201–210 of 475 posts
I've got kids, so I buy my cars used. A while back I decided to start buying Toyota products, I haven't regretted the decision.
I do hope the American manufacturers turn things around, though. Maybe with the electrics.
This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice. I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in…
German citizen here. I travel to the US quite often - I find that the quality of the Grocery stores is on average one level up. The quality of the goods sold there is another story. But mid-and southern Europe likes it cheap when it comes to these things. There is a reason why we call them "discounters". I really do hear you on the housing quality - it's ridiculous what people are willing to put up with over there. W…
The first time one of these places sells (with black mold still in the basement, asbestos in the walls, and lead paint the children's room) the value of the nearby houses goes up and everyone starts looking to sell THEIR old beat up black mold and asbestos special. It starts a boom and suddenly a whole neighborhood of 300k$ houses become 1million$ grey monstrosities.
This all drives up the cost of new construction as well (which is always a little more pricey than buying an older home) and so you get overpriced mansions that you describe as well, but the root cause is the removal of the entire "bottom" of the market. It is now almost impossible to find what Americans call a "fixer-upper" in some cities.
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I think it is a fallacy that EVs are simpler. You have just moved mechanical regulators to software so the complexity is hidden. I.e. instead of a timing belt you have an inverter etc. Instead of a water pump driven by a belt you habe an electrical pump cooling the batteries and motor.
Agreed, but the potential is there even so, software can not wear out with use. (Corrupted flash notwithstanding.)
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I'm inclined to agree. I've lived in Japan (5 years), in San Francisco (6 years), and now live in Germany. The food quality goes Europe -> Japan -> USA, with a sharp drop between Japan and the USA. I'm currently living in Leipzig, which still has bombed-out looking empty buildings from the time of the Iron Curtain (although things have finally been picking up over the past few years). And yet even here the infrastruc…
Infrastructure in Leipzig is awesome because it was newly created after joining Western Germany for the money from westerners. Infrastructure in Western Germany is crap! My wife uses subway in Munich and there is no week without complaining about delayed or canceled trains. Buildings of universities in Western Germany is a bad joke. University in Regensburg was literally collapsing while one in Dresden got many new b…
I used to hate public transport in munich, but compared to US (e.g. SF or NYC) it seems incredibly good.
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Yes it's regulations, but there's another factor too: population density. In Paris for example, you can find food markets where stuff is brought from small farms and is ridiculously cheap, right in the city central areas, though often hidden in the back alleys. The reason this works is that this type of commerce doesn't require marketing: local people just see it and use it. Only possible in higher density population…
Decent parks are much more common in the US than huge shopping malls.
Don't get me started on ANY German car ... my cars and home appliances are all Korean now.
This is why I think Tesla will have a hard time when most manufacturers are creating EVs. In Europe we are already seeing that a lot of Tesla owners are turning to Porsche. The build quality is just sad for such an expensive car. Wind blowing into the side window!? Ok, they will fix it over time, but I'm just flabbergasted they shipped those cars.
sorry, but where are we seeing that ? Has Porsche already delivered any electric cars to customers ? Or are you talking about the fact that the e.g German media finally has a darling to talk about, even if it is really really pricey and slower with less range ? I have no issues with E Porsche. Good for them and their fans. I hope they sell as many as you can even if they take all Tesla customers that overlap. But Por…
Looks like a lot of discussion here is about housing, but the CR report suggests that most of the issues are with the infotainment systems in cars. And that includes Tesla. I assume that the ecosystem is big enough to create a 3rd player that’s better than android auto or iOS and better suited for cars specifically.
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sorry, but where are we seeing that ? Has Porsche already delivered any electric cars to customers ? Or are you talking about the fact that the e.g German media finally has a darling to talk about, even if it is really really pricey and slower with less range ? I have no issues with E Porsche. Good for them and their fans. I hope they sell as many as you can even if they take all Tesla customers that overlap. But Por…
The Porsche Taycan is pre-ordered more than 30000 times. Most of those customers currently own a Tesla.