The main attraction is that it solves the biggest two problems of electric cars, range and recharge time.

PHEV's get excellent mileage even when driven by the internal combustion engine alone. I get around 50 MPG from the Prius without charging it at all.

Maintenance costs: The idea that maintenance is a huge hit is simple not true. We got 275,000 miles out of our last Prius without any serious issues. We never replaced the battery pack. The idea that a PHEV will be often scrapped after 5 years is not true. Granted that if the car has deteriorated, people will be more likely to scrap it but this is true of all cars.

All cars have maintenance costs and some of them are expensive. What happens when a ICE car needs a new engine? And because of all the smog equipment, replacing the engine on a car also requires special skills.

Talking old cars of the road. This will happen automatically as older cars reach a point where it is no longer practical to maintain them. At that point, most people will replace them with something more environmentally friendly than the old car.

I generate my power with solar. So some of my driving is free and is good for the environment.

I am amazed by the responses that say in essence: Communism / Socialism sucks. How dare a communist sci fi writer write a sci fi story that involves communism?!

Relax and take a deep breath. It is only science fiction.

There have been many Sci Fi stories about how a group of capitalists got together and created a moon landing / interplanetary travel / interstellar travel / colonization. Shall we decry them for the capitalist propaganda?

In reality the moon landing was created by the government taxing the citizens and using some of that money to create a government program to send men to the moon.

Science fiction has always had a lot to say about technology, economic systems, governments and societies. I am concerned about the problem of a world where fewer workers (this includes computer nerds) are needed to produce the things society wants because of advances in technology. What happens to this large mass of unemployable workers under unregulated capitalism? This is a perfect theme for a science fiction story. I look forward to reading The wages of humanity.

I agree completely. We need a law that says simply: It shall be illegal to do any misleading advertising.

Financial penalties would rapidly escalate and repeated offences would subject company owners to jail time.

The offender would be required to publish in a similar venue a statement admitting to, and apologizing for, the misleading advertising.

The test of misleading would be if average people would believe something untrue after viewing the ad.

I'm guessing the lawsuit with the best chance of success will be and end user who incurs a huge expense due to his inability to use the bricked device. Or the manufacturer who ordered FTDI parts but received fake ones.

Personally I hope they sue FTDI into bankruptcy.

I telneted in to your bbs. Wow that brings back memories! The all text interface. How amazing BBSes were in their day!

A job should be a learning experience just as much as college. By frequent switching you learn a variety of skills and ways of doing things.
During your first few months on a new job, you have to absorb a lot of information in a short time. This is a plus if you value learning.

I have always got far bigger "raises" by switching jobs than I got for working for a company for a long time. Admittedly, I haven't worked for many
companies for more than a year. A couple of times, I switched because of the amount of my raise and got a much better salary at the new employer.

Job shopping teaches you the art or resume writing and interview techniques.

That said, if you are truly happy with your work I wouldn't jump for a small increase.

There are a lot of benefits to job shopping to offset some employers seeing a job shopper as a liability.

The one improvement Microsoft could have made in windows 8.1 is to have an option to have a more windows 7 like interface. I accomplished with a lot of work and by adding classic shell. The old windows is still there, but Microsoft hides it because they want us to start using the metro apps.

The trouble is that a lot of us don't want to move to the metro apps. My computer has a keyboard and mouse and my old programs work just fine that way.

I'm self employed because I hate putting up with the BS involved in being an employee. I am not getting rich but I have a LOT more free time. For me it is a freedom issue.

"Real journalists" have a conflict of interest. They want to keep their jobs and their access to government sorces. As a result, they become stenographers for government PR people.

The media owners also have a conflict of interest. They are intimidated by the government and demand that the journalists do what it takes to keep the midia owners business safe. They are also intimidated by the threat of lawsuits.

As a result the media has become garbage. I am sad to say that there is no high quality media in the United States today. Better coverage can be had from foreign sources and bloggers.

Politicians and insurance companies will come up with new creative ways to screw the peasants (You and me). If engineers can be creative at what they do, why can't crooks like politicians and insurance companies?

How does a human driver react to the polite driver, the impatient driver or the insane driver? When I notice an unsafe driver I give them extra room so no matter how they drive I will have time to stop. I don't see why similar behavior could not be programmed. The simple rule of making sure you have time to stop no matter what the other cars do should handle most of that.

The hardest challenge would be hackers, smart people who want to throw a monkey wrench in the system. Maybe they like seeing accidents or maybe they just want to shut down the system. It would probably be possible interfere with a cars detection systems.

On the whole, I think the benefits of a driver less car would outweigh drawbacks.

Insurance is not a problem. Automakers will estimate the liability risk and add that to the price of the car. Insurance companies will not want to lose the revenue stream so they will figure out a way to keep selling insurance to drivers.

In the end it will be the consumer who picks up the tab for liability. Just like it is now.

You can still drive very old cars that don't have the latest safety technology today. Cars from the 50's don't have seat belts or dual brake lines or smog controls.

I don't see why this is a problem. It is simple programming to notice that the brakes have been activated and the car is not slowing at the required rate and to shift into low, turn on the emergency flashers, possibly send a signal indicating 'Car out of control to nearby cars'. When the car has slowed sufficiently, it could pull over to the side and wait for a tow. In other words it would do what a skillful driver would do.

Most likely the car would have redundant braking systems as most cars do today. I wonder what portion of drivers today know if the brakes fail, to downshift and to use the parking brake.

In addition to redundancy for critical systems, there would need to be robust diagnostic routines to detect for example that the brakes are not operating properly.

I see the most difficult problem as getting the software to a very reliable state and keeping it there. If your android has a bug and one function doesn't work no one dies.

Thanks for the info. I will make it a point to buy / recommend Leveno products. I want to reward this behavior.