The problem is, it looks like they're trying to sell it as a car, when it's really just another glorified golfcarts.

It's funny that you mentioned Florida, since that's where I am at the moment. I'm only quoting parts of the laws, so this doesn't become a huge message. You can follow the links to read the rest of the statute and other relevant statutes if you want.

Golf carts can only drive on roads in certain communities and only in certain circumstances.
See Florida Statute 316.212

316.212 Operation of golf carts on certain roadways.â"The operation of a golf cart upon the public roads or streets of this state is prohibited except as provided herein:

The "Local Motors" vehicles would appear to be classified in Florida as LSV (Low Speed Vehicles). They're covered by Florida Statute 316.2122

316.2122 Operation of a low-speed vehicle or mini truck on certain roadways.â"The operation of a low-speed vehicle as defined in s. 320.01 or a mini truck as defined in s. 320.01 on any road is authorized with the following restrictions:
(1)âfA low-speed vehicle or mini truck may be operated only on streets where the posted speed limit is 35 miles per hour or less. This does not prohibit a low-speed vehicle or mini truck from crossing a road or street at an intersection where the road or street has a posted speed limit of more than 35 miles per hour.
[snip]

The UTV is classified here as an ATV (All Terrain Vehicle), and covered by Florida Statute 316.2074.

316.2074(5) Except as provided in this section, an all-terrain vehicle may not be operated upon the public roads, streets, or highways of this state, except as otherwise permitted by the managing state or federal agency.

That's not to say people don't drive them on the road. I've seen them do it. They're breaking the law, and if the police are so inclined, they will be more than happy to give you a stack of tickets.

I've seen both golfcarts and various designs of ATVs used in a lot of places. A agree, they are popular for both industry and off-road applications. But with them implying it's a car it's a problem.

Honestly, it wouldn't be safe to drive any real distance in most metro areas in Florida, if it is accepted for road use as a LSV.

For example, I can't think of any routes that you could safely use to get from downtown Tampa to downtown St. Petersburg. You can't cross any of the bridges in that car, because they don't go fast enough. It would be virtually impossible to even find a route where you wouldn't be under the speed limit and significantly under the average speed.

Even downtown St. Petersburg to downtown Clearwater would be risky at best.

Ya, but golf carts aren't so hot driving across town. I'd think it would be a rather limited market that would want to pay over $8,000 for a golf cart that you can't carry golf clubs in. Generally, I'd assume Slashdot readers don't fall into that niche. $8K on a gaming machine, maybe. $8K to leave your house? No way. :)

Does cherry picking old war stories usually work out well for you?

From their site, they intend to make all the essential parts for crash safety out of printed plastic.

Everything on the car that could be integrated into a single material piece has been printed. This includes the chassis/frame, exterior body, and some interior features. The mechanical components of the vehicle, like battery, motors, wiring, and suspension, are sourced from Renaultâ(TM)s Twizy, an electric powered city car.

Also on their site has the specs.

Motor - 5 bhp or 17 bhp, 42 lb-ft torque*

Top Speed - approx. 50mph*

The "*" indicating there should be a footnote explaining it, is missing.

Actually, their donor car (Renault Twizy) isn't even classified as a car. It's a quadcycle, and is not currently legal for road operation in the United States. From what I found elsewhere, Renault isn't even planning to make it available in the US, since it doesn't meet the road requirements here.

You can build a full VW Beetle from 3rd party parts. Quite literally, you could have absolutely no parts sourced from Volkswagen or their OEM manufacturers at all. It's an expensive hobby, but people do it.

Try this: Crash safety testing.

Well, assuming the article saying that the consumer can "design" it really means design, and not just select from a few options to make it custom.

That's farther down the list. "Don't implicate yourself, even to your friends" :)

I'm the wrong one to implicate. Your diversion will be a bit too transparent. You may as well hang a neon sign in your front window saying "IT'S ME!"

At best, someone will show up to my door with doughnuts, and we'll have a good laugh over it.

Mental note: When establishing a questionably legal site for definitely illegal transactions to be made through, don't keep any logs about it, nor your conversations regarding it.

We've explored more of this rock than any other. That's the "mostly".

Finding the lost airliner isn't a matter of lack of exploration. That is, we can't recheck an entire ocean in a short period to see if the airliner is there now. I believe that part of the ocean was already mapped, so it has already been "explored".

Your airplane argument would be like saying you haven't explored your back yard, if someone tossed a beer can over the fence yesterday, and you didn't know about it.

BTW, I tossed a beer can over your fence yesterday, you should go clean it up, your yard is a mess.

Dude, it's from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I picked it on purpose, just to show that I wasn't totally serious. Damn, you'd think an obvious landmark from an extremely popular science fiction movie would be a hint to some people.

I'm not saying that it's an alien spacecraft. What I'm saying is, we wouldn't necessarily know if we saw one. Hell, people find all kinds of "lost" things in their own back yards. In the last year, someone found a viking burial site. Someone else literally found buried gold. Would you know if there was an ancient spacecraft buried 20 feet under your house?

I wasn't even trying to propose that alien spacecraft do have rock shielding. What I'm saying is there's a lot we *don't* know. Short of seeing a spacecraft that looks like a spacecraft as we'd expect it, we could easily overlook it.

I did say it was poorly constructed statistics. :) I know I'm not immortal, but it looks good on paper.

Everywhere is relative. There are an estimated 5 trillion habitable planets in the known universe. We've mostly explored one. On our closest neighbors, we've done roughly the equivalent of checking your back yard and saying "There are no whales". Well, unless you happen to have whales in your yard, then we'll say "... no elephants". :)

If there is/was life on other planets, it is very likely not to be in our solar system. Even if there was an species that achieved space travel, and spent millions of years settling on millions of planets, it's *still* not very likely they'd be found on one in our solar system.

Even if we found one, would we know what we're looking at? Since rock seems to be pretty abundant in the tiny speck of space that we've explored, a sand and rock covered hull of a spacecraft would be reasonable. That would help protect from micro-meteors and other hazards. If one crashed on a neighboring planet even 10,000 years ago, would just look like rock. Heck, if one crashed on Earth, it would still look like a rock.

Is this space craft remains, or a natural formation?

No, I don't believe it's a crashed spaceship. It's just a rock. But since we don't exactly do thorough core samples on every large rock on the planet (and under the surface), we wouldn't know if it was.

Careful, that's my argument for immorality. :)

A person can die in just a second. I've been alive for over 1.3 billion seconds.

So far, it's 0 in 1.3 billion. With my own (poorly constructed) personal statistics, the chances of dying are very very slim.

Plane crashes? 0 in 1.3 billion.
Shootings? 0 in 1.3 billion.
Lethal virus? 0 in 1.3 billion
Extraterrestrial object impact? 0 in 1.3 billion
Potentially lethal natural disaster? 1 in 654 million.

Then there are car accidents have been 1 in 218 million.

I'd expect I'm probably safe for the next 1.3 billion seconds. Unless, an asteroid carrying a lethal virus hits an airplane I'm flying in, which then crashes into a highway during an earthquake.

Hey, it could happen. I'll worry more about what I'm having for dinner.

The same fears started when people first started with saying that AIs could someday become sentient. Why wouldn't they want to kill us? Why would they? The same with aliens coming to us wanting to help or exterminate us. We can thing they'll act any way we can imagine, and with as many possible outcomes mentioned, one might be right.

To the best of my knowledge, no program has become self aware. And no martians have seen our probes as a hostile invasion. It makes for (sometimes) good fiction though.