co-pay or a deductible. If the person is unable to pay due to financial hardship, CNS will not send the bill to collections nor will they recover the debt.

If you call 911 and report that someone has fallen from a ladder, especially with a suspected head, neck, or back injury, the dispatcher will send a full fire & EMS response. That means, besides the medics, this big red fire truck shows up. It arrives not because there’s a fire, but because it is staffed with EMTs (Emergency Medical Technicians) who can begin assistance even before the ambulance arrives. Additionally, fire stations in the area are positioned such that the nearest fire truck can get there faster than a free ambulance.

In various incidents, if you can get to the hospital on your own, experience shows that it’s often necessary to go if you want results. This is not free either. Every such visit costs me $200 (insurance pays ten times more), but as it turned out later, it was always worth it. You just need to know where to go, and choose large facilities where the queues are shorter.