Originally published at: Lucid Air: now with electroshock handles and pepper spray cannon - Boing Boing
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Lucif Air.
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who is buying these to drive around, and where do they live?
Rich arseholes who don’t need all the features and rich criminals who do.
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That sounds like an invitation.
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Unless it’s available with a South African Blaster (under-mount flame thrower) security system, I’m not interested.
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This or Magnavolt?
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This could be just what I need to pick up my breakfast sandwiches. I have to go past the junior high school.
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I’d be very curious to know how much below the skin the up-armoring goes; and whether it extends to modifying any of the default behavior of the high voltage safety systems; or reinforcement of the vehicle to compensate for an already very heavy car now carrying some armor.
The ESA has an overview for first responders, which has some interesting tidbits like the fact that anything that triggers the airbags will cause the “integrated safety system” to put the vehicle into a state better suited to first responders by going into park; isolating the high voltage battery pack from all high voltage systems, and extending all door handles for ready access to the vehicle.
That’s the sort of thing that is really helpful if your threat model is mostly concerned with the paramedics being able to swiftly extract you from the car after an accident without you bleeding to death while they futz with isolating the high voltage system; but could be…somewhat less helpful…if you are concerned about the hitmen or black-bag squad being able to coax your car into turning you over without a fuss by giving it a bop to the shock sensor.
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Someone in the higher echelons actually okayed this. Lucid. The irony.
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Original design documents have surfaced, apparently they were executed by an 8-year old boy in crayon.
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Ha! Beat me to it.
As for…
…who is buying these to drive around, and where do they live? Crime is down…
… I would suspect that a big part of the answer is people in the developing world. I’m from Rio de Janeiro, and many of my friends and relatives still live there. In Brazilian cities, expensive and/or roomy cars are stolen at a non-negligible rate. My cousin has a Mitsubishi SUV (i.e. not an outrageously fancy car, just roomy, her toddler has a lot of stuff…) and decided that it was worth it to add the armor and bullet-proof windows. My other cousin saved up for and splurged on a nice new car for the first time, and it was stolen. A friend of my parents’ likes nice motorcycles, and is on his fifth one because the previous four were stolen. I realize that “the plural of anecdote is not data” but I hear so many stories like these… If I still lived in Brazil, I would probably have an armored car. (Or maybe I would just have a little compact car like most people… But if you have a long commute and/or enjoy road trips, roomy cars are kinda nice, one of the advantages of living in the US…). My guess is that the situation might be similar in other cities around Latin America and elsewhere in the “global south”.
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