This "intelligent avatar" thing, however, is probably going to be the worst of both worlds: the slowness of human interaction (waiting for an artificially generated face to actually speak out the words instead of just skimming the text on the screen in a fraction of the time) combined with a complete lack of common sense. And of course the avatar is going to speak as slowly as possible to make sure even the most retarded passenger can understand it, etc...

I really hope they'll at least include a start screen with two options: text based or avatar. But more than likely, they'll be so proud of their incredible technological achievement that you'll have no such choice.

Yes, it has a "key fob" to allow anyone to steal your car as long as you are in range with the fob when they drive off (for example if you are standing next to the car). When they get out of range, the car will complain about the missing fob but will still continue to drive until you turn it off (or run out of battery). But you can use the remote control on your phone to honk the horn, lower the windows etcetera while they are driving, hopefully attracting attention to them.

(Note: this is how it worked a while ago, they might have issued an update to fix that particular issue)

I'm certainly relieved that they couldn't use the ignition: imagine the mayhem the hackers could cause if they figured out how to ignite those batteries!

It's a new feature on the smartphone app: you could already honk the horn, open the windows and roof, and many other things. Now they added "split in half and eject driver". Very useful, I must say.

Are there really more methane-producing animals than there would be if there were no humans? Cows, buffaloes, deer, any other farting animals? I might be wrong, but it seems implausible that we would be responsible for the fact that there are now too many animals on the planet, quite the contrary. I do believe that we are responsible for the disappearance of vast amounts of forest that used to turn all these farts back into oxygen.

In European cities, the beeper may well be 5 meters (sorry, 15 feet) from your bedroom window. So yes, you WILL hear it even while fucking. Of course it's not going to be a problem on American mega-intersections with parking lots on all sides and the nearest home miles away, but some Canadian cities are (fortunately) more like European ones.

Then add it to the far pole of the other side. Duh!

Who says you have to look down? Just install it at more or less eye height so you can see it before you start to cross. Then, while crossing, you look at traffic instead of at the digits on the other side.

And it annoys the hell out of normal hearing people, especially those living close to an intersection. Please, there's enough noise as it is.

How about a very small timer that can be read by people standing next to it, waiting to cross? There's absolutely no need for it to be readable from across the street.

That's a great solution, I wonder why nobody else has thought of that!

The same power as 17 Teslas in a golf ball, I wonder what range you get out of one of those.

Why would suppliers provide electricity at negative prices? Can't they just waste it somehow, just install a bunch of resistors in a big swimming pool and run the excess electricity through there?

Of course storing it for later use, for example by pumping up water that can be routed through turbines later, would be even better but would also require a serious investment. But certainly from the provider's point of view, simply wasting it is better than selling at negative prices?

Yes, that's a different law: if a headline ends in a question mark, the author of the article got everything backwards.

Except for certain Prince songs.

It will be 800 km in "extended cruise mode", meaning constant low speed, the way car manufacturers used to measure range before better standards were invented. In other words, they're cheating. Actual real world range will be about the same as a Tesla S 85.

Only just: a model S 60 is $69,900. And I imagine refilling with hydrogen at a gas station will cost a fair bit more than plugging in at home, making the Tesla cheaper and much easier to operate.

The S 60 has 2/3 the range of that concept FCV (208 miles vs. 300 according to Wikipedia), certainly way more than a fifth as stated in the article, and for $10,000 more you get an S 85 with a 265 mile range.