Invention News!

The world's coolest air conditioning machine and Toyota's manual electric car!  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
How did the world's coolest air conditioner get so hot?
An article I read in the Wall Street Journal. Did
you know that the window air conditioner has been largely
unchanged for one hundred years. If it seems like a
window air conditioner today, if you have one is just
like the one you had as a kid, it's because
it is, even if you're ninety years old. They haven't
changed in like one hundred years. They're big, heavy, inefficient

(00:25):
freeze you if you're six inches away from them. Do
nothing for the room on the other house. Outside of
the house pieces of equipment.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
I've lived in and sucked down amazing amounts of electricity too. Yeah,
I've lived in many a place with a window air conditioner. Well,
somebody developed a new one that is just lightening up
the world. Europe especially has a lot of window air
conditioners for a variety of reasons. But they're catching on
in the United States and it's just a lot of
people who have central air are adding it in rooms
that just kind of stay hot because this thing is

(00:55):
so efficient, it's quiet, it doesn't use much energy, and
it puts out ridiculous cold air. So if you have
like an upstairs room that stays hot. You know, sometimes
in a house you got to you gotta make it
so freezing cold on the lower level to make the
upstairs sleepable or whatever, you put a window air conditioning,
one of these new ones in there. So anyway, looked
into the new U shaped window AC they're talking about.

(01:18):
It's right up there with Apple's original iPhone, Tesla's model S.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
And now this air conditioner is like a game changer
for an industry.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Wow, unless this thing cosses immediate blindness or insanity or something,
it sounds too good to be true.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's fantastic insanity. Well, they should, there should be a
movement forward for the first time in one hundred years.
But here's my favorite story from the world of invention.
Toyota is developing an electric vehicle with a manual transmission,
just so you can pretend you have a manual transition transmission.
So Toyota has been and I hadn't even thought about this,

(01:53):
but Toyoto has been super skeptical about the whole electric
vehicle thing, so they hadn't poured a lot of resources
in it. But they now realize that you know that
trains leaving the station, whether they like it or not,
so they're trying to figure out ways to appeal to people.
Automatic transmissions aren't in many cars in the United States,
like supers, high end sports cars and really cheap cars

(02:14):
and like nothing in between. It's a lot more popular
in Europe for I don't know what reason, but some
people just love manual transmissions. So Toyota applied for a
patent in the United States for a car that would
have no actual multi speed transmission. Instead, a shifter would
be connected to sensors and a central computer program to
mimic the feel of a car with a manual transmission.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Since not all cars with manual transmissions are the same,
they have different engines and different transmissions with different numbers
of gears that you can program it in.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
This is crazy.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
The central computer would be programmed to imitate a specific
sort of manual transmission car to complete the experience of
the driver will have a clutch pedal in addition to
the usual brake and accelerator.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Which, of course we'll do nothing.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Drivers will even be able to shift, a process known
as engine breaking, which we all know it is. If
you're in a lower gear and you let off, it
slows you down and the engine wind's really loud, well,
it will do that. The friction of the unpowered engine
slows the car. Blah blah blah. It also includes programming
that will allow drivers to realistically experience not doing it well,

(03:18):
like if you shift into a higher gear at too
low a speed, it will shaken buck just like a
gas powered manual transmission would.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
That is crazy. I'm sorry I keep saying that.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
This is I mean Toyota, this is, you know, the
real company.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
It's almost got me converted.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
It's hilarious, isn't that. I've given up on trying to
predict what things will catch on and won't. But what
a funny one that is.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
In a related story, Harley Davidson is producing a motorcycle
with pedals so you can pretend you're on a pike.