Given a construction budget of $125,000 per residence for a particularly nice two bedroom single bathroom house of about 1000ft², that's 80,000. Estimates are that there are currently between 750,000 to 800,000 people that have no home right now. Taking the high number of 800,000 that $10,000,000,000 is 10% of those people housed. You could reasonably go down to $30,000 for a build for a single floor house of the same footprint if you used mass produced prefabs, and get 330,000 people housed, or over 41%. Do you realize how much that would uplift things if we suddenly had a 41% reduction in homelessness? Considering that companies like Google and OpenAI are throwing around hundreds of billions of dollars which never get circulated back into the wider economy, spending $10,000,000,000 to bring 330,000 people back into economic and societal participation sounds amazing. That's assuming a somewhat low yearly income of $45,000 per person, adding up to $14,850,000,000 in circulation, or a gain of almost $5,000,000,000 right there. Even if we only achieve half of any of this that's $7,000,000,000 for one year. Two years in and the cost has already been paid back and more.
This comes with the giant caveat that we exclude the external costs of such a huge project, like social welfare visits, probation or monitoring if needed, or even just placement programs. Likely those all combined would be a third of the total cost.
It's not just social media. At least once every two weeks I get FanDuel sending me garbage in the mail in the form of a giant closed envelope with their stupid purple branding all over it.
As I found out, they're so determined for it to reach you that they even plastic coat the envelope and the paper inside. Can't even get the minuscule joy of burning them.
The majority in that statistic are selectable 4WD, which isn't the same as AWD. Pushing the two groups together skews the numbers a bit. Most trucks since the 1970s have been 4WD, ever since companies like Muncie and Borg-Warner started selling axles to Ford and their cohorts. AWD trucks are a relatively new phenomenon, with the first one I can think of being the limited production GMC Syclone in 1989, and it being a truck was an emissions loophole. I think the 2005 Honda Ridgeline was the first real mass produced AWD truck, or perhaps the Subaru Baja from 2003 if you consider that a truck rather than an open deck car. Right now I think only the Ridgeline, Hyundai Santa Cruz, and Ford Maverick are sold as AWD, whereas every other truck is selectable 4WD.
Push the goal posts of you want. OP specifically said rear wheel drive.
There’s a whole community that doesn’t consider anything without front and rear lockers, dana 44 axels, frame on body, and 37s with bead lock a real off road rig.
There is a difference between AWD and 4WD, because 4WD trucks are RWD until you manually change the mode. AWD is all on all the time and is FWD biased, usually something like 70:30 F:R. For most of their lives, even when towing, 4WD trucks are used as RWD only. As for specialized off-road vehicles that wasn't what we were talking about, but yes those people split hairs down to the micron for what constitutes what.
There are so many varieties of AWD. Most are wet-clutched (inside or outside of the main transmission), some are lockable or torsen center differentials, Prius adds electric power to the rear wheels to complement the FWD hybrid setup. Traditional 4WD with a transfer case using a manual shifter-actuated gear selector isn't very common any more. My 1999 Suburban had a wet clutch in a standard truck-shaped transfer case, one side of the front differential had a solenoid to lock/unlock one wheel to the side gear to keep the front drive shaft from spinning in RWD mode, and used a motor to mechanically engage or disengage the wet clutch (between the front and rear outputs) and to slide the engagement ring to offer AWD (rear-wheel biased, engaged when front and rear wheel speeds differed anywhere from 0 to 100% torque transfer) or 4WD (clutch fully engaged), and even 4WD-LOW by running the motor the other direction to engage the planetary gearing with the rear drive shaft.
In my mind, the biggest difference is whether front and rear drive shafts turn at exactly the same rate; if so it's "4WD". If clutch slippage or a differential allows different front and rear axle speeds then it's some form of AWD. But many AWD systems have clutches capable of effectively locking the front and rear driveshafts. E.g. the Suburban had tire-hop turning on pavement in 4WD mode which is about the most torque that drive-train would be expected to encounter.
Some cars are going with entirely electrically actuated brakes, either inboard on on-hub, compared to the E-Tron which uses traditional hydraulically actuated brakes. One uses an electric motor to wind something to tighten the spring clip by pulling it that then pushes the pads to the rotor and the other uses pressure to overcome the spring by pushing the spring to compress it and push the pads to the rotor. I'm guessing Audi didn't go with entirely electric brakes because they have a reputation for being harsh and difficult to modulate with the pedal, and Audi is supposed to be both a luxury and sport brand where pedal feel is important.
With electrically actuated brakes the default power off state is fully engaged. Meaning if the power dies the brakes lock up. That causes it's own issues, obviously, but a sudden deceleration is better than no deceleration at most road speeds.
edit: as formerlyproven below states, the ones currently for sale also have a hydraulic backup.
Brake by wire passenger car brake systems are still hydraulic... and all of them have a mechanical backup. There is not a single car on the market today using electromechanical brakes.
Unless you're talking about electric parking brakes in a thread about ABS.
Exactly, they aren't good at creating new material. But many discussions in comment section are simply regurgitations of existing material, which they are good at rearranging. New novel discussions in places like this are actually a very rare thing, as many comment sections are simply people who already know informing those who don't. I'm doing that right now, funnily enough.
No, they aren't even good at rearranging existing material. They produce bad writing that only superficially looks good in a lowest-common-denominator sense, and falls apart under any close examination. Everything is wrong with it, from the sentence structure to the rhetorical forms to the substance. AI 'writing' is a loose collection of cheap tricks that score well on A/B.
Texture resolution and shadow resolution do a lot to make a game look better. The big difference between the PlayStation 2 and 3 was the massive jump in texture resolution, shadow resolution and model polygon count. Play Gran Turismo 5 and go look at one of the cars imported from Gran Turismo 4 for a good example. However the PlayStation 2 was capable of some very high polygon count models, as evidenced by Lulu's cutscene model from Final Fantasy X that rivals most PlayStation 3 player models in detail. Those resolution upgrades, the number of objects and not just polygons displayable on screen, and the increase in distance required for low-poly LOD models all made that giant leap possible and very visible. Since then it's mostly been adding camera effects such as depth of field and ambient occlusion that are much less noticeable. Though for those with keen eyes, only in the current generation are there textures without noticeable anti-aliasing effects which came as a result of being able to split the UVs thanks to a higher resolution making small UV faces possible.
Look at Nissan. Their CVTs are known to have an effective life of about 60,000 miles. Anything beyond that is betting against the reaper. Because of the way the transmission is mated to the engine (in order to reduce the overall size) most times the cost to replace it costs more than the car is worth. Many times insurance will total a seven or eight year old Rogue or Altima if the CVT needs replaced. This is because Nissans depreciate in value so quickly, and it's somewhat of an ouroboros in that they depreciate in value so quickly because of the short lifetimes of the CVTs.
Meanwhile Mitsubishi has been suffering issues with their AWD systems failing, and because the Eclipse Cross and Outlander Sport are sold primarily as AWD that affects a majority of their sales.
Ford's had the issue with the dual-clutch automatics failing on the Focus, Fiesta, and Escape.
Dodge has... Well, really only the Durango currently that's reliable. The Charger PHEV is having all sorts off issues, from the battery packs overheating to random software glitches to the engine refusing to disengage from the electric portion of the drivetrain. The Hornet's been getting the shit kicked out of it by Kelley Blue Book and Consumer Reports because the transmissions are ripping themselves apart and the BCMs are bricking themselves.
Jeep's had issues with the Cherokee, Wrangler, Gladiator, and Compass because of the Pentastar engine nuking itself before 100,000 miles either by losing too much oil or the water jackets cracking. Meanwhile the differentials in the Wrangler and Gladiator have had problems that Stellantis denies.
Back before about... I'd say 2016? 2017? You had a lot less issues with new cars. Most issues were simple recalls like transmissions slipping out of gear or premature wear on the cams, not something that would entirely junk the car.
The valvetrain and fuel injection systems of any given internal combustion engine vehicle made since the 1980s are far more complex than the voltage controller of an EV drivetrain. The difference is that those mechanical components are in a system that can have multiple minor fail states before ceasing to function and contain far less energy than what's coursing through the voltage controller. The reason EVs are more dangerous currently is because they haven't gone through the decades of regulations and testing needed to provide multiple diagnostics and failsafes the way mechanical components have. That's easily fixed by just giving them a few years and letting people develop folk knowledge they way they did with internal combustion engines. Even now hobbyists are developing new ways to test for unbalanced cells, impedance hotspots, and integrating new monitoring systems that don't require costly proprietary sensors.
Most of this limitation from Ford and GM about their EV drivetrains is because they want control over deployment for monitoring, and so they can cover their asses legally if something like a manufacturing defect becomes widespread.
When you do that you're supposed to classify the vehicle as an OHV, or off-highway vehicle. Problem is a lot of states don't actually do emissions testing, others don't do vehicle status inspection, and some don't do either. You ever wonder why Indiana has such a huge number of drag racing cars in the Prostock and Superstock classes? There's no emissions testing outside the capitol.
Having grown up in Indiana, and having watched a lot of drag racing, and even crewed for a friend drag racing motorcycles, I have not once wondered that, either. I, of course, just assumed it was that way everywhere. “What, your small nowhere town doesn’t have its own drag strip or dirt oval? How odd…”
(And when I say “nowhere”, I mean go look up Bunker Hill, IN as a go-to example. It’s a fine town as far as small towns go, but a long way from any major metro.)
Back when people still watched cable Street Outlaws was Discovery's biggest show for a while. It is an oddly specific thing, but a question I heard a lot about ten years ago. The two places where drag racing are biggest are Oklahoma and Indiana.
Of course, the emissions testing is a state issue. Even the federal regulations say that federal government vehicles have to be tested in the state they are stationed in.
One thing I do not understand is the sheer ridiculousness of the participation rate within the military. As you stated, many of these people in positions of command know exactly what they're violating, be it domestic law, international law, standards of decency, or their own morals. Enough of them seem to disagree with the current directions being given that they could refuse orders and draw down, effectively paralyzing the military with a sizable non-compliant command structure. And if they're all removed from their posts the ensuing chaos would ensure the implosion of the current operation and likely cripple the military for decades. There's a very powerful position these people are in, and they know as much. What's even more important from this entire interaction is that they stand to lose more than they would gain from continuing the war, while they would gain nothing but lose very little if they just stopped and refused. The continuation is actively detrimental to the military because it increases fear of petty or capricious reprisal, reduces trust, makes international cooperation during crises less likely, and pushes foreign militaries away from buying U.S. equipment.
So why continue listening to the order to punch the brick wall and break their knuckles? There's some deeper cultural issue at play here, likely that's been there since Vietnam and only grown over the last sixty years, where refusal of orders even if clearly detrimental is a betrayal of your country and fellow servicemen rather than an exercise in judgement and consideration of consequences.
This comes with the giant caveat that we exclude the external costs of such a huge project, like social welfare visits, probation or monitoring if needed, or even just placement programs. Likely those all combined would be a third of the total cost.
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