Crosley's intent for his car was well summarized by his proclamation "You wouldn't cross a river in a battleship," nor would you want to cross town in a large family car just to purchase groceries or have coffee with a friend.

Your alternator is NOT a chargerThe alternator’s job is to supply the power needed for all electrical items on the vehicle, plus replenish the battery from the last start up. The alternator is not a battery charger so much as it is a battery maintainer. If the alternator has to recharge an overly discharged battery, the alternator will become over-worked, which will shorten its life.If you use your alternator to charge your dead battery, you will overheat the alternator during its charging process. The greater the amperage flowing through it, the higher the heat an alternator creates.Maximum Alternator Output Only Occurs at high RPMSAfter you start your car with jumper cables, the voltage regulator sees a discharged battery and commands maximum field in the rotor. But at 600 RPM, the alternator can only provide about 1/4th of its rated output. Let it idle for a long period and all you’ll do it overheat the rotor windings and burn up your expensive alternator. A 110-amp alternator can only output 110-amps at RPMS of 2,500 or more. So don’t even think about letting it idle to recharge the battery.A battery charger costs $40. A new Alternator $350Not exactly brain surgery, is it?The correct way to deal with this situation is to jump the battery (using a jumper pack is much safer than jumper cables) and driving it to a place where you can place a REAL battery charger on the battery.

Your Alternator Is Not A ChargerYes, you read that right. An alternator is designed to MAINTAIN your car battery, not recharge it from a deeply discharged state. Its designed to run at only 35-50% of its fully rated output. When you use your cars alternator to recharge a dead battery, you force it to run at nearly 100% of its rated capacity and that overheats the alternator and dramatically shortens its life.

This was much more of an issue a generation ago, when your ‘74 Chevy Nova or ‘69 Ford F-100 had a 35 amp alternator. Any car made in the last 15-20 years will have a 75 amp alternator as a bare minimum, and ratings well north of 100 amps are common in larger vehicles.There’s dozens of amps of headroom to charge the battery at idle speed, especially if you turn off the lights, stereo, HVAC, etc. That said, it’ll charge even more quickly if you drive the car.

Third, as he explains, he actually doesn’t like driving. Not this kind, the kind the rest of us do, with traffic in two directions, and pedestrians, and junctions, and nothing clear-cut to prove. In fact, he rarely does it. “I just think that I find it stressful,” he says. “I try not to do things that don’t add to my life.” And then he adds—a statement said with sincerity—“Look, we’re on these roads, anything can happen.”

Level 0 is no automation whatsoever. Level 1 is partial assistance with certain aspects of driving, like lane keep assist or adaptive cruise control. Level 2 is a step up to systems that can take control of the vehicle in certain situations, like Tesla's Autopilot or Cadillac's Super Cruise, while still requiring the driver to pay attention. Get past that and we enter the realm of speculation: Level 3 promises full computer control under defined conditions during a journey, Level 4 expands that to start-to-finish autonomous tech limited only by virtual safeguards like a geofence, and Level 5 is the total hands-off, go-anywhere-at-the-push-of-a-button experience.

The CEO of Volkswagen's autonomous driving division recently admitted that Level 5 autonomy—that's full computer control of the vehicle with zero limitations—might actually never happen.