"If Moore's Law applied to cars, you could replace your $12,500, 10-year-old, 39 miles/gallon Toyota with a $50 car that weighs 200 pounds and gets 500 miles to the gallon today."
So what exactly would that look like? In 1997 I was in 7th grade and using an Apple "Performa" 6205. Thats a 75 mhz PowerPC 603 processor with a whopping 16 (later upgraded to 32) megs of ram and I think a 1 gig. harddrive. The thing cost about $2000 and came with a 15'' display. It has been consistently rated as one of the top 10 worst computers apple ever made and was really a 1995 computer.
Fast forward to now and $2000 will get you a 2160 mhz iMac (28x faster just by that number, faster in reality), 1000 mb of RAM (62x), 250 GB of harddrive (250x) and a 24'' display (1.6x)
So how about the Toyota Corolla? Well it has kept up well. In 1995 you could get a 1.6L Corolla that got 32 mpg and squeaked out 100 HP and could go 0-60 mph in about 13 seconds. It sold for around $13,000.
And now I have found a spy shot of the 2007 Toyota Corolla! It gets 500 mpg and made of crystalized air and water. It runs on a mix of solar power, body heat, and bio-fuel, but that doesn't stop it going fast, it has over 2,800 horse power! This can take the new Corolla from 0 to 10,000 ft in about 12 seconds. Of course, its still available for $13,000!
... Or not. In reality we get a $14,500 (1.11 x) car with a 1.8L, 126 HP (1.26 x) engine that gets 33 MPG (1.03 x). Yay!
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