China’s Transit Elevated Bus (TEB)

Published Dec 20, 2016, 5:00 PM

When developers revealed a working, full-scale model of the Transit Elevated Bus (TEB) in August 2016, it seemed like the project was on the right track. So why did the Chinese state media label it a scam? Tune in to find out.

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Go behind the wheel and beyond with car stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. I'd welcome to car stuff. I'm Scott, I'm then. We are joined today as always by our super producer Noel de Rail Brown de Rail, I like it. Where what was the other one they had for him earlier? Top lane center up below the what could have been under the bus? That's great, under the bus. Everybody could be under the bus. And as you know, we like to we like to use opportunities to give NOL nicknames as a foreshadowing of a sort for our episode. But before we get to that, we have a couple of pieces of business that occurred off the air that we would like to bring to your attention. Yeah, just a few things I want to mention. And I'm kind of excited about this this week, this past weekend, and I posted this on Facebook on our on our page. Recently, UM I saw for the first time ever a real life accurate NSX accurate NSX and I was pretty geeked about it. I was enough that, you know, I passed it on the road and I UM, I pulled it wasn't a dealership, It's in a Ferrari dealership of all things. It was parked outside. They have this huge, beautiful show room that you know, well lit and has uh you know, maybe I don't know, twenty cars and fifteen cars and they're all arranged perfectly and everything, and it's it looks beautiful, but there are all Ferrari cars. So they have this accurate NSX on the lot, and they parked it outside and they left it out over the weekend. It was raining, and you know, he's blown around and everything. The lots under construction as well, so it's a little bit backgrounds a little uh iffy, but but I was so excited to see it. And this thing is I mean, it's a hundred and ninety eight thousand dollar car that they just left outside over the weekend. Usually this dealership, it's a it's a combination um Maserati dealership and Ferrari dealership, and they always bring of the Ferrari product inside for the weekend, whether it's in the garage area, inside the show room or wherever, and they leave the Maseratis outside and some of some of them, you know, Garner spy inside as well, but for the most part they're stuck outside. Do you think it was meant to be left out as some sort of promotional thing. Possibly. I mean it's an attention grabber because you don't see these very often. This is, as I said in the post, this is the very first one that I've seen on the road outside of maybe an auto show, so I was pretty excited. It's so it's one of those that you've heard about for years and years and finally to get, you know, to stand next to one and and kind of peer through the window and see what's going on. It's cool. I'd love to hear it, of course, and see it and feel it. Maybe. Also, as you mentioned, it made you forget the totally overlook the other fifteen or what cars. Well, yeah, yeah, that's the thing. It's a It's one of those lots where you have to park far far away and walk all the way across the lot because they don't want anybody driving around, you know, all the maseratis in the lot on the weekend, so you have to park at their you know, the big gates and then walk through the lot. And after all that, I got so distracted by the NSX I didn't even think to turn around and look at, you know, all the twenty ferraris that were well lit behind me that I could have easily taken some photos of. I've just totally forgot about it. So the one they had was a hundred and nine grand and nine must have some some bells and some whistles. Well, it's a pretty low number if I remember right. I got a picture of the the tag because they number each one, and I think it was number one. I'm pretty sure it was. It had four hundred and thirty six miles on the odometer, so I guess technically it's a used car, uh believe it or not. It like, you know what, I think that's that happens in the supercar world. I think that you know, you put a few hundred miles on it, you get tired of it and you move on to the next thing. Or you know, maybe it was an investment. It's probably an investment for somebody. They bought an early model and then sold it for a huge profit, you know, substantial profit. So um, maybe that's what's going on. I don't don't remember what the m s RP for. Yeah, the M s r P is is a little bit lower. Actually, it should be quite a motor trend. Uh hundred and sixties seven Okay, so somebody just made thirty thousand dollars and drove it for four hundred fifty miles, right, or they will make I'm sure they had some extra kid on it. Yeah. But alright, so just to paint the picture for everybody here. So twin turbo three point five leader V six five horsepower, uh four hundred six pound feet of torque, and it's got three separate electric motors. Yeah, and it's a nine so it's a it's a hybrid. It's got a nine speed automatic with paddle shifters to and then you can you can see them through the window. But um again, you know, without being able to get inside and sit down and really feel it. I wish I could have done that, but I don't even know if they were open, if they would have been allowed to do that, we could almost do a show just on that. Almost. Yeah, it's a it's a great car, and I love I love the Classic NSX as well. Um, I really love that. That's kind of one of the dream cars. I guess you know someday, but um, I don't know. It's just interesting to see that anyway. So that's the first thing. Wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry before we move on, I want to correct myself because I had quoted the fair market price of a hundred sixty seven five d sixty two dollars. The m s r P is actually a in fifty six thousand, which, ladies and gentlemen, it makes your estimated monthly payment to own a brand spanking new one a low, low, low fire cell price of three thousand, sixteen dollars a month for how many months, like sixty months, seventy two months before the rest of your ninety six months whateverever. It's a long time. I bet it's a long long time. It's a long lease. Okay. So second second thing this morning, you know I Okay, just so everybody knows I I this weekend, I pulled all the rally decals off my car. So I'm kind of enjoying that anonymity of driving on the road. This has nothing really to do with it, but I'm driving, uh in the in my Volkswagon see see now, with no rally decals. Finally, after months and months, and I asked you earlier, we were talking about this off air. This morning, I asked you, you know, well, Scott, do you think you're you're driving differently, Are you going back to your old ways that now? Because I remember I said it made me a better driver because they would be spotted, you know, like everybody know exactly who I was. Well, this is a little something to do with it. I guess. I was in in on two five, which is a road that goes around Atlanta like a circular path. And uh, I was trying to get to the main road that goes into town and early morning, busy traffic. And there's a huge shoulder to my right, I mean the far right lane. There's a shoulder that's easily as wide as a lane, probably wider than a lane of traffic. So there's a lot of space over there. And then a guardrail, big metal guard rail. As I'm driving, you know, we get to this part where you know, traffic kind of backs up and everybody's stopped, and there was no panic stop or anything. We don't all it's all kind of stopped at the same time. And about I don't know, fifteen seconds after I had come to a complete stop, behind me, I heard this loud bang, I mean like four cars back. And the bang was not what I thought it was. I thought somebody had smashed into another car. Somebody had probably just looked up last second darted to the right, you know, after the shoulder and ding that guardrail. I mean hard though, like like whole side side of the car, you know, swiped it out. Yeah, um, but really really hard. And here's how fastest person was going. And again stop and go traffic in the morning. This person was going fast enough that I'm four or five cars ahead, and they went sailing past me, still scraping the guard rail at about sixty really flying, and they came to a slow like they coasted to a stop. They pulled it off the rail finally and came to a stop. No one was injured or anything. And I mean the car didn't even look like it had been damaged, you know, because it wasn't like all smashed up on one side or anything. It was apparently like a real glancing blow, just barely touching it, like a like a stone skipping off water. Yeah. Yeah, like it just glanced it. But it was fast enough and loud enough that man, it scared the hell out of me when it came by, too, because I thought, oh man, this guy is gonna lose control and pull it out in a trap, especially exit no exit path, there's nowhere to go. But I can't imagine being that first car back there where the guy darted, you know, around him, because that would have been a panic moment for me to look up in the mirror and see that guy coming. Yeah, uh no, no injuries. I mean I as I am there, the person went farther down the road and was just kind of sitting there, you know, breathing because you know, trying to take it all in for a moment. And then as we were passing, I got out and just kind of checked out the side of the car. But I was five. Is notorious, man, because it's it's one of those for anyone not familiar. It's one of those huge inner states, at least huge for this part of the country, with you know, five or six lanes in each direction and weird, weird merging off and on points that don't really exist on other interstates here, uh and you know, like people merge in from the left straight into the passing lanes and stuff really weird. And you know, and I think a lot of places are a lot of big cities have this is that main road that goes around We've talked about these in the most dangerous roads because uh, this is one of them. It's like Top five or something in in Atlanta. But that's because of volume and these roads, these perimeter roads like that are the ones where semi traffic has to go. So if you've got a semi load that's not going into the city, they have to bypass, you have to go around. So let's say someone's coming from you know, north and they're headed down to Florida, they have to take that pathway to get around town. So a lot of semi traffic on the road, it gets really you know dangerous. Um. But man, that was that was terrifying this morning. Like it made my heart really jump and I'm glad you're here. Yeah, me too. Um, maybe take surface streets maybe maybe. Anyways, that's just weird coincidence. I was just kind of you know, anyways, there's no way, there's no way around it. And this reminds me we're going to have some listener mail at the end of the day, because we got a lot of feedback on both our three thousand Mile podcast and we got a lot of feedback on your doing it wrong. Oh yeah, that's right. A lot of people had uh, you know, additions and also maybe some questions or corrections maybe for us. Yeah, well, we'll follow up with this too, and I think there's some important information for our fellow drivers to hear, uh from those correspondences. But first before we do that, Scott, you remember this, this idea is something today's topic. Rather is something that I became inordinately excited about when I when I first read about it, and uh, yeah, there was a lot of news around this recently this last summer. Yeah. So let's travel power of imagination to China. And I've got a disturbing statistic here for China. Uh, disturbing statistic as disturbing statistics. As of twenty fifteen, every year, at least two hundred thousand people in China die as a result of road accidents, two hundred thousand, two hundred thousands, according to WHO, the World Health Organization, and that number according to w h O. Uh, the number they have is more than four times what the Chinese government reports. Man. The point is that in a country that's growing so quickly, in such a in such a large country, with such dense urban areas, too, traffic is spoiler alert bad crazy bad. To eight five is bad that's nothing really nothing compared to that. That's it's just densely packed and with more and more people wanting to move into the cities. Uh, the Chinese government, on state and federal levels are running into something that a lot of other cities and a lot of other places in the world have had to tackle, which is, how do we with the with the road infrastructure that we have, assuming that it's going to be incredibly expensive to try to buy up more land to build on, with the traffic infrastructure that we already have, how do we deal with this rising tide of newer drivers or commuters. So one idea might be you can build, uh, you could build under you build tunnels. Sure, that's tough. Another idea could be that you like London uh famously approached it through a taxation angle and they said, let's make people pay more. Yeah yeah, so that people would, you know, then think twice about maybe bringing another car into the city. Um. The other thing you could do is, I guess you could try to somehow build up right, you could build elevated uh you know roads or whatever. Right, crazy talk, Yeah, well it is kind of crazy talk, but there's kind of like a half solution that works, right, Yeah, like a half measure that will get you there a nice up gap. Now we're not talking about uh, we're we're not quite talking about something like the l in Chicago and elevated train. We're talking about another nifty idea that came about around two thousand ten. Yeah, two thousand ten. Now this is crazy because most people hadn't really heard about this until this last summer. And we'll get to you know what happened this summer. But two thousand ten they started talking about this, uh, the straddling bus, and they call it they keep on a straddling bus. And I think maybe right up front, we should get this out of the way. That's not truly a bus, right, Yeah. It's based on rail, so it's almost more like a train car. Yeah, okay, so that's trolley. Yeah, so it's not really like you can't just freely drive this thing around the city and change lanes and all that. It's it's on a designated path. It's on a rail. But the idea was that in Shanghai they were going to create this bus that was above traffic and it would allow what is it, one or two lanes of traffic to go through underneath. I think it's two lanes, two lanes. So, um, this thing is on like big legs. And I'm sure everybody has probably seen this by now, and if you haven't, you know, it's an easy enough Google search to do. Just check it out. Just look at elevated bus or China's China's elevated bus or something and you'll find it. And the idea again, well, it didn't really start in two It started way earlier than that. But this is when we started seeing this. Is this posed as a solution, Yeah, just shang has you know, congestion problem. But where did it come from? Then? So the idea of this elevated bus system first was proposed by two American architects, a guy named Craig Hodgetts and a guy named Lester Walker, and they called it the Bowswash Landliner. Uh. And this concept way back in nine was sort of a nifty I don't know it was. It was almost more of a novelty or one of those uh, futuristic what if kind of things. So it wasn't until decades later that people said, well, what if we apply this to China's traffic problem. Here's the let's see we can paint the picture here. It might be a little difficult because it's very visual. But let's say you have a four lane road, two lanes of traffic going each way uh median dividing the two directions. This elevated rail system, the what they're calling a bus, would be as wide as two of those lanes, and on either side it would have um either side, it would have the rail wheels connecting to the point where if you're driving under it, it would be like you're driving in a moving tunnel. So in China, there there are four modes of transportation. There are public transit, there's the subway, there's light rail, there's the bus, rapid transit, and then there are normal buses. This thing would be a substitute for the rapid transit bus. And if you initially think about it, the concept is there. It sounds pretty cool because you're you're bypassing traffic without having something disastrous like a flying car. You know, it's it's creating as you said, as you said, Scott, it's creating an extra lane essentially above traffic, and this would move ideally in theory, this would move almost independently of traffic. Jams. Yeah, they'll be elevated platforms so that people could enter and exit this uh, this this bus, I guess, uh you know on the little street side, I suppose and be able to get on and off on a big platform. Maybe that kind of was over the roadway. Okay, so this thing is pretty big. It's um, I think that the the top deck they said, is something like four or four and a half meters high with two levels, so you know, when you look at this, there's actually two levels of passengers inside there as well. Um, it can carry something like twelve hundred to four hundred people at a time. It's it's enormous. It's a really big thing. Um. It was supposed to be powered by electricity and then solar energy. Now this is back in two ten. That was the idea. Um, electricity, electricity and solar energy. You could power this thing up to six hour per hour. Well, was carrying those twelve or passing years? Yeah and this Okay, so this all sounds great, especially considering that estimates have the country of China expected to gain twenty million new drivers next year. Twenty million next year alone. Yeah, oh my, next year, twenty million additional cars on the road cars or trucks or motorcycles or whatever. Oh man, and it's already crowded. Okay. So so that's way back in two thousand and ten when this thing was kind of well first really suggested as as Shanghai's solution. If you fast forward to about May of China had a working model of this ready to go, so it looked cool. Now, the model I'm talking about like a real model, like almost like an RC you know, r C set, like a slot car set almost where they showed in very slow creeping maneuvers, you know, and and supposed city situations with watch a little tiny scale model cars. How this bus would be able to just kind of float over top of the cars and you know, um kind of seamlessly integrate itself into this traffic situation, right, yeah, very graceful and everything that. The problem here is that all the cars are on a you know, a designated track, and the train or the car, sorry, the bus is on a designated track as well. So everything in this little scenario here, this little u um almost i don't know, make like a model train set. It's like make believe land or something, you know, like when the trolley would come around. Um, it's like that, and it's kind of interesting to watch. You can watch, you know, videos of this thing with a little miniature trees and light posts and all that, and it's really interesting. But that's that's in May of two thousands sixty, so early in the spring of this year, and they kind of were thinking like, well, we're just gonna throw this out there that we're still thinking about this as our as our solution, and we're maybe we even look for investors at this look for investors to fund at least the building of a phototype, and we should explore the prototype of before the rubber hits the road on that one. Let's pause for word from our sponsor, and we're back, and I've ben we should probably tell him the name of this thing to First of all, they coined it. They coined a term for this. They called it the TEB. The t e B stands for Transit Elevated Bus, So if you do a search for TEB, you'll also find this thing. Um. But they had the idea that they were maybe kicking around the idea that they were going to build a prototype, and everybody thought, no, there's there's no way they're going to do that. I mean, this thing it looks so futuristic. It looks so you know, like, um click, something out of a sci fi movie. Really, it looks like something out of this I was thinking about this. It looks like something out of a sci fi movie from the nineteen seventies, you know, like that the retro futuristic stuff. What was that? Actually, when Noel first heard about it, I saw a picture. He said it reminded him a Blade Runner. Yeah, he was wearing a Blade Runner shirt. He said, hey, that reminds me of this, and he showed us his shirt and it's kind of like Logan's Run or a Tron episode. Honestly, it really does look like that. It really does look like something out of a sci fi movie. And you know the thing is that in May they're still trying to get people interested in it. But they've got this little, this working scale model that they're showing off and trying to get people excited about it and saying, we really can do this. Um, you know, if you're excited about it as we are, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and see we can make this work. And we've all got a chance to make a lot of money on this, right, So the before we go on, Scott, maybe we could talk about some pros and cons with this before we talk about this story. Is that okay? Oh yeah, alright, so we'll just back back and forth. So pro it effectively creates a new lane of traffic, sure, yeah, yeah. Pro it gets a lot of people into one area. I mean one single bus that can carry twelve or four people versus maybe ten buses that are required to carry that many people. Are more con the clearance on it would not be tall enough to permit a lot of commercial vehicles like dump trucks, semis and the like. Con would also be that I say there was an emergency situation, the people are stuck up in the air there, they're a a a story above the ground. That's the problem. So you can't just exit to ground level easily. Yeah. Uh. Con In any traffic situation, as you have mentioned earlier, drivers will not be predictable, just the same way people try to force themselves into the breakdown lane to save a couple of minutes toward an exit. Uh. I could definitely see people swerving in a way that's injurious to this vehicle. I mean, it's pretty it seems pretty sturdy. But I think if it got smashed in the right kind of thing, or if they were pile up underneath it or something, it could get very ugly very quickly. We'll imagine the situation if you're driving side by side near train. I mean some of the dangerous moves that people might pull to cut laughter, cut right in front of that train, or try to just stop abruptly when that thing can't someone's boun to happen and someone pulls over right, is there passing it from down under? Yeah? And also here's another con is that if you're a driver on the road and you're sitting in a light and this thing suddenly envelops you, you know, like you're parked at a light a read lad and this thing goes past you or it goes over top of you. How disorienting would that be? How how frightening would that be? The first several times that had happened. Um. Also, and watching a little bit of the video of you know, this thing in action. Um uh, they had some footage of of you know, what it would look like from underneath if that did happen. You like these different scenarios, and it's just it's very confusing to your mind when you see something like like you have to stop at a red light, but this thing that's all around you continues to move on because it's got right away, or you know whatever. There's a different series of of um uh visuals that happened when something like this is moving around you. It's like, imagine the walls of the either the room you're in or the the bridge or tunnel that you're in right now, moving at a different rate than you are. You're moving. It's it's really all very disorienting, very very crazy. So I mean, we can go back and forth with pros and conflict this all day, I think. But if we jump ahead to August, early August this very year, they built a prototype, they actually built a working prototype in China, and no one could believe that. They thought, well, this was just a drawing a few months ago. What happened and then a model. Now they've got one on the road. And I'll tell you, when I first saw this, I thought it was actually working in the city. I thought it was actually and I know it's a working prototype, but I did say it implemented this thing. But I don't think they haven't implemented it, but they did, by golly, by gum, they did build an actual working prototype, and you can see footage of this thing rolling. You can see some of the pros and cons that Scott and I listed earlier become quickly apparent, uh, in both good and bad ways. One of the things that really suck with me was that yet they built it. But I believe the Chinese government depend on the road has a height limit of like thirteen or fourteen feet. Yeah, I've got it right here. They have a limit of you're allowed to drive in the roads with something that's four point two meters in height, and that's that's thirteen ft seven inches, So you're right. So the bottom of the bus, however, and if you were to look up from underneath, how high is that? It's about seven feet. Yeah, it's it's just about it's it's not even quite that high. It's it's half of the legally allowed height on Chinese roads. So if you're allowed to drive something that's four point two meters, the distance between the road surface and the bottom of the bus which we would travel under is two point one meters, and that's about six ft eight inches. That's not very high at all. I mean, so they're right away. A lot of vehicles, a lot of vehicles would not be able to pass underneath this, and that means that there would be several lanes that could not be used by anybody with a vehicle over you know, six eight inches, because you know, who knows when the next bus is gonna come by, or who knows if you're gonna try, you know, just forget the height of your vehicle and drive underneath and cause some kind of calamity to happen. Um, you know, I could see you know, you you know what happens when there's a low bridge in town. Everybody hits that bridge. It's always that way, isn't it. If you see the scrape marks on the bottom, if it's really if it's a really really low one, people people will sometimes set up cameras because they know that people hit that bridge, and sometimes they'll catch you know, it's it's terrible for the truck owner or whatever, but you know, you catch people trying to squeeze underneath there, and you catch some kind of funny things and you catch some kind of sad things too, um, you know, with with you know, property damage and you know whatnot. But um, anyways, so they built this prototype and they had me fooled. I thought that this uh, this situation where you know, we were seeing little video clips of it maybe fifteen twenty seconds at a time and saying, yeah, we've got this thing and it's working. Those clips made it look like it was on a busy city street and it and it kind of was. It kind of was. But they've they found a way around it by renting a bit of the road for their tests. And I find this really really interesting. This will play into a later part of the story too. But the developers are the people that that created this. They rented or I guess they least about four feet of roadway public roadway in China and set up their track system. And they've got this thing that's on the track and it goes in and out of this big garage that they've built as well, like a big shed structure that's open on both ends. And they ran their tests. First, they did it in uh I think it was in Yeah, it was August. Uh. They did early testing, but that was without anybody inside it. And then not long after the first test, the was the China State media came out and said, hey, everybody, guess what this may be a scam, big ponzi scheme. That's right, they called it a ponzi scheme. And here's why. The project was funded by what's called peer to peer lending. And that's something where an online company will have a bank of investors and a bank of borrowers, right and say, here, investor A can fund this, uh, this borrower be and over time they will pay back in a way that is beneficial to the borrower who's maybe getting a better rate than they could for bank loan, but still beneficial to the investor, who's getting a better rate than they could for another type of investment. And they're shopping it to them. They're saying, well, here's this futuristic transportation technology that's really set to uh, you know, change everything here in Shanghai and all over China. Really if this even really works out. So um, you know, they get them excited by this new technology investment and say it's probably a good bet to you know, we're already building in prototype. You know it's here, it is, and you know you can go down and watch them construct this thing or whatever. And then we've got four feet of public roadway already secured that we're going to test this thing in August, and so they probably already said, actually, Scott, not to interrupts. I think what they probably said is we've got it running on the roads now. They probably technically true. So they're doing this testing and that's in the early part of August, and then of course late in August is when the China State media comes out and says, hey, it's maying this maybe a scam, and tell them why. But this is why they said it. It's because they largely were considered the media was largely considering anything using ap peer to peer lending model as automatically a scam. So this is a little tricky here because it's one of these situations where you gotta try to figure out was it an actually that way or was it or was it something that people just believed to be a scam and they pulled out and then you know, um, well whatever, we'll get to that. But um so, so end of August they come out and say, like maybe a scam. Investors start to flee, so you know, the money is going away and they also want some refunds, so the investors are saying, not only am I not going to invest, I want I want some of my money back that I've already given you. And that scared him on that scared him a little bit. But in September sixteen they were back for more testing, so things look good again. I don't know how that happened. Maybe a new influx of money somehow. Yeah, but um, they did this testing and of course you know they're doing this now out in public again, and this time they allowed passengers on board, so it looks even more real, like, you know, like it's really gonna happen. We're we're testing with people now, like with actual humans on boards, like families. There's a lady with their babies sitting by the window. Yeah, and that's as that's as late, I guess I should say. It is September of this very year. So things were kind of looking good and then it just kind of went away. We didn't hear anything about this after September. Yeah, this seventy two ft long, wide, fifty or sixteen ft high vehicle just seemed to disappear. So the next question, of course, Scott has to be this, what happened to the t e B. Yeah, I can't just disappear, right, I mean, there's something. There had to have been something. There's a there's a story here, right, And that's the end of our show, Kitty. No, we will be back with some answers for you after a word from our sponsor, and we're back before we talk about the ultimate um where the current state of the disappearing t e B. I do want to say, you know, this peer to peer lending model is not this is isn't a financial show, but the peer to peer lending model is not inherently a bad thing. Part of what happened is that there were other peer to peer platforms in China that shut down and were declared Ponzi schemes by the government for using the same thing. However, this is not a uniquely Chinese practice for lending. You can find other institutions or services even here in the States where show is based, who advertised this sort of thing. So it's not necessarily a Ponzi scheme. I myself have never participated in it, but it definitely any investment carries risk, and a lot of these people folded. Additionally, the state media started making more claims and you can read the sexcellent article in Popular Mechanics about this. I don't know if you heard this one Scott. The Global Times started, as the younger folks would say, started throwing some shade at the TV project. They said that the project's chief architect had only a primary school level applicate education. Yeah. So the China State media is coming out with, you know, saying a couple of bad things about it, you know, just kind of pushing towards like it is a scam. Maybe things aren't always what they appear. Don't invest in this, that kind of thing. And when you hear like a big media agency, I guess, um, you know, of course it's the China State Agency. I take that for whatever you want. But um, there there may be telling investors not to invest or maybe to to consider, you know, looking elsewhere if you want to invest in future technology. So, um, I don't know. It seems like they're they're an authority of some sort and they're saying bad things about it. So of course that makes people wary and want to pull out. And when they do that, then other investors start to get wary and want to pull out, and it just becomes this big snowball situation where uh, suddenly they're left with no no money and uh and that's exactly what happened. Yeah, after testing was labeled or after the project was labeled as a scam by media and the investors pulled out, testing abruptly stopped, and those investors began asking for their cash back. As you said, well, when I say no money, they've already got the money that they've collected Friday investors, but they don't have additional funds coming into further the project. And you know that's the that's the idea. But um, man, so this thing, after after looking really really promising. Um now we're in December of so only a couple of months after September, this thing's abandoned, right Yeah, with no word from the parent company of the TV, which is not fit called Hwai Ying Kalai, and they have disappeared. There's a kind of sad are There are a couple of sad articles about this in Chinese media, man, uh, with headlines like China's elevated bus site has been abandoned for months. Get this Apparently they just left it in the roads. Yeah, so they Okay, this is really fascinated me. So I told you that they least this bit of roadway right right, so they bought or they least I should say, Um, I'll get the dimensions right here. I think I think it was three three hundred meters long, um, so three of roadway. But they leased this road, they at least part of the city road. It's a main public the main public road, and they had it all cordoned off and they built this makeshift like shed area right and this train of courses on that three test track that they were running back and forth on. They just parked it and left it. So right now today, if you were to go there, you would see it sitting in this garage under a thick layer of dust. And they've got a couple of uh as they described them, old security guards watching the place. And the old guards even say, honestly, they left without even telling us where they went. They forgot about us. They forgot about them too, so that this thing is like just abandoned in the middle of the city and under this rusty old garage. Um And you would think like, okay, well maybe they can just why didn't this you know, why doesn't the China state just move it out? You know why don't they come in and just you know, scrap this pilote. Here's here's the reason. They say, no one's done anything with it. And over two months and it hasn't been dismantled. That this this local residents said, give us our roadback, we want to pass through. So it's blocking traffic, right, it's causing a lot of trouble in the city that that they tested this thing in and they say, unfortunately, locals won't be able to get rid of the straddling bus so easily. The least for the three long test track was set to expire on August thirty one. However, in September T. E. B. Tech, the deputy manager and spokesperson, confirmed that the lease had been extended for another year. So in uh, at the end of what was it, September I'm sorry, August thirty one, they were newed that least for another year. It's gonna sit park there for at least another year until that lease is up. And their website is still up to yeah, so if so, are they gonna come back and dust this thing off and give it another shot or what's gonna happen? Or have investors soured to the idea and decided that, you know, no matter how many times the times they bring this thing out, you know, we're not going to invest. It's like the mono rail idea, you know, like everybody always gets every everybody always gets suckered into a mono rail deal. It happens all over the place, right, It's also one of your favorite episodes of it really is, but places really do fall for that idea. Yeah, it's true, and like that's the solution because what do they say, like it worked at disney World, you know, or Disneyland, and why wouldn't it work in our city? Why wouldn't it because every city is pretty much Disneyland. I mean it's just like, well look at Detroit's people mover. That's one example. There's tell you what, there's examples all over the place of a mono rail of it just doesn't go where they think it's gonna go. Well, here's something else. And I think this is very important to point out. There were no accidents, There were no mishaps, right in terms of physical collisions or something disastrous like that on its own test track. Okay, so aside from I I think the biggest problem is the most apparent and most media problem is the height difference is so if they can get it up, if they can essentially double the height there, then it would be a little more feasible. But I also have to ask, and I know maybe that's a there's a big conspiratorial scott, but is it possible that someone in the company angered, someone with influence in the media could be Why not? And you know what if they if they raise this thing to twice the height that it is now off the road, it seems like they're gonna have to make it wider, Like they're gonna have to go to three lanes wide instead of two lanes because it's gonna be too top heavy. Because you've got twelve people in this thing. And that's a that's a what it's called a liveload. I guess where it shifts and moves as people you know, vary their position inside. Um, it seems completely unstable. I mean, right now, it looks, you know, low and wide enough to be you know, feasible. I think if you double it, you're right, you would have to widen it. You'd also double the height. You would have to you'd have to go at least one lane y or if not too so, this thing is gonna get exponentially bigger. Um. I just don't know. I feel like people have just decided that they've had enough of this for now and let this go away for a while. Besides been like they said in the Simpsons, it's probably more of a Shelbyville kind of idea. Anyway. However, the story is not over yet. As Scott said, they have renewed the lease uh for the place where they abandoned this thing. The website sell active. They may well be, although we're less we checked. I think their last update on the official website have been in September. Now, Ben, can you just I mean, just imagine this. I'm looking at photos right now of this thing because you can find these online. There's this rusted out shed that's open on both ends. You know, it's a huge, huge building that they've built right in the middle of the street. There's a like a looks like it looks like a box car with a window on it, and that's all rusted as well. And that's probably where the security guards kind of hang out. It likely was in office at some point. I hope they at least being paid. There is a you know, that's the thing. If the investors are gone, who's paying them? I mean who Maybe it was a state operated thing or something. Maybe eventually they'll just get the bus for themselves. I don't know. It just it looks like I mean, it's it's awful look and the the visual of this thing right now is no good. I mean, they need to do something with this. They need to get rid of it or continue to keep it, maintain it at least exactly. They need to do something because there is also a there's also a platform, you know, a pedestrian platform, and that they used for testing to show what that would look like. Um, that's abandoned. Um, it's just it's a it's a horrible visual for this this um uh, this idea like no one's ever gonna come back to it. If this is what they're looking at right now, in to this thing that you would say that because I'm not sure if you're aware, but government officials in India have already expressed interest building something like this. To me, it seems even less feasible because from what I understand, India has where this would be useful. India has some to chaotic traffic. We have seen chaotic traffic there. I mean you can watch clips online of that and it's like there's there's just no order to some of those those intersections. And this requires extreme order. I mean, there's gonna be separate, a separate set of rules when this thing is an operation, because it's not, because it's on rails, I guess it corners differently than you might think it requires, you know, along sweeping turns as what a train. Um, it's not something that can turn tightly like a bus can. It can't make right hand turns so or left hand turns. Um. Nothing, you know, ninety degrees by any means can't do you turns. It's probably just a like a straight shot there and back, if not one big loop, you know, maybe a circular track. But um, everything is different. And again watch some of these videos and just pay attention to how disorienting it is when someone's if you're in the car, like you know, the perspective from a driver and this thing comes over you from behind, or you know it stops and you have to continue on or one or the other. Very very um um. It just messes with your perception. Well, hey, check this out. Though we have a smaller example of this with the Atlanta streetcar. Okay, yeah, it's kind of a debacle. You can tell. It's it's Scott's favorite thing now it's yeah, it's it's not a good situation. It's a it's a losing proposition. Well, okay, I'm not getting what. I'm not giving enough time. No. No, The thing is they went half measure with it in the city, and so it was built almost as a proof of concept in a very small, very small, single loop. It circles around uh Centennial Olympic Park, and then it also goes to by the west End Peach Tree, and then it has a loop that takes it through Edgewood, which would be near the MLK Center. That's right near us. That's right near us. Yeah, and it's so it's a very small loop. And the idea wasn't it before tourists, Right, It would be a way to get tourists around the city. You know, they're in town. Maybe they don't have a car, or they do have a car but don't want to deal with the land traffic or whatever. It's I think it was a cheap ride too, isn't like a dollar or something. It was free for the first few months. Yeah, it's free, and now it's like a maybe a dollar too, like hopping on. But I've written it yet, well I wrote it. When you know me, I wrote it was free. You get mugged. No, I mugged some people. Good for you. But now they get a profitable trip, right right right, But the I did not, in fact might anyone. But the thing that interests me about this for the purpose of this episode, is that when they began testing this thing on a very small track. I'll show you this map here. That's the loop. It's almost like two loops with the nexus point. So when the or an intersection point, rather when they begin testing this thing, the accidents start occurring. To be fair, none of the accidents are the fault of the street car operators, people reacting to its people to a thing on the rails. When they have, you know, the agency of anywhere they can roll their car. In many places they should not, sure, but there are places where street cars work perfectly fine. San Francisco, I mean, that's the That's a huge example. How much of that is just how much of that, though, is just the fact that people are used to that. People who are driving in San Francisco now grew up with those training. That's true. There's a ton of tourists, though, I mean you think that they come in contact with him at some point. I mean, most tourists are on that street car probably, I mean instead of, you know, instead of trying to deal with it in traffic. But that's a good point. I mean, I don't know. It seems like when anywhere that there is a train that shares the roadway like that, or a bus like this that shares the roadway, there's always going to be that chance that, you know, the interaction with other drivers who are um able switch lanes and able to you know, make poor decisions around that being able to swerve somewhere. I think what happened a lot of I think at least a couple of the accidents with the streetcar here in Atlanta, even on its very small route, I think at least a few of them were people trying to jump ahead, cut it off, and then execute illegal left hand turns or something like that. But not a smart move. No, especially with the vehicle that does not stop as easily as you know, a typical light sedan would, I would say, so, I mean, it's a big, big, heavy vehicle and it's on rails to begin with, which is what it's this, it's it's a different but similar problem. Uh. And you've got a lot of people inside. They're not buckled in, they're just sitting on open seats, so that's another danger aspect, I guess. And in a bus it's the same thing. Um, it was just like trying to race the train, like why would you? Why would you race the train? So, Ben, this will lead to a lot of infrastructure changes as well if if it does come about, either either in China or in India or whoever else decided to jump on the bandwagon, or Atlanta, wherever they decided to do something like this. But it does, it does change the landscape of the roads. And also there's such a significant investment, so so crazy expensive to build stuff in any city. I mean the bureaucratic red tape alone, you know what I mean? Well, what was the amount that was raised for this thing? It was like what's the universe? It's RMB right, that's so there was like fifty fifty million, which is about I think it's a little over seven million US dollars that was raised for this project. And now if you look at the image of it sitting in the barn, kind of rusting. Um, that's where you're seven and a half minute or seven and a a quarter million dollars plant. And so many people are convinced that these guys just built everyone and mother off with seven millions. Well they're gone. No one could find them, even the guards left guarding the place. I mean, that's an interesting story right there. I'd love to find out what those guys do all day, you know, probably nothing, probably playing their phones all day, probably like yeah, they probably like chain smoke and plainly angry birds, suduco masters. You know. I think it's really good at something. Maybe they're secretly the owners and they're just sitting on that cool seven mill Now, wouldn't that be something if they found out, like those those sleepy guards that are outside there, those are the guys that are just counting the cash at night at home. What a heist? There's no way, that's an interesting thought. That would be such a great and I would watch that that work, and everybody that asks, they're just like those that's what they're telling everybody. They're like, they left, we don't even know where they are. Call me back, we can't contact them, and that's a perfect cover, perfect cover. We'll see, we'll see maybe. Guys, if you're listening to the show, right in and let us know. The funders of t e B, we'd love to hear your your take on this. And for everyone else out there, we hope that you are having a wonderful time as we're in the midst of the holiday season and we want to hear from you. What do you think is the place of light rail like this? After all this, I kind of I would love to see something like this really work because it's really it's a cool looking thing and as far as like replacing a bus or something, this is a completely different idea something we have. It's a really neat looking thing. And if if it were to work like they wanted to work, like you know, flawlessly, and there were really no other real world issues that are getting in the way, which it's it's loaded with those, by the way, But if it really would work the way that they wanted to when they say that it would this, I'd love to see something like this in place somewhere in a crowded city, in a crowded city where the where the speed limit is relatively low, that's another problem you didn't even talk about. But where the speed limit is relatively low, then I would also love to see that. Would you love to hop on this thing? I would. Here's the here's the other like the knee jerk reaction here is like, well don't they just pull it off the side and have it on its own designated trail, like so the no cars have to go underneath it, and that's that eliminates the problem. Right, that's just a train. Then, yeah, they've got they've got those they're trying to you're trying to deal with the roadway that exists, so like the infrastructure, Like if you're thinking that, because I thought that at one point, I was thinking, well, why don't they just keep the cars away? Oh, that's right, because that's the idea, is that it's supposed to go over the cars, right, And then you know, I was also thinking the money aspects. You could set up. You could set up like a food stand there, and then eventually I'm sure there would be someone with enough novelty that they would say, hey, we're going to make one of these things a restaurant or that's a good idea. Yeah, I think the restaurant's an okay idea, But what if you know somebody who's probably gonna try something novelty hotel too, And I don't think that would work as well, but the restaurant might. So they're they're all these cool they're all these cool wouldn't it be great if kind of ideas? But we want to know from you guys, do you think any of this would work? Do you think this is a scam or just delayed funding. I'll tell you what, if people are not returning phone calls, then that makes it sound like a scam. It sure does sound like that. It's like it's like they don't have much prospect of coming back to this project. I don't think. And and we'll see what happens over the next year as we wait out this lease and see what goes on, because it'll be in the news for sure. People. We're still reporting on this. I mean, one of these reports in front of me here comes from today. It happened this morning before we came into the podcast studio. So, um, you know, it's still an area of interest, and we'll find out what's going on with it the next year for sure. Um. One more thing, Benny, we want to talk about some listener mail, right we have we have some feedback? Is that right? Absolutely? All right, let's do it alright, So Scott Our first listener mail today comes from David R. David R says you asked for nicknames. I have three. When you all can decide who is who. The nicknames are number one camshaft, or two down shift, and number three overdrive. I like cam shaft myself, all right, yeah, camshaft, Scott, camshaft, Benjamin, Yeah, I can live with that. Yeah, what about you? Uh, also cam shaft? We can we can all adopt cam shift. Uh maybe I would go for I don't know, I guess nol. Why don't you pick one and then I'll take the third one? So we'll get back on that. Uh. I was thinking of difficult nicknames to pull off. By the way, unrelated to this, David, something you have to you have to live up to one of the Alright, So I met someone? Did I mention this already? I may mention this on the air, somebody calling themselves snake bite. Oh yeah, you told me off here. I don't know about on air. It's still in my head that someone would call themselves snake Bite, and then I'm expected to refer to them. Is that? Come on, man, that's a crazy nickname, Scott, I'm in my thirties. Yeah, and you got friends named snake Bite. What's going on with your friends of friends? What's going on in your life right now? Um? All right, what's going on right now? I'm glad you asked. Uh it will be uh listener mail. Okay, So moving on and thank you, Thank you, David. So our second email comes from ron C and he did a he's he's riding back in response to the zipper merge, and he says the zipper merge may work well in theory, but in practice it's just an excuse for impatient, self important people to cut in line. Say, let me point out two major flaws with it now, Okay, ron drives a semi. Sod one flaws trucks when I'm in my semi and bumper to bumper traffic. They're around six cars in the lane next to me. The zipper merge method says that the cars alternate. Most drivers think that this means if they are next to another vehicle, they get to be in front of it. If they're lane ends every one of them thinks they have the right away to emerge in front of me. Since I have to slow down for these people that don't care and wait for them to squeeze in, I then have a new crop trying to squeeze it in front of me. Again. It's often not until I get up too far for them to pull up alongside that they back off. There are no cones, emergency vehicles or cops. They will stay in the closed lane till they are buying me, often driving in the dirt or on a sidewalk. Oh boy, Okay, now listen. There's a couple of things here, and I totally understand why a truck driver, a big truck driver would understand or would not um agree with the zipper emergency theory. It's tough for them because the cars are just continually cut in front of them, way too close and not a lot not giving them enough space to break. That's one thing, right. The other thing is who wants to let a big truck in front of you? So they will, like he says, I mean, they'll they'll they'll try to squeeze out that last inch of pavement in front of him. I'm sure, um, you know, so they don't have to be behind the big truck for whatever reason. That seems kind of silly, but it'll do that well because a lot of people when driving have this natural line mentality and want to be at the front of what they see as a line, even though that that logic doesn't really apply to traffic. Yeah, and you know, I we got a couple of notes from big rig drivers, you know, from semi drivers, and they said, you know, the zipper emergen thing, it's not really good for us. And I totally understand. I I get that well. Semi drivers have I think one of the toughest jobs on the road because there are so many people who think they're hot shots because they've been fortunate enough to never get hit by a trailer and think that this, think that it's fine for them to swerve into a lane and slam on the brakes just to get in front in line. Yeah. Yeah, you know. One quick thing I want to mention here though, is he also mentions like the people that go all the way to the very end and then try to squeeze in and end up using like the shoulder or like he said, you know, the side the sidewalking. It in. That's not at all when I was talking about I guess when I was talking about the zipper merges where people actually you know, working with one another, and I know that's the problem. The problem is that you know, you you kind of line yourself up with you know, the space in between the two cars next to you, and that's the way it works. And then everybody lets everybody in seamlessly. And I know that's a dream, you know scenario. It happens sometimes, but it doesn't happen very often. Usually someone's fighting and that there's like two cars that go ahead, and then one slips in, and then maybe another three cars go and another one session it just doesn't work out all that one. It's it's kind of like what Ron pointing out the sentence that really stuck got out to me. He said, most drivers think this means if they're next or another vehicle, they get to be in front of it. So which part of the zipper are you? He raises. His second point um is the following, and this is an example when he's in his car. The second problem is when multiple lanes are closed. As an extreme example, I offer what actually happened to me in my car a few weeks ago, fatal collision closed the freeway, but not until I was stuck in it. For the rest of us, the police had left open one lane out of eight all the way to the left. When you're in the only lane open and seven other lanes are zippering with you, you were not zippering with every other car. You were zippering with every eighth car. Definitely doesn't work in that. Add this to the number of people the previous problem creates, and I was stuck on a freeway for over two hours, so only one mile from the closure, I can. I have experienced this absolutely. You know. It's strange because again, people don't have a an overall view of traffic, right We don't see the forest for the trees. And that becomes readily apparent if you look at any of the science behind traffic jams, you know, and how easily and quickly a a small slowdown and one lane three miles away can create a bottleneck, you know, in a few minutes, and it doesn't work. It makes a perfect point is that it doesn't work when you're going from eight lanes to one. There's no way that you're going to perform a you know, any kind of zip or merge at all. It's just all right, you can go ahead because you've been I've seen you sitting there, you're ahead of me or whatever. It's like it becomes a courtesy thing that you know when because you're you're almost making at that point. Let's say it's in the you know, in the left side, and you're trying to get to the right, you're almost making a right hand turn to get off of the road, you know, to exit ramp or wherever. But um, yeah, that that's hopefully just decency. Common decency comes out in that situation. People let you in or you let people in, and it just has to work that way. Otherwise, like you said, you can be stuck in there for two hours if the road justester down. To have my judgmental nature rises to the surface so quickly and so strange. Man, I'm so petty and like a traffic jamily. I will I if I see someone and I think, look at look at that guy. You know, he's like working hard, he's got his kid in the car, you know, I like the truck or whatever. It's like, oh, he just lets someone in and now he needs to get in. Well, you know what man karma, but uh yeah, someone lets you in when you're like right, when you're leaving a parking lot or something. Yeah, then I'm like, cool, if we're going the same way, we're road dogs and you're traveling a pack, you're kind to the next person that wants to get your head? Did you show? Like, well you let me in, I'm gonna let someone else send so you know you just so you know what's paid back. But here's the thing. Yeah, I start building my own pack or tribe in my head when I'm like, who's with me in this in this traffic jam? And then if I see somebody, you know, a hot dog in around and like trying to cut off a semi these people who do the obnoxious thing where they immediately tailgate somebody else in traffic who has nowhere else to go. If I see that person and you're around other members of what I have decided in my weird head is my tribe or my pack, I'm going to collaborate with them to ruin your day. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'll get over in this lane and me and the guy on the other side againna pace you box you in. We're gonna box you in. I will box I used to do it a lot, but it's you know, it's not fair because you to be to be absolutely honest, we don't have any idea what other people's situations are, why they're in a hurry. They may not just be being you know, I try to think garbage people, but I try to think like that. When I see someone using the you know, the the the sideline, the shoulder, you know, to pass a traffic jam, I think, okay, maybe just maybe there's a medical emergency going on, or they've got to get home because you know, there's some bad news or something, or you know whatever. I try to I try to think the best of people in that situation. But then about five minutes later, I'm thinking, like, I just saw that guy pull off through it. He's not going anywhere important, you know, I know that they're not going anywhere important. But I try, and initially I try to think good things about that person. I think positive thoughts, but it just doesn't work. Secret well after you know, after a few minutes of sitting in traffic, you know, you think like, well that that jerk is already home or something because he pulled that move and then you think, well, maybe you got a flat tire from all the debris in the You know what, man, they're not happy at home. People like that are never happy. And what is this taking a turn? Hasn't Yeah, you're right, I'm sounding like a real monsteries taking a twist. So be you got one more for us? Or or is that it? Yeah? We got let's do one more today. Kelsey b rights to us and says, Been and Scott, Uh, I it's a very high praise, incredible podcast. It's such a pleasure to listen to kind don't let us get you know, big heads about ourselves. So h Kelsey's responding to listener mail and use tires. Kelsey says, I typically buy used wheels and tires off Cruig's list and sell the old alloys for the cost of the new ones because everyone likes new shoes. Oh now I remember this, I wrote back to Kelsey. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, and Uh said on the three thousand k episode, you know we talked about steps to uh increase your probability of having a car make it to three thousand miles three thousand, says I love this, um have been a twenty year mechanic on heavy jets and also an addition, has done three years of auto work during some hard times. And Kelsey going to weigh in and say, throttle body cleanings are snake oil in my opinion, pull the intake off, clean the carbon off with a little arrow, coil and bush and brush and then flush clean. Uh. These are the upsells in the auto repair world. Of course, paying the shop to do this intake cleaning is not economically feasible, so Kelsey is just promoting the do it yourself method versus having it done at the dealership because it really is very simple to do. I mean it's it's and also, you know we've we've talked about this so many times. You've got the benefit of YouTube and all these d I Y sites that will tell you exactly how to do it, and step by step through this thing. You can even watch somebody do it, probably on your own vehicle. There's so many videos out there, So just look for that stuff online and you'll find it. And it's really really simple. And again you don't have to pay somebody one hundred dollars to do this. You can buy a can of the cleaning solution and use an old toothbrush or something or whatever you've got. You know, I'm kidding with the toothbrush, but you can use you know, the stuff you've got around the house. Your roommates too. But anyways, it's a it's a simple, simple thing to do. So he's right, and uh again, Um, A lot of that stuff is if you're if you're ready to get your hands dirty and you know, roll up with sleeves, then a lot of that stuff you can kind of get done on the cheap. Yeah. Yeah. Points as last point, I also feel we changed too much based on mileage, he says. I run spark plugs and inspect them at intervals rather than an automatic change. A very good. That's that's that's really wise. Advice is that wait until something is showing signs of wear or has broken. Well, and not I wouldn't say it has broken, wait until it's showing signs of wear, but that that requires you inspect things often too. So if you're not pulling the plugs out and inspecting them every you know, twenty miles after a certain point, Um, then you probably wouldn't know that you're having an issue. That's the thing. A lot of people. I would say a lot of those mileage mandates, that's what I like to call them. A lot of mileage mandates come about because is there were people who weren't necessarily interested in their cars. They just wanted to know, like a very simple way to enforce a maintenance regimen. Sure. Yeah, and the manufacturer says, well, before it breaks, uh, you know, we'll we'll we'll play it safe on our end, so you know, we know that it's you know, designed to last. Let's say ballpark fifty miles or whatever. We're gonna have them change it at thirty Did they say that, Scott Or did they have a meeting where they said how often can we get people to buy spark cars? I saw you roll your eyes when I said that bigger conspiracy ideas maybe that Yeah, they're in with the spark plug people. Well, I mean not yet, but you heard that Apples considering building some autonomous vehicles. That's gonna be planned obsolescence I'm calling it now. Yeah, I'm talking about system updates and yeah, yeah, like what happens, really really what happens? I mean, we've got a lot of questions about this. There's there's really some serious concerns we have. I'm going to go on record and say I probably I would not unless Apple changed as a company, I would not buy a vehicle from them. Oh man, So we've we've talked about so many things today in this episode. We've been all over the board. That's good though. Yeah, this kind of went on some tangents. But I like episodes like this. Yeah, me too, man. Yeah, and hopefully other listeners like it as well. Oh, let's hope. So it's literally our job. That's what we're banking on. That. So if you would like to check out some of the previous episodes of Car Stuff, you are in luck. You can go to our website car Stuff Show dot com find every single audio podcast we have ever done. That's a lot. Some are better than others. Oh yeah, but uh but even more importantly, we'd like to hear from you. If you have a recommendation for something you think your fellow listeners would like to hear about, visit us on Facebook or Twitter where we are Car Stuff HSW. That's also the spot to go if you're just like, hey, here's a funny thing I saw. Drop it. Drop us a line. Can also find some stories on there that don't make it to air for one reason or another. That's where you can check out that accurate in s X that Scott spotted in the wild, and along with a multitude of other reports and events and postings and cool card pictures. Whatever I find on town. Really it's it's one Scott finds around town. Instit tune in. Do you check us out there? And if you would like to take a page from your fellow listeners books and write to us directly, we have an email address. We are car stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you say, Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Did Bonnie and Clyde really write to Henry Ford to thank him for his fast, reliable getaway cars? Do 
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