I like this car, I may buy one when my Hyundai dies. I expect they are comparatively priced.

Do enlighten me: How do you think "dominant corporation(s) or collusion thereof [will] strongarm retailers?" That simply won't happen. Rather, there will be fewer barriers to entry for other widget manufacturers to enter the market, either independently or working for competing "dominant" corporations when they discover that it's more profitable to not be "paid off" but to compete in the market instead.

A dominant corporation cannot buy every possible competitor. That's absurd. And there will always multiple "dominant" corporations, and not just one, or one and a number of "start-ups." Where there is Coke, there will be Pepsi. Where there is Apple, there will be Samsung. In a free market, monopolies and cartels cannot exist except in the very short term and at an eventual loss (unless they have the primary monopoly of the government to back them up).

If there are patents, there's no free market. A free market, by definition, must exclude all patent, trademark, copyright, and other such IP law. So, you may have picked the worst example.

Free markets without patents is not a problem at all. Not for the market and not for consumers. Companies may just be more careful about spies. They certainly wouldn't be incentivized (like they are now) to spend $millions just to hold patents on products that are never produced, only to corner the market and "strongarm" competitors (like they do now).

Companies like Bed, Bath & Beyond have been trying to price upstarts out of the market for years, decades even! And they're still not able to get rid of competitors! Same can be said about Walmart. Many stores other than Walmart sell TVs, even at higher prices, and remain competitive. Other stores sell linens besides BB&B. So, you have a distorted view of how markets actually work. No one corporation can monopolize the sale of any goods or services. That's just incorrect (unless the government helps them to do so). It just doesn't happen.

There's no such thing as a "natural monopoly." Name one. In Texas, for example, there are competing utility providers, and people can choose which energy service to use. This is in contrast to CA, where most of us are forced to "choose" PG&E over zero other alternatives.

"Restriction of information/prevention of rational, informed consumers"

I'm sorry, but anyone who has been involved in business knows this is complete horseshit. If you have a better product/service (the only way to outdo the competition), you will let the customers/market know right away.

And there's no scale at which markets collapse. The same forces of the market apply to big, small, and medium businesses. There is no arbitrary size for which these forces do not apply. And keep in mind that without government granted privileges, corporations would be much smaller than they are now, because competition would make it easier for competitors to participate, thereby forcing a re-allocation of resources to accommodate the market's demands.

So, yes you most certainly "overstated" your case. All markets can be free, regardless of size. Whether it's a small farmer's market or Whole Foods. The same market forces apply. They all have to court voluntary customers through service, price, quality, etc. Again, anyone who has had to work with marketing will know this.

BTW, things like "price dumping" are circumvented all the time. Does Rolls Royce care that Hyundai sells cheaper cars? Does Mercedes care that a Prius is less expensive?

Target makes money because Walmart is cheaper, not in spite of it!
And everything Walmart sells, you'll find many other stores selling it, even though Walmart might sell it cheaper.
The local natural food store in my neighborhood sells, more or less, the same things as Whole Foods. None of your objections pose any real problems in the real world.

I don't see Walmart buying every other TV seller, or even trying to do this. Microsoft tried but, so what? They failed, because they could not buy every single competitor in the software world, could they?

Even in Somalia, to use @enoch's example, in the telecommunications industry (to pick one that saw growth), no one even remotely managed to do any of the things you say could happen. In 20 years, no corporation did any of these things. Why not?

Because they couldn't.

And did "dominant" corporations take over all small retailers and sellers? No way, not even close! They couldn't. Only regulations can really kill all small retailers (and they do it all the time). Your outrage is gravely misplaced. Do the countless bazaars and sellers of Turkey, India, or Thailand get taken over by "dominant" corporations?

Hint: No.

Only when government meddles, do the big corporations wipe out the little ones, and sometimes each other.

In any case, Coke will not eliminate Pepsi (or Sprite, or Dr. Pepper, or A&W), government or no government.

Hyundai Executives. This Comment is brought to you by Hyundai.

$90k on a commuter car is a tough sell. My Tesla would be getting beat up in the lot at work all week, and I'd be making the 2-hour trip home to see my parents in a 1995 Hyundai Accent.

I can only hope Tesla survives long enough to have an impact on the real-world car market. Having a large company doing/driving battery R&D is also a good thing for all sorts of markets.

Frustrating yet relieved to see that the western world is finally noticing the terrible condition these North Koreans live under. As a Korean American I had access to Korean news during the 90s and I remember hearing these horror stories in North Korea, and yet no other First World countries cared enough for this region politically to do anything about it. Hell, if Dennis Rodman can meet the goddamn leader of North Korea, how hard can it be to send a few bowls of porridge into the country? Fucking hell.

The founder and CEO of Hyundai motor group was himself born and raised in North Korea who had immigrated south just before the Korean war began, and he personally spent millions of his personal money to send 1000 full grown cows to north Korea by the truckload, and convince the North Korean leaders to open their borders and accept US/South Korean aid in. That was the 90s she was talking about. Fucking Cows man. Basketball players and Cows.

To this day we have North Korean refugees in China selling their bodies to make ends meet, and little children pickpocketing in the street. This is not some history lesson. This is an on going news coverage.

I'm not sure what the technical term for it is. Independent wheel drivetrain something or another. I've only ever seen or heard of it on off-roading vehicles but the concept is that the system senses when a wheel is no longer in contact with a surface and will then stop powering that particular wheel and instead divert the power to the ones still in contact with the ground. It's a pretty cool idea but I never would have guessed to see it on a Hyundai sedan. I'm fairly certain that's not a stock option on that model...

Just watched this on Dish Network a couple weeks ago, while sitting in a Hyundai dealership waiting for an auto-start to get put on.

This is really just a silly Hyundai Elantra commercial where they also talk to one of the Walking Dead creators about his work. There are roughly 3 different versions of the car depicted, and none of them are feasible.



Of course no one would pick a compact coupe as the foundation for an armored car if they had any kind of choice in the matter (and if they don't, there's no reason to talk about what a great choice their only option is). There are a couple key areas in which this car really shows the limitations of the basic platform (a compact coupe): Height, Carry Capacity.

Basics:
An Elantra weighs about 2,800lbs unmodified (and roughly 3,500 - 4,000 as imagined), has about 150HP (not impressive numbers from a 1.8L engine), and has a sunroof roughly 4'8" feet off the ground.

Height:
The idea of a turret on top of the car for offense is great, except for the part where he's talking about a car with a height of less than 5 feet. The average person is about 5'6" with an arm's reach of at least an extra foot. So, the person in the protected turret is still likely in range (the hypotenuse of an arm reaching to this height would be slightly longer than the ~4'8" car height plus the roughly foot and a half of turret). Have you ever stood out of a compact coupe's sunroof while the car was in motion? There's not a lot of room in that car period, there's certainly no room for a person to stand in the center of it while it's in motion in a high stress situation.

Carry Capacity:
The Elantra has a roughly 900lbs carry capacity (this weight includes driver and passengers, plus armor and such). I'm going to assume the weight of the cow catcher is about equal to an average small truck snow plow (250lbs), and that it's for hitting zombies not clearing the road of vehicles, and I'm going to place a fair shot in the dark of roughly 172.5lbs for the rest of the armor (assuming 7 gauge sheet metal is ideal, and assuming 23 square feet will cover enough glass). So far we've got 477.5lbs of carry capacity for driver, gunner, passengers, and gear. Each person likely weighs roughly 200lbs which means the car has enough capacity to deal with a driver, a single gunner, and two moderately well stocked bags of supplies. Any more than this and the car will start to run into issues, a lot more than this (say, loading it up with passengers and gear) and you risk significant damage to the car's ability to continue driving. All of this assumes they don't want to beef up the rear of the car to allow the vehicle to be able to "safely" ram other obstructions in the road (in a demolition derby drivers drive, and crash into each other, backwards to protect all of the sensitive components in the engine bay).

Other:
The roman chariot style blades on the wheels of a car was tried in an episode of the tv show Top Gear and it threw off the wheel balance to the point of making the car entirely undrivable for any more than a mile or two. Also, just about the last thing you want to do when dealing with zombies is damage their legs because it's much easier to see a zombie walking than a zombie crawling (our soldiers crawl when they want to be harder to see in modern combat for a reason). The general purpose of a compact car is to be accessible (read: inexpensive), and often they utilize a small fuel efficient engine. Increasing the weight of this car by about 40% is not doing any favors to the already under powered car, and the fuel economy is going to suffer. Realistically, speed and acceleration are meaningless (of course the car will exceed the 3 mile per hour average human walking speed).

Improvements:
*Start with a different type of vehicle. Perhaps something that was designed to be large.
*Ignore the mad max spikes.


research tools:
http://www.hyundaiusa.com/elantra/specifications.aspx
http://www.hyundai-forums.com/197-i30-elantra-touring-forum/140546-load-capacity-2012-touring.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humvee
http://www.fisherplows.com/fe/showroom/homesteader
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gauge-sheet-d_915.html
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/scales/sheetmetal.html

>> ^Payback:

>> ^spoco2:
We just bought a 2 year old Kia Grand Carnival (the Sedona in America), replacing our old 2002 Carnival that had it's engine die after a tiny bloody plastic T joint snapped causing the radiator water to spew onto the road instead of around the engine to cool it. This resulted in an engine that overheated very quickly and a system that was de-pressurised, and apparently not really able to be re-pressurised (don't tell me it could, I don't want to know that it was actually a cheap fix when we're told the engine was cactus... don't want to know we needlessly just paid out a chunk of money on a new car that we didn't need to).
Aaaanyway.
When I was looking into whether the engines in the new Carnivals are any good (apparently they are, Hyundai Lambda engines made in the US of A), I noticed they made a big deal on the wikipedia page about it having a timing CHAIN rather than belt, and wondered why this was a big thing.
Now I know <img class="smiley" src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/tongue.gif">

Here is me, NOT telling you it was a cheap fix, even if the engine seized from overheating after you ignored the "check engine" warning light. I also won't tell you that if it didn't come to a screeching, banging, violent halt, you probably could have "nursed" it home/to mechanic by waiting until it cooled down.
No sir, I REFUSE to tell you any of that.
I will tell you that if the reason it couldn't be pressurized was "a warped cylinder head" then ya, the engine is boned, but I'll avoid saying it would be about $2500 for a motor out of a auto wrecker (junk yard, used parts lot, etc) or even around $300 for a new cylinder head.


Well that's good to know (sort of). My wife was driving it at the time, and the check engine didn't come on, but it did come to a screeching, banging halt, with steam pouring out of the engine bay. To get an engine from one of these old ones rebuilt is around $4K (Australian), and that's about all the 2002 carnival is worth now, no-one wants to touch them. There's no point getting a 2nd hand engine from anywhere as there's not many to begin with, and they're just not reliable enough to spend the money on anyway.

So it was either a scrap yard for $500, or a trade in for $600. We had to be able to drive it in. Limped it in (still no check engine light on), handed it over, bid them good luck with it. We had told them the engine had blown up, but they were 'well, if you can drive it in, we'll give you $600 for it'. So it's not like we lied to them about the condition of the car. They'll scrap it for parts anyway.

>> ^spoco2:

We just bought a 2 year old Kia Grand Carnival (the Sedona in America), replacing our old 2002 Carnival that had it's engine die after a tiny bloody plastic T joint snapped causing the radiator water to spew onto the road instead of around the engine to cool it. This resulted in an engine that overheated very quickly and a system that was de-pressurised, and apparently not really able to be re-pressurised (don't tell me it could, I don't want to know that it was actually a cheap fix when we're told the engine was cactus... don't want to know we needlessly just paid out a chunk of money on a new car that we didn't need to).
Aaaanyway.
When I was looking into whether the engines in the new Carnivals are any good (apparently they are, Hyundai Lambda engines made in the US of A), I noticed they made a big deal on the wikipedia page about it having a timing CHAIN rather than belt, and wondered why this was a big thing.
Now I know


Here is me, NOT telling you it was a cheap fix, even if the engine started to seize from overheating after you ignored the "check engine" warning light. I also won't tell you that if it didn't come to a screeching, banging, violent halt, you probably could have "nursed" it home/to mechanic by waiting until it cooled down.

No sir, I REFUSE to tell you any of that.

I will tell you that if the reason it couldn't be pressurized was "a warped cylinder head" then ya, the engine is boned, but I'll avoid saying it would be about $2500 for a motor out of a auto wrecker (junk yard, used parts lot, etc) or even around $300 for a new cylinder head.

We just bought a 2 year old Kia Grand Carnival (the Sedona in America), replacing our old 2002 Carnival that had it's engine die after a tiny bloody plastic T joint snapped causing the radiator water to spew onto the road instead of around the engine to cool it. This resulted in an engine that overheated very quickly and a system that was de-pressurised, and apparently not really able to be re-pressurised (don't tell me it could, I don't want to know that it was actually a cheap fix when we're told the engine was cactus... don't want to know we needlessly just paid out a chunk of money on a new car that we didn't need to).

Aaaanyway.

When I was looking into whether the engines in the new Carnivals are any good (apparently they are, Hyundai Lambda engines made in the US of A), I noticed they made a big deal on the wikipedia page about it having a timing CHAIN rather than belt, and wondered why this was a big thing.

Now I know

http://carscoop.blogspot.com/2012/05/alleged-hyundai-sonata-yf-sudden.html


No current recalls on this model concerning any acceleration issues~Found another video of a Sonata's alleged over-rev as well-

Korean story on this: http://www.mhj21.com/sub_read.html?uid=54972§ion=section26§ion2=%EC%82%AC%ED%9A%8C%EC%9D%BC%EB%B0%98 (Chrome translates it, not sure about other browsers).

Seems it was a he as the article says he is asking what is going on. This is a black box recording of the accident on a Hyundai Sonata YF along with a dash cam. It was apparently an older gentleman. I have to guess that it is easy to armchair it in and say shift into N or kill the engine, but if your car suddenly starts accelerating faster than you are pressing the accelerator then panic probably kicks making rational thought go out the door... plus if I don't know about Korea, but at the local BMV, I often see older people given lots of chances to see the flashing light... "...do you see the light now? On the right?" "Oh! Yeah!".