Goddamn, the Tankrantula looks even cooler here than in the novel (probably since the profile pic lacked action poses I guess)
Has it ever been addressed how Akira drives the car remotely? I know that we all know it's really Alpha driving it then, but no one else in-world seems to comment about it either. I assume it's some built in feature of the vehicle and maybe Akira's aug suit, but I still don't recall it being directly mentioned anywhere.
It starts getting brought up more around/just after here in the novel; wasteland vehicles do typically have some kind of autodrive but it's not any better than the real life AI driving systems of today. Thus when they see the car performing impossible shit they assume that Akira is in control (having some kind of body aug or at least a really fancy suit integration to do so) & end up getting impressed all over again. He likely won't ever admit it in his lifetime due to his inferiority complex, but at the end of this arc he's shown genuinely pulling off some insane shit while disconnected from Alpha, so he really
is becoming supernaturally skilled and once the AIs stop doing their cognitive filtering bullshit (why everyone instinctively loves Katsuya & why everyone sees Akira as being too weak to live) it'll be more than just the slum people who've seen him drag a corpse to an enemy's base that're utterly fucking terrified of him...