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[Glamdring]

I see Edd didn't leave because he had other projects. There were clues in the vid Mike made a few weeks ago.

Here's Edd's thoughts:
https://youtu.be/E1TF7bxrXDA

[Glamdring]

I see Edd drove a sofa on a London to Brighton mini run.
https://youtu.be/CCrof0_34eo

[Glamdring]

Watched some of this week's Horizon about fully autonomous cars. The tech is there, the software is within sight but there are still huge problems to overcome. I give it ten years, not the four some are saying.

[loughor]

I can see how a car can maintain it's distance and stay in lane but I'm not sure how one would cope with the kind of side road where cars are parked wither side so only room for one car to pass and cars coming the other way, then crossroads on such roads and the joining busy traffic at the end. And all with no input from the "driver". Needless to say, I won't give way to an autonomous car

[Glamdring]

I suppose it may be that the autonomous part would only work on main roads and so on. There just isn't an AI capable yet, and when there is it will be looking to take over the world. Elon Musk said so.


I've taken a little bit of a shine to the US Junkyard Empire. They seem pretty skilled.

[Glamdring]

New Wheeler Dealers starts on 4th Oct, with Ant Anstead instead of Edd.
https://youtu.be/PBgaMrXg0zE

[Glamdring]

Speed is the New Black is pretty good in an American OTT sort of way. Discovery Turbo. Building/modifying cars. They're experts. Today they did a Triumph TR3, which they'd not heard of before, being based in St Louis. It showed up the pretty shoddy workmanship of the car as it came out of the factory in 1963 or so. Looked brilliant after a total rebuild and added supercharger. The cost wasn't discussed but must have been around $30k. Or much more.

Their 'shop truck' was a highly modded Ford F150 with 1000bhp. Automatic. Sounded great.
I'm many ways it's the only thing I envy the Americans for having. That passion and the roads. But not the stupid speed limit which is enforced even if you're literally in the middle of nowhere and a straight empty road ahead of you three miles long before the first gentle curve. There will be a cop hiding behind a road sign.

[Wooster]

Those long straight roads would do my tits in.

[Glamdring]

The only one and it's utterly beautiful.
https://youtu.be/U9FoExi1yxI

[Wooster]

You wouldn't like it for long. (But probably love it for a while.)
It's a toy for the rich, or a tool for a professional driver.

Spend six hours in it and you'd start to hate it.
I spent 20 minutes driving a Lamborghini Gallardo at Brands Hatch and hated it within 5. (I didn't even book it)
...it's just a very high powered go-kart.

That looks and sounds lovely though.

[loughor]

Good to have The Grand Tour back. The only blip is that the sound:mouth sync went goes a little. I paused it and it seemed to catch up with itself. Probably down to the TV Amazon app and interwebs speeds.

[Wooster]

I've noticed that happens on Amazon more than it does on Netflix or iPlayer.
(Not mentioning UKTV Play, it's so shit I've never managed to watch a programme after the first ad break on it...it just repeats)

[loughor]

I just spotted the "went goes" phrase. I'm not turning into RT, honest. It was an incomplete edit.

It was a weird crash for Hammond and just shows what a big fire you can get from lithium batteries. Not really a spoiler as they tell you at the start ot will come up later, in their usual jocular fashion.

[Wooster]

The ones caused by spare Vape batteries shorting out in people's pockets are pretty dramatic, and that's a single battery.
(Apparently they use similar ones in cars, just lots of them.)

[loughor]

They said eighty cells. One failed and started the fire. The adjacent cells were damaged and the next day a spontaneous fire started, which damaged the adjacent cell .... and they had five days of cascading self-started fires. I bet a tank of petrol wouldn't have done anything near as dangerous.